User Manual

TEMPOS AND AUDIO
650
Performer knows the tempo of a soundbite, it can
compute the exact duration, in beats and ticks. If
you have configured the Soundbites window to
show the “Duration (beat|ticks)” and “Tempo”
columns, you will see this, as shown below in
Figure 52-1. You can also view the tempos in the
Waveform Editor as explained in “Viewing and
editing soundbite tempo maps” on page 654.
Figure 52-1: The Soundbites window has two columns that show
information about a soundbite’s tempo map, if it has one: the TEMPO
column, which shows the constant or average tempo, and the
QUARTER | TICKS column, which shows its duration in quarter notes
and ticks. You can show and hide these columns by double-clicking
one of the column titles.
Viewing soundbite tempo maps in the
Sequence Editor
In the Sequence Editor, Soundbites with tempo
maps are drawn with gray lines on them,
corresponding to the grid lines in the time ruler, as
shown below in Figure 52-2.
Figure 52-2: A soundbite recorded at 120 bpm in a 120bpm sequence
(above), and the same soundbite placed in a 114 bpm sequence
(below). Notice how the grid lines inside the soundbite no longer line
up with the grid lines in the ruler to alert you to the fact that the
soundbite tempo map doesn’t currently match the sequence’s tempo.
If a soundbite has a tempo map, the time ruler grid
lines inside the soundbite stick to the audio data,
not to the sequence. As a result, if a soundbite was
recorded at 120 bpm, and you place it in a sequence
with a tempo of 114 bpm, its gridlines won’t line up
with the time ruler grid lines to alert you that
soundbite currently has a different tempo than the
sequence. When this happens, the lines inside the
soundbite are drawn in red, to further alert you to
the discrepancy.
Ritards, accelerandi, and rubato tempos
Soundbites will usually have a constant tempo, but
they are not required to. Each soundbite can
essentially have an entire conductor track inside it!
If you set up a conductor track with ritards and
accelerandi, and record a soundbite, the soundbite
automatically gets a copy of the current tempo
map. If you later decide to change the conductor
track, Digital Performer remembers the original
tempo map with which the soundbite was
recorded, and the audio will be stretched to remain
in time with the new tempo (when the Stretch layer
is enabled).
THE TRACK STRETCH LAYER
When the track Stretch layer is enabled for an audio
track (Figure 38-12 on page 365), soundbites in the
track will always remain conformed to the
measures and beats of the project time line, as long
as the soundbites have a tempo map that accurately
reflects their tempo. The Stretch layer can be
enabled on a per-track basis, so you can disable it
for things like movie dialog tracks or sound effects
tracks. For details, see “Stretch” on page 141.
AUDIO MENU > SOUNDBITE TEMPO
In addition to the automatic beat detection and
tempo analysis features discussed in the next
chapter, Digital Performer has several commands
for manually creating or modifying a soundbite
tempo map, as discussed in the following sections.
These commands are found in the Audio menu >
Soundbites with
tempo maps.
This soundbite has
no tempo map.