No love for slow tempo Dolly here ? Oh well...... I thought it was good anyway.

bitflipper
I've never verified this, but I was told once that a person's heart rate will attempt to match the tempo of music.
 
It does make some intuitive sense, given that we listen to slow tempos to relax, and that extremely fast tempos are most popular with teenagers who have energy to burn. But why the popularity of 120 bpm? Seems like an uncomfortably high target unless you're at the gym.
 
Here's an article about a study showing the relationship between music and heart rate: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=7902380
 

Here's another one Dave 

120 is two times 60, that seems the simplest answer. 120 is also not a weird heart rate if you're dancing hard. I'm not sure I buy the original premise though. And I also completely disagree that click tracks are inherently bad. I understand the idea is that you should be able to hold a groove without a metronome, and also that sometimes speeding up or down (or even hitting a specific break late or early) is a good thing, but that idea simply doesn't fit all styles. What I will say is that it is possible to play well with a clicktrack, and to play really badly with one, usually depending on if the musician is used to it and/or has a very precise feel for time or not.

On a sidenote, since someone mentioned quantizing, I really love having the option of adjusting quantize strength. I never quantize at 100 percent but rather stick around 60 to 80 percent. It really helps tightening up a part without losing the human touch. As always, you have to be careful around appogiaturas and slides and the like, but it's a lot better than programs only allowing 100 or nothing.

Sanderxpander
And I also completely disagree that click tracks are inherently bad. I understand the idea is that you should be able to hold a groove without a metronome,

All the DAWs seemed to be designed around the premise that everything builds upward from a click track, so if a person is composing is a DAW, I don't know that there is a realistic alternative to using the click track.  But at least there is a tempo map available so a person can use that to simulate something that sounds more like natural music.

I haven't done it in ages, but if the tempo map is like in Logic, you can just play your part and tap along later to fill in the tempo map.

EDIT:
Also, I already hate the idea that you can't produce "natural" sounding music with a tight beat. That's just not true.

Jeff Evans
If you import files from outside Studio One you do not have to stretch them manually at all. They do not need any special tempo info embedded in them either.  All you have to do is simply figure out what the tempo is of any external imported files (which you may know anyway) and simply let Studio One know that info.  The moment you do that the files stretch to the session tempo and to any other tempo changes as required.  When you import a file that does not have any tempo info in it when you look at that track and its inspector you will see the words 'Not Set' in the tempo window.  That is where you add the tempo info and once you do that it will respond immediately.

Jeff, I tried to do this with a project again, and it didn't work. I did the "type tempo for 'Not Set'" box and all that. The file could stretch to the current tempo, but if I changed tempo, nothing happened. I had shown this to someone at PreSonuSphere when I was doing a seminar there on signal processing, and he confirmed that it didn't work but he didn't know why.
 
HOWEVER! I found out what the problem was. When you create a song, on the very first screen you must check "Stretch Audio Files to Song Tempo." I created a test project with that checked, and everything worked as you described. I created another test project without that checked, and had the issues detailed above.
 
The problem occurred for me because the setting for that check box persists from song to song. I had turned it off a long time ago for a couple specific songs where I didn't want to stretch tempo, and missed turning it back on again.
 
With that mystery solved, I then I thought I'd compare quality. I did a stretch from 84 to 95 BPM in PS1, another in Sound Forge 10, and then Sonar. The sound quality in Sound Forge and PS1 was very good (I couldn't tell any difference between the two), even in real time, although doing offline rendering in Sonar did produce better results. The main difference was less frequency response alteration (wasn't expecting that) and the timing accuracy seemed better.
 
In the process of comparing, though, I discovered something EXTREMELY cool. I put the two tracks side by side and used exclusive solo to switch between them. But when I played them both together, there was an amazing swirling sound caused by the differences in the algorithms. It's sort of like flanging, but more out of control. I can hardly wait to use this on drums!!!! It's one of the first "new" effects I've heard in years and it rocks. Try it!
 
 
 
 

Yes I forgot to mention that check box at on the start page. For me that has always been ON and is usually on for every new song I make hence I missed that.
 
I guess 84 to 95 is a pretty serious change too. I would not be making such major changes like that but it is good to know it works if need be. The smaller the changes the closer two different stretch approaches are probably going to be too.
 
I still think they make it easy though to use loops and things from other sources. Sometimes you might have to spend a little time working out the tempo of a loop etc. I have an old Boss metronome with a great great tap tempo calculator and it makes it pretty fast.  I think there are programs that can figure it for you too. Or you could always do some calcs between transients.
 
Thanks for the info on the swirling effect. I have got a few other programs such as Sonar 8.5 and also Cool Edit Pro that could be the second time stretching device. I am sure there would be some differences between two stretches from two different programs. Sounds like the swirling effect is it!

cparmerlee

Metronomes and tuners are for people who want to be musicians someday.  Musicians don't need them.
 

Don't agree - at least about metronomes.  Metronomes can be a valuable practice tool.  When learning a technically challenging passage, forcing yourself to play to a slow beat is a good way to learn the fingerings (at least on a keyboard).  Recording a performance to them ... well, no argument there.

Thanks for this Craig! Great knowing how to, easily!

dmbaer

cparmerlee

Metronomes and tuners are for people who want to be musicians someday.  Musicians don't need them.
 

Don't agree - at least about metronomes.  Metronomes can be a valuable practice tool.  When learning a technically challenging passage, forcing yourself to play to a slow beat is a good way to learn the fingerings (at least on a keyboard).  Recording a performance to them ... well, no argument there.

I think we are in 100% agreement.  I often practice with a metronome.  I do that so that I can keep excellent time when playing live music in ensemble.  For most people, time doesn't just happen any more than pitch happens.  Both are skills that come from careful practice.  (And the access to advanced recording capabilities at very low cost really revolutionizes how one can practice these skills, but that's a subject for another thread another day.)
 
What I was referring to is the evolution, especially in pop music, to recording everything to a click track.  Some styles (euro Tek or the Gangnam style thing e.g.) are intentionally robotic, and that is a matter of acquired taste I suppose.  But I believe much, if not most, of the elegance and emotional grip of the most beautiful music comes from flexibility in time and nuance in pitch.
 
When I go back and listen to the hits from the 70s and earlier, it really is shocking just how much more depth there was to much of that music because it wasn't so robotic.  I heard Johnny Matthis in a radio interview recently talk about how most of his recordings were done on one take, or two at the most.  The label wouldn't budget any more studio time than that.  Yet the music was brilliantly done.  I was never really a big Johnny Matthis fan before, but now I have a huge respect for him and all the others who were (and are) such exquisite musicians.
 
I learned something from this thread about how to use tempo maps in a new way so that naturally flowing music can more easily be integrates with the DAW.  My "to do" list now includes learning a lot more about Audiosnap.