Changing tempo screws up my regions

[dezzo]

Hi all,

 

I have a sample I brought in as an entire track off a CD. I've selected quite a few parts of the track and created regions instead of cutting and saving new samples.

 

I wanted to increase the tempo of the track, so I selected the original entire track file and changed the tempo. When I've come back to look at my original regions, the highlighted area is now in the wrong place, so they are all out of time.

 

I'm guessing that when you increase the speed of the sample, it keeps the highlighted region area at the same length, that's why it's out.

 

Is there any way around this? Also, can you undo once you've changed the tempo of a sample? I didn't seem to be able to.

 

Thanks

 

(I'm using Logic 8 BTW)

[Ashermusic]

Hi all,

 

I have a sample I brought in as an entire track off a CD. I've selected quite a few parts of the track and created regions instead of cutting and saving new samples.

 

I wanted to increase the tempo of the track, so I selected the original entire track file and changed the tempo. When I've come back to look at my original regions, the highlighted area is now in the wrong place, so they are all out of time.

 

I'm guessing that when you increase the speed of the sample, it keeps the highlighted region area at the same length, that's why it's out.

 

Is there any way around this? Also, can you undo once you've changed the tempo of a sample? I didn't seem to be able to.

 

Thanks

 

(I'm using Logic 8 BTW)

 

1. Lock the regions to SMPTE. You are going to want to assign a key command to this as you will be locking and unlocking them a lot.

 

2. There is undo in the T & P machine but you need to do it pretty much right away. But before you EVER do anything destructive to a sample, you should create a copy and perform the process on the copy IMHO.

[dezzo]

Thanks for getting back to me so fast. I will look up SMTPE as I don't know what it is!

 

You're right about copying the sample. I couldn't undo and I've had to start again from scratch. You learn the hard way I guess!

 

Thanks again.

[ski]

You don't really have to know the ins and outs of SMPTE in order to use the SMPTE Lock feature. Just think of it as function which prevents regions from moving if you change the tempo after you've recorded something.

 

Think of it like this: at a tempo of 60 BPM (and in 4/4 time) you record something at bar 1 and something else at bar 2. At 60 BPM, each quarter note lasts for one second. Do the math and you'll see that each bar lasts for 4 seconds. So the region you recorded at bar 2 happens 4 seconds after the region you recorded at bar 1.

 

But that 4-second spacing between those two regions is dependent on the tempo. If, after you recorded those regions you changed the tempo to 120 BPM (double speed), the region at bar 1 will play as before (from the start of the song) but the region at bar 2 is now going to playback earlier than before. In fact, it's going to play back 2 seconds after the first region.

 

This shows that tempo determines the playback position of regions (and events). But when you SMPTE lock regions, they become locked to the absolute TIME where they were originally recorded (or placed). So per the 60 BPM example where one region starts at the top of the song and the second region happens 4 seconds later, once they're SMPTE locked they will remain 4 seconds apart regardless of how you change the tempo afterwards.

[dezzo]

Hi there Ski,

 

Sorry I've taken so long to get back, I hadn't had time to check this. Your explanation made a lot of sense of SMPTE and I've played around with it a bit now. I am starting to get it!

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.