I gave up with trying to work with all of the stems and Sonar running at 119 bpm. My solution was to drop everything apart from the vocal and build the track from the ground up (in my own style!).
Sonar is not built for remixing stems with variable tempo (or whatever is going on that makes the track go out of sync).

Good luck to anyone having a go at the remix - can't be sure I'll finish my track but it's fun to work with a vocal track anyways.

Grum.

Thanks for all input guys.
I don't mind the competition, the more the merrier;)
 
Hopefully I get a remix uploaded...
 
Merry Christmas!

Sorry about Ableton Light, I didn't realize it didn't have the complex warping algorithm. If it helps and you're still interested you can use a fully functional demo of Live 9 for 30 days.
 
It sounds like the original track was simply recorded without click. You will always get tiny variations that way. 119 is probably just the "average" tempo, more or less. Ableton is pretty good at understanding this and locking the whole thing to a fixed tempo.

Sanderxpander
Sorry about Ableton Light, I didn't realize it didn't have the complex warping algorithm. If it helps and you're still interested you can use a fully functional demo of Live 9 for 30 days.
 
It sounds like the original track was simply recorded without click. You will always get tiny variations that way. 119 is probably just the "average" tempo, more or less. Ableton is pretty good at understanding this and locking the whole thing to a fixed tempo.

The headphone bleed in the vocal stem does appear to have a click but obviously other things are at work!

If anyone wants a proper tempo challenge have a go at tempo mapping Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky". Huge fun .

Grum.

Transfer from a wonky tape perhaps? Well enjoy, in any case!

> The headphone bleed in the vocal stem does appear to have a click
 
The song was recorded at or around the birth of MIDI, and MIDI wasn't even standardised then.
I wonder if they attempted MIDI clock (which never worked that well back in the day, and indeed for the decade to come....).

Why dont you just edit an 8 bar audio loop of drums from the stems and import the re-edit 8 bar clip into a track in Sonar and then double click the audio and Sonar Loop editor will reveal the original BPM?
 
Thats what I did on my Gary Numan remix and I managed to get the BPM locked that way.

I just downloaded the stems and pulled the drum track into Melodyne, it comes up at an average of 118.931, so set up a new project in X3 as 118.93 and imported the 8 stems (from the \BeatportRemixPackage-TearsForFears-PaleShelter\TearsForFears-PaleShelter-BeatportRemixStems folder).
 
I am not familiar with the song, so I muted the 2 synth and percussion track and jumped out to ~ bar 12 and it seems pretty synched. I didn't delve into it much beyond that though.
 
It seems this remix contest is rather skewed, as it has stems (and a cfg) file in that download specifically for Ableton. I would recommend the stems from the directory above, as the others seem to be specifically linked to that config file (i.e. require Ableton).
 
 
Edit: I just listened to the actual original song, so your timing issues may be that those initial bars are, in fact, added to the song. Not sure, but the "official video" starts ~2 seconds before that initial drum beat. They have a nice propaganda tag on the front of that vocal track (backwards lyrics)... says "The sickness in the system is an amplification of the sickness in the individual"
 
Edit2: Those 8 stems seem to be synched to each other pretty much, but do need to be slid some. By leaving a lead in on the song, they can be synched where the first couple bars of the drums come in and are close. They seem to stay well synched, but the timing does drift, so if you are looking to insert MIDI, you may need to audio snap from that point.

I did come back to that this morning and audiosnapped the stems and saved it as a CW bundle (in X3d) if you want them (456Mb). I did change the leads on the stems to sound like the original, but left the rest "in tact" as it were. I have not used Gobbler yet, but this would be a good use for it. I sent you a PM a bit ago.
 
FYI - When you used audiosnap, you want the project to follow the clip for something like this, I think. There are a few nuances to using audiosnap effectively, so this gave me good practice at least
 
Oh... I keep forgetting your question in the thread title! The key is C.
 
Edit: If you have not used audiosnap for drum replacement, Cakewalk posted a nice tutorial here when you attack that part.

Internet is slow whee I am at the moment so I may way to get home to download.  I think one of the downsides of software like Ableton is for some they become too reliant on the software to do too much for them.  Not knocking convenience.  I say use every tool at your disposal, but understanding how to do things without the instant gratification button has much value. I find that my favorite remixers tend to do a lot more things manually despite having tons of software at their disposal. For how I approach remixes, Ableton does not offer me much more. I'm sure for others that is different.