Doubling the BPM

I'm having a brain fog day today, can't figure this one out...

I'v made a down tempo track at 72 BPM. I've decided to make an electronic version at double the tempo 144 BPM as all the original parts sound great playing at the original tempo, with 144 BPM beats.

Heres the brain fog moment, if I double the tempo to 144 BPM, the arrangement gets all messed up. I have a load of automation written and the arrangement works, so I want to keep this in place, however I can't drop my usual loops (set for higher tempo) or Apple loops at 72 BPM as they try and play half speed.

I know I can bounce stems and perhaps do it that way, but I want to dig into some of the parts and tweak some of the automation so it fits in new genre style.

What the best way to do this?

Keep it at 72 BPM.

Hold Alt while dragging the right side (= stretching) of your wannabe 144 BPM audio loop regions to the left, until you halved their lengths and so doubled their tempi.

Watch out for "funny results" though!

right side (= stretching)

To my opinion such extreme audio timestretching is dependable on the audio material and in many cases it may come to funny results. As a whole, forcing low to higher tempo time stretching works better until the allowable auditioning (regarding the audio Q artifacts and the singing speech if any ). For example the sample library developers could be very happy if they can offer one BPM sample version "Phrase" recorded in 72 BPM using some "Magic" Time Machine. Unfortunately there is no such magic TM yet, that's why they have to record the original at least in 72, 102 and 132 etc for instance...

A.G

I'm not wanting to time stretch the audio, it works perfectly as it is.

I'm looking to build the rest of the track around the original parts at double the BPM

You mention "original parts". Is that MIDI? Or audio? Or Apple Loops? Or something of everything? What "rest" of what track? I'm afraid I don't know your project as well as you do, so you should perhaps be a bit clearer on that?

I thought the problem was that the loops play at half speed?

I've decided to make an electronic version at double the tempo 144 BPM as all the original parts sound great playing at the original tempo, with 144 BPM beats.

I gave you a method to play them at full speed (1/2 times 2).

As I understand it you have a 72 BPM project, and what you want is 144 BPM loops playing at 144 BPM. That is exactly what I've shown. In fact, there is no stretching going on if the loops' original BPM is 144: first it is strretched to 72 BPM (when following the project tempo), then it is stretched back to 144 BPM.

If the loops are exactly at 144 BPM, you could also try to simply untick the Follow Tempo tickbox in the Inspector.

In the arrage window, select all of the regions and click "lock smtpe position" then double your tempo and do your thing..

Both these tips don't work 100%

Locking the SMPTE locks the parts, but not the automation.

When I drag the right corner of any of my saved Apple loops and Apples own loops (holding Alt) mine spring back to the original positions?

Also unchecking the 'follow tempo' box sets the loop back to its origin BPM.

You have some loops at 144 BPM, you say. Right?

You have a project at 72 BPM that sounds fine to you at 72 BPM, right?

YOU WANT:

the 144 BPM loops to play in the 72 BPM project, at their original 144 BPM, right?

SO:

DON'T alter your project tempo, just (re-)double the loops' speed either by shrinking it in half as I've shown, OR by disabling Follow Tempo (so the loops play independent of the project tempo, at 144 BPM).

That way, your automation will stay put, as will everything else. It is by far the simplest way to achieve what you want, and Scandors doubts on audio quality are unfounded, since there is actually no timestretching happening.

Ok so instead of doubling the tempo ,try doubling the metronome to get the dpubled effect.. instead of clicks at 1/4 click at 1/8 this will keep all your automation synced

OR you can lock the automation to SMPTE positon in the automation event window. (CTRL+Command +E) then in that window you can lock the SMPTE in the function dialog.

You have some loops at 144 BPM, you say. Right?

You have a project at 72 BPM that sounds fine to you at 72 BPM, right?

 

YOU WANT:

the 144 BPM loops to play in the 72 BPM project, at their original 144 BPM, right?

SO:

DON'T alter your project tempo, just (re-)double the loops' speed either by shrinking it in half as I've shown, OR by disabling Follow Tempo (so the loops play independent of the project tempo, at 144 BPM).

That way, your automation will stay put, as will everything else. It is by far the simplest way to achieve what you want, and Scandors doubts on audio quality are unfounded, since there is actually no timestretching happening.

The penny has dropped...you are thinking my loops are set at 144 BPM.

They're not. Over the years I get in the habit of saving drum parts, percussion that I've written etc into my Apple loops library. The origin BPM of these loops are all different. The same story for all of Apple loops own library. I often come across something interesting that I can edit and make unique by dropping these loops into a project.

As things stand with the song tempo being half the speed, these loops don't work, they play at half speed.

hi Johnny, it's been 5 years... has your problem been solved?

i was having a similar problem and googled this post.

finally i found a work around, here it goes:

1. set all parts to "lock to SMPTE"

2. change the project tempo to double as you want

then:

3. for Apple loops, you can select them all and change  "speed" to "1/2"

4. for audio that don need time stretch, just uncheck "follow tempo"