Auto-generate tempo map?
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I know the answer is probably no, but – music games like AudioSurf have a way of generating a song’s tempo layout in a few seconds. I don’t know about everyone else but a large portion of my time is spent just tempo-mapping.
Has anyone ever thought of making some sort of automated process for this? I know Reaper doesn’t have the innate ability, otherwise we’d know about it. I lack any kind of programming skill – otherwise I’d try it myself.
Just a thought
I know the answer is probably no, but – music games like AudioSurf have a way of generating a song’s tempo layout in a few seconds. I don’t know about everyone else but a large portion of my time is spent just tempo-mapping.Has anyone ever thought of making some sort of automated process for this? I know Reaper doesn’t have the innate ability, otherwise we’d know about it. I lack any kind of programming skill – otherwise I’d try it myself.
Just a thought
Would be nice, since I REALLY SUCK at tempo mapping. I can’t see it happening and being accurate to needle point like it could be for a human doing the tempo map anyways. I just can’t see someone literally taking hours programming something just to make tempo mapping easier, because at that point, it gets ridiculous. More time would have been spent programming something to make tempo mapping faster than would have been spent just mapping songs by hand.
Although tempo mapping, for me, is genuinely the most difficult part. It’s tedious, boring, and it often goes wrong in some way if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Digital signal processing is quite complex, and while this idea isn’t impossible, it would be a large undertaking. You’d need to find an existing beat extraction library for your coding language of choice, plug the song in, pray that it produces sensible data, and then export that data as MIDI tempo events that REAPER can import.
Tempo mapping is tedious, but really doesn’t take very long when you’re used to it. Tempo mapping should take less time than any well-made EMHX instrument chart for the same song.
Digital signal processing is quite complex, and while this idea isn’t impossible, it would be a large undertaking. You’d need to find an existing beat extraction library for your coding language of choice, plug the song in, pray that it produces sensible data, and then export that data as MIDI tempo events that REAPER can import.Tempo mapping is tedious, but really doesn’t take very long when you’re used to it. Tempo mapping should take less time than any well-made EMHX instrument chart for the same song.
Exactly.
What’s even worse is that depending on the quality and file type of the sound you’re using, it may not work right at all. All that an MP3 is to start with is basically a guess of what the sound data from a songs (or a sounds) master should sound like and to make this happen, its plugging in a bunch of information (which is usually missing a lot of subtleties to conserve space) to make a file that you can listen to, but doesn’t take up much space. Its basically guessing at what the sound should sound like, and if the data isn’t all there (this is why some MP3s sound like shit to even an untrained ear), there will be no kind of quality, and thus, no possibility of a tempo map.
MP3s are, on a technical level, generally very sloppy representations of sound to start with. The sound might be fine to the naked ear, but in reality, its missing a lot of overtones… but that’s where my rant would potentially become a bit confusing and would take way too long to explain. I’ll just end it here lol
It’s half an hour max once you get to your third song.
Unless your song is a victim of the loudness wars. Then it can be very, very hard.
It’s half an hour max once you get to your third song.Let me introduce you to Dream Theater.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_biggrin.gif”>But yes, normally it doesn’t take that long, and it’s an important part.
Let me introduce you to Dream Theater.” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_biggrin.gif”>Don’t worry – there is zero risk of me doing a tempo map for Dream Theater.
If you want a “shortcut” of how to do it, figure out the overall tempo of the song (if it isn’t changing tempos like crazy or whatever), set the in-project tempo to this number, then use the peaks in the waveform to guide yourself. This should make it not take very long. Trust me on this one- I learned it personally from an established RBN/C3 charter.
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