PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Beginners Forum Audio Chord wizard not working as expected??!??

Hello guys!

Recently I've been trying to use the audio chord wizard to create some drums tracks (and others things) for my band (since we don't have a drummer yet).

So, while trying to use this function (after watching the official tutorial and some other tutorials in youtube) I'm getting some problems when trying to get the right tempo/bars of an imported mp3 audio song.

For example, using the song Go with the Flow by Queens of the Stone Age that has a tempo around 159-160bpm, I was able to get the right bpm count while trying to manually insert the bars in the middle of the song and the using the auto-marking button (as in screenshot 1), but then the audio track is removed (the whole audio track before the bar I set as the first one) but the bars and tempos are set properly for the rest of the song (screenshot 2).

So, to avoid this I'm doing what I'm supposed to do that is select the first manual bar at the beginning of the audio track and then in the next bar another one, so BIAB auto would detect all the others ones as the previous example, but here is where I'm getting another problem. After selecting the first two bars the audio track is moved a couple of second ahead and the bpm counting is messed up showing me much highers bpm (screenshot 3, instead of showing me ~160bpm it goes up to 203.5bpm so then the whole song is set up to 203bpm)

I don't know what to do now, as I told you before I need this to create some drums track and as far as I know this function should be working as selecting the first and the second bar and the let the program auto measure all the other bars, but as mentioned before if I do this the whole bpm count is not right.

Can anyone one provide some details on how to use it property or what I'm doing wrong???

Thank you guys

Welcome to the forum.


Setting Bar 1 is required by the ACW to correctly align when to begin counting measures. It compensates for the leading recorded time of the audio file that's been inserted onto a track in a BIAB project. In a 4/4 song, it's the very first 1 of 1-2-3-4 and in a 3/4 song, it's the very first 1 of counting 1-2-3- 1-2-3- of the song.

The ACW isn't difficult but it's not easy and requires practice to get even moderately precise with it.

Here are some tips and screen shots I made with the first minute of "Go With The Flow" by Queens of the Stone Age.

* Set up BIAB before importing the song or opening the ACW: (First Screenshot)

Select a style from the StylePicker for the song. My version of BIAB had 139 suggestions.
Change the number of Chorus's to 1 from the default of 3
Disable the Style. (ignore the drums if they default to midi - it's irrelevant at the moment)
Set the end bar around 100 measures.
Complete the song title.
Save the BIAB project.

* Import the audio file before opening the ACW:
Doing this allows you to adjust the imported audio file and have a more precise alignment between the audio file and the BIAB bar settings.
Label the Audio Track with the imported audio to analyze.
* Open the Audio Editor and select the Audio Track. (The Audio Editor defaults to the Melody Track)
This displays the imported audio file and that the audio and BIAB bars are not likely closely synced.
* Set the curser to the first beat at the beginning of the song. Rt click with mouse and select 'Set this point as bar 1 of the song'
* Select the Audio Chord Wizard Button to open the ACW.
* Select the Snap Button to activate Snap to Bar to check the first beat is precisely set to bar 1.
* Add a Bar Line (L) at Bar 1
* Deactivate Snap.
* Play the song from the beginning and pressing the -L- key at each beat for 4-5 measures and stop playback.
* Playback the song from the beginning and adjust the bars that have been set for accuracy by listening and also comparing to the Waveform peaks.
* With the opening bars corrected, select the Auto Marking Button and continue playback and correcting the auto marked bars for accuracy for the remainder of the song.

In my example, "Go With The Flow" by Queens of the Stone Age had a BPM of 159.15 average.

Hope this helps.

Charlie

Charlie.

i gotta say , your method is brilliant stuff.
please please please could you contact pg to make your method a STICKY...cos lots of new users i'm sure would
find your method usefull.

i'm not exactly a dullard haveing used biab now to gen
bed traks for 90 plus original songs. but when it comes
to the acw i often flounder.
might i also suggest you do a vid or two on you tube.

i love the way you described your method.

well well done charlie...serious kudos mate.
om

Charlie that was the most precise information that I could ask for! Any tutorial covers what you just explained.

Thank you so much for the information, and yes I agree that this should be posted as a permanent tutorial somewhere in the forum.

Thanks for the more than kind remarks fellows. I truly appreciate them. This method works ok most of the time because the more information provided to the ACW, the better it can do it's job. It was a huge improvement once I learned to set up the main page and input as many settings as possible before turning on the ACW.

Charlie

Great job Charlie. What exactly is the key to "setting up" BIAB?

Is it picking a style? Setting key? Setting tempo? Unfolding the chord sheet? Or other things? Or all of the above?

I have had little success with ACW, but certainly would like to improve.

Thanks Mike

In my opinion, the key is two fold. Practice and giving yourself and the ACW as much information before applying the ACW as possible. For me, setting up BIAB to be as close to the tempo, hearing a style at least similar sounding to the song being analyzed and seeing the audio WAV file close to being in sync with the bars was very helpful to getting successful ACW results.

