Editing Tempo and Time Signature V5 in Cubase

today we talk about

Editing Tempo and Time Signature V5 in Cubase

• Set a fixed tempo
• Tap a tempo beat calculator
• Recorded range selection

• Tempo from loop

• Beat Calculator at selection start

hello everybody Andrew Blake from The digitalaudiomanual.com Today we're moving on to our fifth video as we continue to discuss editing Tempo and time signature in Cubase but before we start I want to remind you that there's a link below to the free content navigation guide which is an easy to navigate webpage with links to all the content on this channel and besides that in the near future I'm going to begin adding tips and other bits of information that will only be available there you know things like simple steps that will get you started and up and running quick things that are in the videos but are written down in simple steps that serve as quick reminders when you need information down the road if you're working with programs like wave lab or Cubase plugins or the cable guys shaper Box 2 and many many other projects that are in the works then I know you're going to find just like I have that this is an invaluable study Aid and the other thing I want to make sure you understand is that this is not a simple PDF this is a constantly updated page that has any information in that is new or anytime videos are changed really anything updated and once you have it you will always have the latest information constantly updated so if you haven't gotten it already go to the link below click on it and save it to your favorites it's my gift to you and it's absolutely free Okay so let's get started so we're on the fifth video as we continue to delve into the subject of the tempo and time signature all the previous videos being in the navigation guide in the link below but let's start out today talking about if you're not going to use a Tempo track in your project at the moment then turn it off so if you go down to the transport and you see the tempo down here like mine says 130 right now and it's lit up right to the left of it this means that the tempo track is activated so if I click that it's now turned that off and it bumped the tempo down to 120. now if I want to change the tempo in any way if I speed it up or slow it down it affects the tempo of the whole project there's not going to be little parts that speed up or slow down down it's going to be one tempo from beginning to end if you go to the tempo track if I hit Ctrl T to bring that up you also have this button over here that activates the tempo track same thing it's turn it off and in the middle you can do the same thing you can spin the tempo up or down when it's turned off you may see if you had a Tempo in here maybe grayed out but those are the basic ways to change your Tempo so let's talk about some of the ways to figure out the tempo when you get these unknown pieces of audio here and the simplest way is when you're dealing with especially when you're dealing with no Tempo or you know a fixed Tempo is go up to your project and go down to find What's called the beat calculator and the typical way you use this is just to tap the tempo now this is actually more available on this than just that but let's talk about the tap Tempo first so if I start this song here and I hit the tap tempo again right now it's showing 60 BPM and I'm going to hit my space bar in time with the music and it's bumped it up to about 127 128. so I hit okay and what it's done is on the field here on the tap Tempo it's punched in 128 for me and if I go down and hit at Temple track start to insert this Tempo it now changes my fixed Tempo down here to 128 and sometimes you get lucky and the click lines up let's see here [Music] yeah that's good you can also use this beat calculator if you have a piece of audio that you don't know the tempo to but it's precise enough that you can actually figure out how many beats on it let me show you an example clear this out here so I had this drum loop it's a pretty quick drum Loop and if I turn my click on obviously the click is totally off from this drum so the tempo I'm showing down in my project is at 100 right now if I take this piece of audio and I'm able to calculate exactly how many beats it is and to do that I'm just going to count it out let's go from the beginning let me turn that click off one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen forty fifteen sixteen all right so it's 16 beats that's why this is kind of only good if you actually are able to do that that would be very hard to do with a you know a whole piece of music or something but if you have something like this and you can actually figure the beats that works really good so I know this thing is 16 beats exactly so I go up to my project hit my beat calculator now if I look at it right now it shows four beats in the uh beat section and you're showing the BPM at 36. so if I spin this up to 16 beats because that's what I'm able to measure it now tells me that the BPM is 144 which I know by looking at the sample that's what it is because it's actually stamped on the sample so there it it did it perfectly let's go ahead and put it in there again it says that the tempo track starts so let's go ahead and hit that so now it's moved my Tempo down here on the tempo displayed at 144 let's hear how the clicks match up with this perfect another way to set the tempo is if it is an audio Loop you can calculate it from the amount of bars if I play this again without a sink so I'm going to turn off the click on this one so what I have to do here is be able to figure out how many bars this is and what I would do is count it in the bar one two three four so I can figure out how many bars it is so these are going to be a little more spaced out so it would be something like this as it's playing all right I would go one two three four so that's approximately four bars that Loop so what you have to do is you put it at the beginning of a bar where it doesn't matter where just any bar then what you have to do is up on top you have to set the loop point to that amount of bars in this case it'd be four bars so we got to stretch this out to four bars so the audio Loop isn't necessarily matching the actual loop it's going to in a minute but that range has to be the amount of space so and now again my Tempo down here is at a hundred so I have to select this piece of audio now I have to go up to audio and advanced and I go down to this thing that says set the tempo from the event I click on that and now it is done is taken my piece of audio and it fits completely perfectly in that range of four bars and now it's bumped the tempo up to 144 again I put the click on and there it goes so there's quite a few ways to do this okay one more thing let's talk about today if we use our beat calculator again so far we've been looking at it as a fixed Tempo over the whole project when we have the tempo track turned off or inactive again looking down here on the bottom where my Tempo is but you have another option on this beat calculator that says at the selection start and where this comes into effect is if you enact the tempo again if I go down to my Tempo on the transport turn it on what this will do now is if I put those beats back in like we did a minute ago for example we figured out this audio has 16 beads to it so if I go ahead and turn up these beats to 16 my initial Tempo or my tempo of my song is at 99 right now but if I go and hit this at selection start this other option it has now moved the tempo of this audio up to 144. so if I play that and I turn the click on everything fits but the tempo surrounding the clip like if I go out here a few bars ahead and play it you'll hear it's very slow still but when it hits the clip it speeds up and if we look at our Tempo track if I go to control t you can see that it inserted a big bump right there where the where the audio was so you can actually use that b calculator to change Tempo over your whole track if you turn your Tempo track off or you can insert small little bits of tempo changes throughout your track using that at the selection start and turning your temple track back on all right so there you go that's it for today if you haven't picked up your navigation guide be sure to grab that from the link below it has links to all the content on this channel ever growing free to use now with headings being added on subjects that cover more than one video allowing you to binge watch the whole subject if that's what you want to do because we continue to move along on this Tempo and time signature thing so today's options gave you a bunch of things to work with more along the lines of fixed Tempo setting a fixed Tempo or tapping a Tempo with a beat calculator recording a range selection and Temple from the loop I'll put those notes in the navigation guide in case you want to review them for yourself as we continue to cover all the information that's available and hopefully making us all a little bit more competent of what we do if nothing else trying to remove some of the confusion and answer a lot of the questions as usual it's great to have you guys here I'll see you in the next video