DAWs should always adapt to the musician. Why should I set a tempo in advance?

[Tj Shredder]

Yes, Logic does it, but I want Bitwig to do it as well - actually I want all DAWs to do it, because I am tired of listening to all that fixed tempo non-breathing music which is flooding us… Not only expression via MPE, also expression in the timing…

Don’t get me wrong, there is space for fixed techno tempos, love it too, but where is all that other music gone to???

[BertKoor]

Is it really DAWs that need to do it? I thought it's the musicians that need to.
Just let go of the vertical bars and the click-track, and Bob's yer uncle.
Listen more to live performances of real musicians, not stuff produced in a studio.

[Tj Shredder]

Is it really DAWs that need to do it? I thought it's the musicians that need to.
Just let go of the vertical bars and the click-track, and Bob's yer uncle.
Listen more to live performances of real musicians, not stuff produced in a studio.

Yes its the DAW that needs to do it. I just play, the DAW should adapt to it, not the other way round (or I would loose my musicianship). Letting go the bars and beats is what I usually do, but why should I be forced to let go. Bars and beats have their uses, and if its just syncing a delay… Or navigating in a score, or all that other stuff that can be synced to a lively performance…

[machinesworking]

Digital Performer has a had a couple ways to do this after the fact, tapping along to your tempo to adjust the conductor track, and adjusting the tempo to beats etc. I would like to see it use a specified track for the tempo template over tapping the tempo in afterwards. Sounds like Logic might have done it right, after years of not doing it at all. I'll have to mess with it tonight and see.

[vurt]

Is it really DAWs that need to do it? I thought it's the musicians that need to.
Just let go of the vertical bars and the click-track, and Bob's yer uncle.
Listen more to live performances of real musicians, not stuff produced in a studio.

Yes its the DAW that needs to do it. I just play, the DAW should adapt to it, not the other way round (or I would loose my musicianship). Letting go the bars and beats is what I usually do, but why should I be forced to let go. Bars and beats have their uses, and if its just syncing a delay… Or navigating in a score, or all that other stuff that can be synced to a lively performance…

i think what bert is saying, is, it's possible now to make off grid music, and none of those making rigid tempo music will necessarily start making less rigid stuff.
even the most basic, speeding up a chorus slightly, not even this happens in most popular and dance stuff.

the musicians need a desire to make such music is all, as evidenced by the fact you yourself don't stick to rigid tempos except by choice:)

[vurt]

also, who is forcing music on you? pretty sure that's against the gwendolyn convention.

[pottering]

AFAIK, in general, the musician learns the instrument, not the opposite.

Also. why even trust choices made by a software assuming sh-t about you?

Most software that has something like " Creating a profile based on your choices. Wait a moment please." provides complete sh-t results.

EDIT: My bad, seems this thread is more about the 2nd sentence of the title.

[brd]

Didn't Logic just come out with this feature a few days ago?

[paradiddle]

yes

[BONES]

it should be standard since years…

And yet i can't recall it ever coming up before. It is not something I would benefit from, that's for sure, because my timing is shit. I at least need a metronome to have even the slightest hope of keeping any kind of time and 99% of the time I'll have drums to play along to.

But I still don't see a problem - just record it and sort out the tempo later.

[apoclypse]

AFAIK, in general, the musician learns the instrument, not the opposite.

Also. why even trust choices made by a software assuming sh-t about you?

Most software that has something like " Creating a profile based on your choices. Wait a moment please." provides complete sh-t results.

EDIT: My bad, seems this thread is more about the 2nd sentence of the title.

The way I look at it is that it saves time having to tap a tempo, then record. You can just go straight to recording and the DAW does the tempo tapping at the same time in the background. So far it looks like that's how Logic works using its smart tempo tech.

I can agree at least that there should be more machine learning in music software to make stuff like recording take less steps. Not to replace a musician or anything like but to enhance what they can do. So much of what we do with music software is procedural (ie follow this ste, then this other step to get to a specific result) and is based off old ideas translated to software. Its time to take real advantage of neural cores in M1, or your computers GPU (Nvidia's tensor cores for example) and use ML for more music tasks. The computer detecting tempo when you record is imo pretty low hanging fruit.

Apple has been adding more machine learning tools into Logic for example.

[pottering]

Yeah, I misread the title and thread, there are certainly tasks that can be automated with ML.

[Hewitt Huntwork]

I'm with TJ the OP.

I'm torn between what we have the capability of doing and what has traditionally been meaningful in music. We've all seen the meme: Everyone Had Fun At Woodstock Despite The Fact That Jimi's Pedals Were Not True Bypass. And I react that way a lot to different things. You watch these YouTube videos by producers chasing minutiae, and I - especially as someone slightly older - think NONE of the records I consider legendary had the ability to do the things the YouTuber is on about. NONE of the records people are making today seem to be more moving for having chased these details that I am aware of (although I fully admit I could be ignorant of the value of many techniques). Music that sits at a consistent tempo has given us so much, but has taken away as well. I know that isn't profound - heck, we all know that. But what are we going to do about it? Saying, "oh, you want a tape machine," is, frankly, obtuse.

I'd like to see some different ways of doing things. TJs suggestion, for one. There is a method in Studio One using Melodyne that I am going to be trying out to match gridded programming to the tempo fluctuations of an acoustic guitar / voice recording.

But I'd also love to see the tempo of my DAW mappable to a single knob, and perform a tempo automation of an entire song the same way I can perform a volume automation of an audio clip. If this were too complicated for audio, I'd be happy to do it with some MIDI parts before recording any audio. Maybe this exists somewhere and I am once again possibly ignorant. Just some thoughts.

[pixel85]

If you don't want to play to rigid grid, then just don't do that. Turn metronome off. It's really that simple.
After recording let DAW assign tempo based on your recording. Your DAW can't do it? Get one that can. I bet you can afford it.
First time I hear that DAW is forcing people to do something one way. Is your DAW threatening you that if you don't follow static bpm, it will post your private silly pictures on social media?
Just set timeline to linear (seconds, minutes), don't turn on metronome and you're free to do what you whatever you want.

For me it sounds like another artificial excuse of "technology makes me do it". No it doesn't. It's peoples decision to follow rigid static tempo. And it's not like all musicians are doing this.

[vurt]

im not even sure what the default tempo in any of my current hosts is, as it's irrelevant. i record audio, even midi instruments are recorded straight to audio.

my timing is pants too, but for what i do it's mostly irrelevant, unless i feel like a change where then i might program some drum hits with the mouse.
obviously if i was looking to do more rhythm stuff, id care more. but no, the host doesn't tell me what to do! im the bloody boss!