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Tempo Mapping in Pro-Tools (video)

I thought it might be a good idea to do a video demonstrating how to set your tempo grid in Pro-Tools. I get a lot of questions/comments from people saying they’re not quite sure how to begin with the whole ‘identify beat’ thing. Definitely this beginning step can throw a wrench in your whole project if done incorrectly so I completely understand your frustration. It’s a process that is best learned hands on (and second best learned visually).

Since I’m an insomniac I set up a webcam last night and started on the painful journey of making a tutorial video… a process which nearly left me hairless and disgruntled. My bad if I look like a total crack head, haha… I must have had the “terrible color” filter turned on. ;-)

This is my second attempt at doing something like this so bear with me as I refine… well… just about EVERY part of my process in the future, lol.

If I left anything out please comment below and I’ll be happy to explain. Here’s the video:

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This entry was posted on March 4th, 2009 in Tips.

The Basics: Trashing Your Preferences » « More Pro Tools Keyboard Shortcuts

7 Comments

Anand

March 6th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

Hehe “terrible color filter”

Matt

March 16th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

Very helpful and easy to understand. Thanks for this!

ben

January 17th, 2011 at 5:00 am

how to create a tempo map from an audio file that has variable speed… using protools 8 LE

desperate for any help !!!

noisefreak

January 17th, 2011 at 11:37 am

Hey Ben, You can do two things… one is re-time the original audio to a constant tempo if you’re talking about a band who fluctuates in and out of their target tempo. The other way, say you’re working on a song that has a section which slows down in the middle and then back up to a higher tempo later, is to just map the tempo in short segments. The steps still apply… Command I to identify beat. Lets say it’s 4 bars long… so you tell protools it starts on 1/1 and ends on 5/1. But then right after that your songs tempo changes, you can go up to your tempo bar which sits at the top of your screen under your tools and click the plus icon. This will add a tempo change, you can type a new tempo and the grid will change at this point, leaving the 4 bars before it untouched. There’s a whole other world of Elastic time; if there’s enough interest I may make a quick tutorial in the future.

Philip

April 13th, 2011 at 8:13 am

Hi i’m trying to figure out how to get a tempo map for a very slow jazz piece with always varying tempo and no strong beats like the bass from your example. Is there a way to perform the tempo for each bar into midi so protools can make my tempo map like that? I knew how to do it in cubase once but i can’t remember how to use cubase as i use moslty protools.

noisefreak

April 14th, 2011 at 10:14 am

Hey Philip, the easiest way to do that is by remapping your tempo every couple bars as the performance fluctuates in pace. It’s a bit tedious to do an entire song this way but I’ve definitely had to do it before.
Say you select and identify the first 4 bars and then the tempo begins to drift, what you’d do next is select bars 5 through 8 or even as short as only bar 5. Press command + i to bring up the identify beat dialog window and define your selection (for the first example, Start 5 1 1 end 9 1 1 or example two - start 5 1 1 end 6 1 1). Protools will then add a second tempo marker with the newly defined tempo. Continue doing this as needed until the end of the song.

The other option, though certainly less desirable for jazz, is to enable elastic time and manually retime those sections that drift. If it’s just a bar that drags or rushes every 8 bars or so then it wouldn’t be a big deal but if it happens often it may make the piece feel mechanical to retime it so often.

Good luck and if you find a better method definitely share it with everyone, we’re always interested in different ways to do things.

Our Official Soundtrack is now Streamable!

December 3rd, 2011 at 11:22 am

[...] And I have one word for music engineers composing for overlapping scenes with vastly different pacing: tempomaps. [...]

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