User Guide

Table Of Contents
Chapter 11: Wizards, Tutors, and Fun
192
Completely, Horribly Wrong:
Some songs have rhythms difficult for a computer to understand. Sometimes a song's rhythmic beats are spaced in
such a way that a song with a perfect Tempo of 120, might mathematically BETTER fit the audio beats at some
simple (but wrong) related ratio such as 80, 100, 160, or 180 BPM.
If the initial Tempo Estimate is pretty good, the Tap Bar line function will be the easiest way to fix such errors,
requiring only a few keyboard taps during playback.
But if the initial tempo estimate happens to be horribly wrong, it helps to make the initial tempo “in the ballpark”
BEFORE you tap a few Tabs or F8's to make it completely right.
Control+click on the Average Tempo control for some easy automatic fixes.
Note: If you want to use the Avg Tempo Menu functions, use the menu very soon after you have opened a song, before you have
done much bar editing. If you invoke the Avg Tempo Menu functions after you have laboriously edited a lot of bar lines, the
automatic nature of these functions can ruin your previous editing.
In some cases, there is a good reason to initially set the tempo artificially slow by using the “Find Best Half Tempo”
function.
For example, if the initial tempo estimate is considerably faster than the tempo that you want to tap in, the Tap Bar
line function can mistakenly think that you want a very fast tempo, which fills the remainder of the song with
unwanted fast-tempo bars. In that case, if you initially set the tempo very slow, ACW will be unlikely to
misinterpret your Tap Bar Lines.
Set Key Signature
Once the chords look reasonable, for instance if your song looks like it is probably in the key of F, set the Key
Signature control to F for better chord spelling. This only affects the cosmetic display of notes and chords (flats and
sharps). The Key Signature control does not currently affect the basic accuracy of Chord Detection.
Adjust Fine-Tuning
If a song is significantly off from concert pitch, the notes are “in the cracks,” which makes chord detection less
accurate.
If your chords look reasonable, there is no need to bother with fine tuning. Most songs are recorded pretty close to
concert pitch.
But if you see numerous chord errors, it may help to adjust the Fine Tune control.
If you are playing along with a song on your keyboard, you might decide to make an ear-estimate of how far out-of-
tune is the song:
For instance, you could adjust the fine-tuning control on your keyboard until your keyboard matches the song's pitch
(according to your ear). Then you could look at your keyboard's tuning readout, and adjust ACW's Fine Tune
control to match. Either click-drag ACW's Fine Tune control (like a slider control), or Control+click the Fine
Tune control then type in a number.
The Fine Tune control currently does not change the pitch of playback, it only improves chord detection on mis-
tuned songs.
The Fine Tune control is calibrated in cents, 1/100th of a semitone. Therefore, if a song is perfectly in the key of C,
but if you set Fine Tune to +100 Cents, ACW would display chords in the key of B. Similarly, if you set Fine Tune
to -100 Cents, it would display that song's chords in the key of C#.
That simple use of the Fine Tune control is just a backwards way to transpose the chords. But if you set Fine-Tune
somewhere in the middle, ACW looks for notes that are somewhere “in the cracks” between the piano keys. For
instance, if your song SHOULD be in the key of C, but it was unfortunately recorded 50 cents sharp.
There could be many reasons that a song was recorded off concert pitch. Maybe the recording studio had a broken
tape recorder. Perhaps the piano tuner was smoking crack , or the singer couldn't quite hit the highest note. Maybe