Reference Guide

367
Changing tempos
Arranging and editing
Changing tempos
Your project can incorporate all kinds of tempo changes, including step changes from one tempo to
another, gradual increases (accelerandos) or decreases (ritardandos), and almost any other type of
change you can imagine. The tempo changes you add to your project become part of the project and
are saved with the project file.
You can add tempo changes to your project in the following ways:
• Clicking the tempo display in the Control Bar’s Transport module.
•Using the Project > Insert Tempo Change and Project > Insert Series of Tempos commands.
• By drawing tempo changes graphically in the Tempo view.
• Inserting tempo changes in the Tempo view’s Tempo List pane.
The Process > Fit to Time and Process > Fit Improvisation commands can also be used to
introduce tempo changes into your work file. For more information, see “Stretching and shrinking
events” on page 692 and “Fit Improvisation” on page 705.
When you change the tempo of a project that contains audio, SONAR allows you to stretch or shrink
audio clips when you have converted them to Groove clips and have enabled the Follow Project
Pitch option in the Loop Construction view. Otherwise, the MIDI tracks will speed up or slow down
while the audio tracks will play at the same speed. For more information about Groove clips, see
“Working with Groove Clip audio” on page 638. Audio clips that are not Groove clips change in size
when moved to a part of your project that has a different tempo.
Sometimes you don’t want to adjust the speed of your audio. Here are some examples:
• If your project contains background music and a voice-over, you might want to change the tempo
of the background music without altering the voice-over.
• If you’re trying to modify the speed of some MIDI tracks to match a sampled drum groove, you
want to leave the audio unchanged.
When you change the tempo of your project, clips having stretching enabled change tempo along
with the project, while those that do not have stretching enabled do not. For more information about
stretch-enabling clips, see “Enable Stretching” on page 631.
Tempos set when the clock source is set to MIDI Sync do not have any effect, because SONAR
follows the external tempo. For more information, see “Synchronizing your gear” on page 1079.
See:
“Using the Transport module” on page 368
“Using the Tempo commands” on page 369
“Using the Tempo view” on page 371