A singer sung without metronome at her place and passed me a wav file. I built a whole arrangement  on her voice, just spending half an hour to contruct first a good tempo map, by aligning the first measure of audio in the voice and then progressing with the "set measure/beat at now time" command. First I guessed the overall tempo (128 bpm) then captured all the slight variations (127.3, 126.6, 127.9, 128.3 etc) every 2-3 measures.
It worked brilliantly  . I recorded the first MIDI instruments with a Sonar metronome following the sliding tempo, then all audio records, and this original little shift really gives breath to the piece.
 
Now I need to export a midi part, but when dragged to the desktop I see it does not retain the tempo variation information, which is stored in the tempo view within the Sonar project. How can i tell Sonar to keep this "sliding tempo info" in the exported MIDI file?
Alternatively, can I set an overall timing info in the midi file (128 bpm) at the beginning, and then write a midi file that goes out of the tempo grid, but stays in time when replayed at that bpm?
 
Please help. I'm working with Sonar since almost 10 years daily and I'm amazed I still get stuck with MIDI!

You might have better results by doing a save as and saving it as a MIDI file.

John


You might have better results by doing a save as and saving it as a MIDI file.

Yes.  I can say with certainty that save-as-MIDI-file does retain the tempo map.  I never noticed one way or the other whether dragging/dropping a MIDI clip kept the tempo information ... something to test next time I fire up SONAR.

YES!! Thanks a lot, I was stuck.
The only little work was that the save as function under the File menu is conceived for a whole Sonar project and not for a single MIDI clip within a project (although the contextual help in the save as window mention that it could be applied to clips). So when I opened the new mid it had all midi parts in it. But then it was easy to delete all the rest and have a .mid with that only clip starting at measure 1 and retaining the tempo map.
Great!

fcarosone

The only little work was that the save as function under the File menu is conceived for a whole Sonar project and not for a single MIDI clip within a project (although the contextual help in the save as window mention that it could be applied to clips). So when I opened the new mid it had all midi parts in it. But then it was easy to delete all the rest and have a .mid with that only clip starting at measure 1 and retaining the tempo map.

I suppose if this activity was something I needed to do all the time, I'd be annoyed at Cakewalk for not giving us a little more power and flexibility.  But the extra hassle actually isn't really all that much extra work, and like I said, it's probably not something anyone has to do all that often.

I put together a small test to check on the behavior of SONAR when dragging a MIDI clip to a folder or the desktop.  The tempo map was included in the resultant MIDI file, but not in a way that anyone would find useful.
 
I created a minimal project with one MIDI track.  I recorded some notes but only after a couple of measures had passed.  Thus, the MIDI clip started in measure 3 and was maybe 3 measures in length.  In the tempo view, I drew in some events before, within and after the measure that the MIDI clip occupied.  I dragged the clip to the desktop and closed the project.  I opened the MIDI file in SONAR and it contained the clip starting immediately at measure 1.  But the tempo map from the original project was there in its entirety.  In other words, the MIDI data and tempo data lost their relationship in time.  I can't think of any situation where this would be useful or desirable.  Is this behavior a bug?  Probably.
 
Saving the project as a MIDI file and reopening it worked perfectly.

I have always viewed them as two different things for two different purposes . A drag and drop to me is a simple way to have a copy of a clip or track n. I would not think it would include other project settings other than what is contained in the clip itself. Where a save as for the project is meant to create a complete standard MIDI file. One that includes all data for playing back that file on any MIDI player. I look at it from a GM perspective. 

Then we have MIDI groove clips. These are not GM type MIDI files. But they would contain more information then a simple copied MIDI clip. Not sure if they have tempo in them. From my view with MIDI storing tempo with a clip seems silly. If you consider that tempo with MIDI is completely controllable in most any DAW.  A clip will follow the DAWs project tempo. So the rare occasion when tempo for a clip is needed it can be done with the save as command and the right editing. 

I hope this makes some sense.

John

I hope this makes some sense.

Sure, it makes a lot of sense and I mostly agree.  However, if the DAW is going to copy both MIDI and tempo events to create a standard MIDI file, some consistency would make sense.  There's no situation I can think of where anyone would want it to work the way it's actually working.  If the tempo is to be included, then the software should just include those tempo change events that are in the region of the clip being copied, IMO.  It's possible there are some situations in which this would be useful.
 

I did an experiment, dragging a MIDI file onto the desktop (something I'd never done before). The resulting file was a type 1 MIDI file (meaning the tempo map is in a separate track). Then I dragged the file into an empty project. All of the original tracks were recreated as expected, but there were no tempo changes. 

I opened the file in a hex editor to see if there were any tempo meta-events in it (FF 51 03 xx xx xx for the nerds out there) and there was indeed tempo data included in the file.

I then opened the MIDI file using SONAR's File->Open. This time, the project contained all the tempo information.

My theory is this: when you drag a MIDI file into an existing project, SONAR ignores the tempo data. This, I believe, is how it should be. When you have an existing project it already has a tempo map, and you wouldn't want to replace it every time you dragged a new track into it.

Thanks for thinking of testing this ... the picture grows ever more complete.
 
I could be mistaken, but if I recall correctly, when you open a MIDI file with only tempo events, SONOR presents a project with no tracks but the tempo map is there.  Not unusual but maybe not what you'd be expecting.  Why would you even have such a file?  Well here's how it could happen ...
 
I have written a utility to convert a MIDI click track into a MIDI file that has tempo events per beat.  Shortly (as in later this month hopefully), some friends around the world (who I have never met in person) will be announcing a new free on-line computer sound magazine, and one of the articles, written by me, will talk about DAW tempo issues.  The utility will be available as a free download.  I'll be announcing it here, so hopefully all those interested in tempo issues will check it out.