What to do if downbeat peaks do not line up with the grid in a measure?
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The downbeat is on 2 and 4 and I am tempo mapping the high hat on 1.
The problem is that the downbeats are not lining up well with the grid.
Do I need to split the measure bar by bar and give each bar it’s own bpm? I did try this and of course everything lined up but sounded even worse when played back with the metronome.
Sometimes you can get away with only tempo marker for each bars; but in my experience it’s better to make a marker for every beats (when it changes).
It doesnt look too far off but you might wanna playtest it to see if it looks/sounds synced up. From what i see it looks like you messed up tempo map earlier in song, those downbeats peaks will continue to be off unless u fix the tempo map, maybe redo it.
Make sure to recognize any time signature changes too (though time signature doesn’t necessarily matter its all about correct BPM). If the song doesnt have a steady bpm throughout i suggest time signature changes if any occur, just because it might get confusing trying to tempo map a song thats in say 11/4 when your time sig is set to 4/4.
I’m working with him on the side for this. The song is a constant 4/4.
A little Music Theory information here to help you better explain issues you are having (and cause it good things to know when working with customs).
Try not to confuse the “downbeat” with just beats. In 4/4 time, the downbeat is just the 1. A downbeat is the first* beat in a measure. This is usually the beat you want to tempo map on (assuming it’s audible enough to use). The other important beats (especially in most rock music) are the 2 and the 4. This is usually where the driving beat with the snare will connect. Unless the song is being played in half-time where only one snare falls on the 3. Don’t worry too much about that though.
Assuming the song has a good enough downbeat waveform to use for tempo mapping, the snares should* fall generally around the 2 and the 4. Nothing will be perfect; humans can’t play perfect beats. The studio can use computers and generalize the tempo, but it’ll next be perfect unless the drum track is completely computer generated.
As long as the snares fall within a few pixels of the 2 and 4, it won’t be noticeable in game and will have little to no impact on playing. That’s what the “timing window” in game helps to fix.
Pixel is not a great indicator since you can zoom in or out. Anything higher than 30/40 ms might give you problems, anything over 60ms will give you problems, anything over 100 is plain wrong.
The biggest gap that I can see between a beat and the grid is 1:39:370 to 1:39:400 so is probably problematic.
As per DoNotPassGo’s advice I will go over the previous section again and then see how this section looks after that.
Thank you everyone!
Pixel is not a great indicator since you can zoom in or out. Anything higher than 30/40 ms might give you problems, anything over 60ms will give you problems, anything over 100 is plain wrong.
Yeah I was typing this about 2 minutes before I went to lunch, it was just the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about that ha.
Yes, you’re looking for something like that.
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