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Old 09-23-2018, 12:07 PM   #122
JamesPeters
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Near a big lake
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sjs94704 View Post
if I was going to go about finding and selecting a single tempo for the whole song, any suggestions on things I might do to at least try to find a reasonable tempo that I can then set in Reaper without spending too much time getting there?

Before anyone says it, I'm not looking for that 'perfect' sweet spot. What I am asking about is the method I can use to go about finding a tempo that works for me ......
The first video explains this rather well.

If you mean "just a general ballpark", you can tap the BPM button in time with what you think every beat is, and the project tempo will change to that. (Keep the metronome on when doing this and you'll hear if you're close or not.) You'll have to have the timebase set to "time" otherwise the audio files will stretch. Also when you set the tempo, even if you get it 100% accurate, it's most likely the audio won't be aligned to the grid and you'll have to move it all to be aligned.

And, if you plan to assign a tempo and then use the metronome, you'll want it accurate. So starting by tapping the BPM button is ok but you'll still want to do what those videos show. Having a slightly off tempo is horrible. After the music plays for a while, your metronome will drift to the point where you'll be so out of time it'll be worse than having no metronome. So this is an all-or-nothing situation; you won't want to half-ass it. Also if the tempo changes during the song, it'll be even worse than that.

So either decide to tempo map it properly/accurately, or not at all.

Again, you're a singer and I assume you're relatively familiar with the songs you're covering. You shouldn't need to have the metronome enabled, and thus you won't need a proper tempo map.
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