Melodyne Tempo mapping?

[D2sX9ek8w3]

Hi,
I am running Melodyne Studio 5 in free-standing mode and trying to increase my competency with tempo mapping.

Celemony has some great videos, but I wish they also had a forum where users could exchange questions and answers.

I have imported a WAV file of an old jazz/showtune song, detected the tempo, and assigned tempo mapping with some minor edits.

One thing I have been unable to find information on is how to prevent the beginning from being interpreted as an abrupt slowdown from 165 bpm.

I tried tempo detecting the song with default settings, and I also attempted to set the tempo in edit mode to the approximate BPM of 65 before importing the audio and detecting the tempo.

In either case, the tempo map produced by Melodyne starts at 165 bpm and awkwardly drops down to the song's tempo of 65 bpm +/- during the first one or two bars.

Melodyne-tempo-01A.jpg

I understand that the detection cannot interpret the intro, but after Melodyne creates the tempo map, I can see the beats in the intro and have an urge to set them correctly. However, the abrupt change makes it very difficult to smoothly transition from the abstracted 165 bpm to a suitable pulse.

Is there anything I can do to make the tempo map seem less awkward at the beginning?

I tried editing after the fact, by lowering the negative-numbered bars to 65bpm in edit mode, but that just made a mess of bars 0, 1, and 2.

Do you have any tips?

[osiris]

When I have high bpm stuff I slash the number in half. Yours would be 82.5. Can you manually adjust it and see if that works.

[BertKoor]

I understand that the detection cannot interpret the intro

Could you share a link to the song, preferrably on a free platform such as YouTube?
Do you think a human could interpret the tempo of that intro? (if not, then what do you really expect from the tool? )

[D2sX9ek8w3]

When I have high bpm stuff I slash the number in half. Yours would be 82.5. Can you manually adjust it and see if that works.

Hi,

I could slash the rate in half, but doesn't that also cause a change in meter? I don't see why I would want to change the meter to something that does not match the song. Perhaps I misunderstand how that works.

To be clear, the 65+/- bpm that is mapped over the majority of the song seems very well matched to the actual song. It is in 4:4 and averages 65+/- bpm.

I am trying to adjust the beginning, where it says 168 bpm. There is no WAV file data correlated to that portion. This area is displayed in the Melodyne editor from -8 bars to 0, and abruptly tapers down in 1 and 2, which I believe makes it very difficult to step down to the 65+/- bpm of the actual song.

I was hoping to learn how to instruct Melodyne to start at or near the song's BPM.

Thank you.

[D2sX9ek8w3]

I understand that the detection cannot interpret the intro

Could you share a link to the song, preferrably on a free platform such as YouTube?
Do you think a human could interpret the tempo of that intro? (if not, then what do you really expect from the tool? )

Well, let us be clear. I am very impressed with Melodyne's capabilities and am very pleased with its ability to map the vast majority of the song as accurately as it did.

So, please, let us not confuse my request for education with some sort of complaint.

"after Melodyne creates the tempo map, I can see the beats in the intro and have an urge to set them correctly."

Yes, I think a human could make the necessary edits, but only using a tool where editing tempo at early measures in a file does not mess up tempo mapping in later measures. Melodyne is one such tool.

It may have been very difficult to start at the beginning with manual "set beat to now" type procedures, but now that Melodyne has so clearly mapped out the pulse of the rest of the song, it is much easier to recognize the movement in the intro.

One thing I certainly don't understand is why Melodyne is showing me measures that precede the beginning of the audio file that I imported. I don't understand why negative measures are shown when Melodyne defaults to loading the imported audio at measure +1.

The song in question is Body and Soul as performed by Billie Holiday, Ben Webster, Barney Kessel, Harry Edison, Jimmy Rowles, Red Mitchell, and Alvin Stoller.

I selected this song to study the subtle ebb and flow of the tempo, and am very excited to have Melodyne 5 Studio as a tool, which rewards curiosity of that nature.

I am just hoping to learn how to become a better user of Melodyne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_and_ ... day_album)




Thank you.

[BertKoor]

Thx 4 the vid, just as I thought.
I can't put my finger on the tempo of the intro, because it's extremely rubato.

[D2sX9ek8w3]

Rubato is what I am interested in.