A practice routine that works for me is to select songs from the Users Showcase made by forum users. The ACW can usually read these songs accurately and artist most times gives the necessary information such as the Style used, BPM, time signature and the songs aren't burdened with confusing arrangements and over-produced.

Charlie!! Great tutorial as I mentioned before now that I've been trying your trick, I'd like to add some others things that I just learned too.

1) If you know before hand the tempo of your song (or at least a close idea of it), you can set it up in your first step (while fixing the number of choruses and the "end" bar).

2)Then while importing you can use the import menu in the file tab on the top (you can also select here which track do you want to use to host your audio track). After the file is loaded, you can go to the "Audio edit" menu, but if you already selected Audio Chord Wizard before you won't see the 'Set this point as bar 1 of the song' button. So to fix this without starting everything again, you can easily press the button that says "Marker Mode" and select "None" and the audio track option will be available again. (1st image)

3) If you already know the tempo as mentioned before, and following your advice of selecting the start of the song in the audio edit menu, BIAB will be already showing you the right bars (2nd image), so just pressing "Add bar lines based on tempo" (3rd image) will do the magic and all your bars will be synced up!!!! (4th image). Obviously, if you are not completely satisfied with the auto marking of your song you can still fix them manually. later.

I hope this also helps some others like me that were so confused about this whole thing!

thank you again bro!

That's the tools I use too. Also check out the ACW Custom settings to set the key and chord progression.


Charlie

This has been quite interesting, seeing various tricks and tweaks that one can do with ACW, but one thing has puzzled me right from the start.

The OP was about building a drum track.
Why use ACW to build a drum track?

To get the Tempo to match a pre-existing MP3(?)
That's how I read it. I've done the same thing before, actually I've done for a produced CD. The drummer didn't want his name on the credits for a given song, so I brought it into RB and using the ACW was easily able to line it up and generate a RealDrum track for that song.

/my usual response for ACW; I use RB for this, as it not only seems more intuitive, it can also handle odd times and generate sections as well as multitracks .. so it's more better for me

I generated two takes of RealDrums on said song and we were able to cut/paste a final track from those that *very* closely resembled the original drummer's tracks
win/win
drummer was happy (and impressed) and so were the rest of us

Well, yes, that would certainly make sense, but he/she says to make drum tracks as they don't have a drummer. And gives the tempo as 159/160. I guess it may be that they're rehearsing independently and use the .mp3 in the background, but want the drums stronger.

I just wondered if using ACW had somehow become self-fulfilling. Why not just put 160 in the tempo box and find some drum tracks?

Maybe they had started recording other tracks along with the MP3 already ..

I wasn't questioning 'why' the OP wanted to do this, just trying to suggest a possible 'how'

In the example below I pretty much needed to do the same thing
All the other tracks were already done and part of a pre-existing project, but suddenly they needed new drums.
Selecting a 159/160 tempo and just generating drums would never have worked, it needed to line up pretty exact to the expected beat (and it waivers a bit) plus have fills where expected/desired
ACW to the rescue!
To me this 'generated' drum track has just as much feel as any other drum track on this particular CD
I would never have been able to do this without the ACW and RB editing

https://flythewreckage.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/09-Track-9.mp3

/hey the drums worked

rharv,

Yes, that worked well.

The OP does also say "(and other things)", which may well indicate that the main reason for using ACW was not the drums.

Hey! Hello again guys! Sorry I've been busy these days so I can't check this forum very often.

But yeah the main reason for using the ACW instead of just setting the tempo and go, its because as these tracks are going to be used "instead" of a drummer for now, it's much easier to use the ACW tools to sync the tempos (and adjust if needed) with the mp3.

The other option as Gordon says is select the style and the set tempo and create the drum track, which is also fine, but it doesn't allow you to fine tuning some micro changes in the tempo in the original track as rharv said. In my personal opinion the drums created with the perfect tempo are perfectly fine but sometimes they feel to robotic as they are so perfect with the timing, something that you can adjust while using ACW. Is may sound kinda crazy to chose something that is deliberately "wrong" but it also true that those micro adjustments can also modify tho whole feeling of the drums (if you are just using it for the drums). Give it a try and check how it differs from the automated set tempo, for example in the same song that we were talking about since at the end there is some changes in the tempo that the perfect timing cannot detect.

Obviously, the main reason to use ACW is to analyze chords to create, for example, backing tracks for your songs, but it can also helps with these kind of issues.

And finally, "the other things" refers that probably this will also helps us creating solos or getting ideas for other instruments, which can also benefit from a perfect synced track


thank you for all your info guys! You're great!

I never tried the Realband before!!! Probably I'll check it out too, since it looks like is also a great option for what we are trying to do right now!

Sometimes "wrong" is just a perception.
It's the little excursions from "perfect" that make real music real.

yeah, you're right! That why I kinda avoid the perfect tempos hahahaha!! Thank you for your point of view too!