My band is using some tracks live. The files are stereo and have the audio content and click panned hard L/R. I do not have access to the original source files.  For one of the backing tracks, the click was done in half-time, i.e one on 1 and 3 instead of on 1, 2, 3,  & 4. I want to change it to the latter and am looking for the best way to do it.
 
My original thinking was that it would be best to have the actual tempo in SONAR sync'd with the audio click. To that end, I imported the tracks into SONAR X3 Producer. I was able to convert the audio click track into MIDI.  I ran the FIT IMPROVISATION process, which I have used in the past,  using the generated MIDI (after editing to clean it up and get the 1st event on 1:01) but the results indicate, I think, that I need to do a lot more editing on the MIDI reference and I ran out of time last night.

Assuming I can get FIT IMPROVE to generate an accurate tempo map, I suppose I can then easily create a MIDI track for the click I want. However, let's assume that the work to get an accurate tempo map generated is prohibitive, how else can I fairly quickly get the desired result, i.e. double-time the existing audio click.  Note that the click sound has an accent for the 1 beat so copying and sliding the audio track won't produce a usable  click track.  I suppose I could massage velocities on the generated MIDI track then slide that but since nothing lines up to the project measures since the tempo of the project doesn't match the audio, it would be a somewhat inaccurate operation.  Suggestions?

Oh, one more thing. Where did the "Interpolate" function from SONAR 8 and previous go to in X3?

Just record yourself playing the click with a midi controller.

morganfm71
Just record yourself playing the click with a midi controller.

 
Just what I would do, certainly the fastest. UNless your timing sucks :) 
 
I've been messing with some old band recordings trying to make midi backing tracks from real drums and bass.. I come close but the end results just sounds terrible. 
All the cool things the drummer did just don't come out the other end , And this whole extracting a tempo from a free time audio file just never seems to work. A few songs seemed better than others and the tempo map wasn't 4,000 different tempos. 
 
But dragging an aduio file to the time line , even a steady kick drum track just plain doesn't work that well. I gave up and just re did everything myself from scratch. It sounds way better. 
 
Which is an option you have-- why not make a better backing track yourself? WHat is the song and what are the parts needed? 

Is the click hard panned on it's own channel? If so, then I would record both tracks into Sonar as DUO mono: copy the click track to a new track and then slide that track to create a dbl time. If the Click is mixed into the audio tracks as a reference then you're probably better off inputting it in Midi as morganfm71 suggests. Maybe I'm not getting how the existing click is tracked.
 
 

The tracks are backing vocals and we're not about to re-record them because they're fine except for the click. I suppose I could record a midi but the timing would not be as exact. I'll keep it in mind as a fall-back. 
 
I mentioned above why copying and sliding the audio click track wouldn't work well - because the 1st beat is accented. 

Backing vocals?? Wouldn't it be easier to use a TC Halicon Box, I just got one for christmas and it's pretty frigggn cool what you can do. I got the TC Halicon Voice live Play Acoustic. 
Dead simple to use. Had it working almost out of the box. 
If you use in ears it gives you a hardwired monitor set up for vox, guitar and aux in. 
The guitar tuner and Body rez is almost worth the price.
 
I can't imagin being forced to play to a click track with only vocals on it,, hurtin..
 
 

Focus, lol! The whys of using these backing tracks were not up for discussion. I will say though that only the drummer and bassist will hear the click. The rest of us just follow the drummer's tempo. 

As it turns out, my original plan worked once I found and deleted 2 extraneous events from the reference MIDI track created from the audio click track. Fit improve produced a dead-on tempo map so that the bars in SONAR lined up perfectly to the free-form audio. If you haven't used FIT IMPROV process before you should check it out. It's been a while for me and simply asking the question, even though I didn't use any of your answers, was sufficient for me to clarify the process in my mind. Here's what I did:

1. Started out with 2 audio tracks, vocals & click
2. inserted ADDICTIVE DRUMS SYNTH MIDI track
3. dragged the audio click track to the MIDI track which caused SONAR to generate MIDI from the audio. That's a cool feature I had to look up in the help doc.
4. cleaned up the MIDI so that it ONLY had ONE event on each beat and ONLY on the proper beats. There were 2 extraneous events that had to be found and deleted.  
5. makes sure all tracks have only ONE clip that starts @ 1:01
6. select the MIDI track and exec FIT IMPROVISATION which generates a tempo map so that all bars now align to the reference MIDI click track. Since all tracks only have one clip starting at 1:01, no audio gets moved.
7. Mute the MIDI reference track as it is of no use anymore after FIT IMPROVE
8. Create the 4 beats desired on a new MIDI track, copy and paste with as many repetitions as needed.
9. Hard Pan click and vocal tracks L/R and export to stereo WAV (master and ultimately convert to MP3)

Much more accurate and faster once I remembered the process than trying to perform a click track!

you don't need a synth or anything. You said you have the click on it's own (left or right) chanel. Just import the file, copy the click, move it forward a beat and blend it with the original. No need to record anything, sync any MIDI up, or use any synths.

Quickest way (if audio) is to highlight the track and slip-stretch it to half its original size, then can either convert to groove clip to roll it back to original length or just ctrl-drag a copy to the right.
 
When slip-stretching, you can click on the number in the upper right of the clip to set the % rather than try to hit it with the drag operation.

The slip technique would not have worked because of one detail I forgot to mention: the click track also has a very low-level rhythm guitar on it so we can tell where we are in the song when rehearsing. The backing vocal track is often silent. Also, as I did mention the click has an accented ONE beat so even if it didn't have guitar on it the results from copying & slipping would sound odd.
 
My solution took a bit longer but I do believe it's the best solution as now the project file tempo matches the audio perfectly. I was able to easily create a new click to mix with the existing click track.
 

mettelus
When slip-stretching, you can click on the number in the upper right of the clip to set the % rather than try to hit it with the drag operation.

 
Thanks for that tip. I'll have to try that sometime. could come in handy in a different situation.....