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

[apoclypse]

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.

In Logic you record with the metronome off and it starts to detect the fluctuations in what you are playing. I think the important part is the tempo detection so that if you want to adjust the tempo, or apply a fixed tempo for the whole track etc you can without have to do tempo mapping after the fact. Again it's about saving a step. It would be pointless to have a metronome going off while the DAW is detecting the tempo initially.

Traditionally you would handle this by playing your track without a click track, then run a tempo map (most DAWs do this except maybe Ableton and Bitwig(?)). However Logic removes the step of having to tempo map after the fact, it just does it on the fly as you play in. The cool thing is that the tempo can vary and it will detect that as a tempo map while you play. Note by Ableton if I'm not mistaken only detects a fixed tempo, but its an app and its meant as a sketch pad so not that big a deal imo.

To me its about reducing steps not necessarily giving the DAW more control, but to reduce steps to get to results faster.

[jancivil]

I have actually never guess-preconceived a tempo in a DAW. At first I simply ignored the grid, which seemed weirder the more I did it. At some juncture Cubase came up with warp time(line). So, you play the thing, and now find downbeats first probably, and then internal beats; and you drag a barline, then the gridlines for beats in the bar if you like, to suit the musical ‘markers’. And it calculates your tempi exactly.

Doing this, BTW, reveals the reality that human time - the tute I saw used a Pretenders hit, you’d think “here’s a steady beat”, and no, not even hardly - does not obey BPM so much.

[jonljacobi]

Tempo fluctuations are indeed human and can be used to very good effect. If I use a metronome and tempo track/warping, I'll often speed up a chorus ever so slightly or slow down a verse to control tension. The effect is subtle and it will remain "dance-able" for lack of a better term.

I can't say how many DAWs will create tempo maps, but I know more than a couple will. Logic and Melodyne for sure made a big deal about this a couple years back. Sorry to be vague, but it's not something I use a lot or pay attention to. Doesn't Live have follow tempo function or some such?

All that aside. I don't see the argument against a DAW implementing tempo mapping automatically. To control the metronome or whatever. But the premise of this thread is a bit wonky as DAWs don't actually require you to set a tempo in advance unless you want everything to match said tempo, use said metronome, or quantize. To that end, smarter/relative quantize might be in order. There may already be that, I just haven't used it or investigated it.

When I was still putting music to paper, the first thing I would always do was enter the general feel (andante, allegro, etc.) to give whomever was reading it an idea of the tempo. Not always the bpm, but just a ballpark thing. So I don't view setting a tempo as restrictive, just something you think about beforehand when you already have the music in your head.

If you're just mucking about, enter it later. If you're all over the place, use a DAW that can accommodate that.

[jancivil]

I embraced the warp timeline not exactly immediately, but at a point where I was growing pieces vertically and “lining things up” got ridiculous ignoring the grid utterly.

(Quotes around lining things up if only because everybody hitting One simultaneously isn’t realistic/is dull even if every instrument or event speaks the same; let alone when things range from at once {percussive} to it’s going to require some wind to get this tuba happening.)

I’m just not very good at guessing a tempo (other than multiples of a clock ticking, which many of us are entrained to). Also my instrumental training saw a lot of JS Bach and few tempo markings. I don’t remember if I cared a lot about it in all my paper music no one ever heard… I was more about getting people in a room to get something to happen, which wasn’t too mechanical.

But! I did sort of have a general sense of MIDI in DAW needing a tempo to begin, when I started. I refused.

[jancivil]

Re: tempo and “danceable”: Bob Wills made his group {The Texas Playboys} increase tempo as the thing went on, in all cases. Because you got to get the dancers’ blood boilin’

Anyway, I posted in case “Did you ever try to fit a tempo track to a free flowing performance? … a nightmare for us mere mortals…” never got addressed. I did it every time I worked since… this was 2004
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cubase-timewarp

if <adaptive> is the goal, however, I got nothin