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Author Topic: Tempo problems...  (Read 9604 times)

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eXOdus

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Tempo problems...
« on: May 12, 2014, 05:08:48 »

So anyway, I'm trying to remix Escape by Vince DiCola with my samples and synths and stuff. But I'm having a hard time determining the tempo. I used Mixxx (DJ Software) to calculate the BPM, but as I was playing the song, I noticed something very important: the tempo is not entirely constant!

I read somewhere that songs composed in the 80s and before didn't always have a constant BPM. Therefore, if it's possible I need a way to determine how the BPM fluctuates so I can "emulate" the BPM change using the Fxx (speed/tempo commands).
Here's what I mean:

Code: [Select]
01 --- F??
02 --- F??
03 --- F??
04 --- F??
05 --- F??
06 --- F??
07 --- F??
08 --- F??
09 --- F??


Each nth line can have a different Fxx, causing the tempo to change every nth line, "emulating" the tempo fluctuation of the song. If that's too hard, the tempo was spit out as 73.73 BPM by Mixxx, which I can't input into FastTracker II, so is there some way I could use the Fxx command to make a song with a tempo of 73.73 (no, I don't want to use OpenMPT :P ). If this is too hard, I can just use Renoise...

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Saga Musix

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2014, 14:25:01 »

Instead of trying to achieve something impossible (accurate BPM with traditional tracker means), you could instead slightly pitch the samples up and down to fit into "regular" tracker BPM.
Using alternating Fxx commands will result in a swing rhythm, and not necessarily in a different tempo.
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eXOdus

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2014, 14:45:23 »

Instead of trying to achieve something impossible (accurate BPM with traditional tracker means), you could instead slightly pitch the samples up and down to fit into "regular" tracker BPM.
Using alternating Fxx commands will result in a swing rhythm, and not necessarily in a different tempo.

Agghhh...so I can just try to get the BPM as close as possible...or use Renoise.
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Saga Musix

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2014, 11:11:14 »

Or you could 1) live with the fact that musicians are humans and not keeping their rhythm 100% at all times and just do the same in your module (as long as the tempo difference isn't too big, noone will notice) or 2) make a remix made with your own materials instead of sampled stuff. :P
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eXOdus

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2014, 13:48:24 »

Or you could 1) live with the fact that musicians are humans and not keeping their rhythm 100% at all times and just do the same in your module (as long as the tempo difference isn't too big, noone will notice) or 2) make a remix made with your own materials instead of sampled stuff. :P
Yeah, I intend on using my own materials for this remix.
So the solution to this is to just round the BPM to the nearest whole number?
I think I can find the intended BPM manually (count the time it takes for four beats and multiply by 25).
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Saga Musix

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2014, 15:54:40 »

Tracker tempo (at least the "classic" tempo mode used in MOD,S3M,XM,IT..) doesn't produce whole numbers either, due to how the tempo is defined internally. Tempo isn't equal to "BPM". You can use OpenMPT (:P) to calculate the "real" BPM value if you need to know the exact BPM. Only a few selected tempo values (such as 125 and 150) are whole number BPMs. A tempo of 100 would be around 100.04537 BPM, for example.
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eXOdus

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2014, 19:01:24 »

Tracker tempo (at least the "classic" tempo mode used in MOD,S3M,XM,IT..) doesn't produce whole numbers either, due to how the tempo is defined internally. Tempo isn't equal to "BPM". You can use OpenMPT (:P) to calculate the "real" BPM value if you need to know the exact BPM. Only a few selected tempo values (such as 125 and 150) are whole number BPMs. A tempo of 100 would be around 100.04537 BPM, for example.
I think I have heard this before...I read somewhere that it was a clock problem or something.
So you mean that it would be possible to achieve a mixed number BPM using normal methods? Well, I guess I'll download and install OpenMPT once I get home so I can obtain the actual BPM... :)
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eXOdus

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2014, 19:03:15 »

Also, if I'm not mistaken, Vince DiCola used the Fairlight CMI for most of his works back then. I'm wondering if the CMI had BPM issues...but that's off topic    ;)
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Saga Musix

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Re: Tempo problems...
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2014, 21:02:59 »

Also, if I'm not mistaken, Vince DiCola used the Fairlight CMI for most of his works back then. I'm wondering if the CMI had BPM issues...but that's off topic    ;)
Well, you wouldn't know if the sequencies capabilities of the machine were being used, and if other instruments were playing along, you'd get "mixed" BPM anyway.

And, yes it's close to impossible to get arbitrary BPM counts using legacy modules. As said, it's much easier to just tune your samples a few Hertz up or down to make them fix into a pattern.
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