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Hello fellow, I try to divide by half the tempo of all the style but without affecting the speed of change of chords.

Or : advance each chord to the 2nd half of the previous bar as in the attachment picture ?

I can not do it manually because I have several songs like that.

On a classic DAW (FL Studio in my case) I can halve or multiply the speed of any track without affecting the overall tempo.
But on Biab I can not find.

In short, the goal is as said in the title, affect the tempo of the chord change without changing the overall tempo.

Thanks smile

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There is a command to do this in BIAB. I think it’s called Reduce Duration of Chords. Where it is depends on the version. Older versions had this in the Edit Menu. Now I think it’s in Song Form. This function affect the entire song.

If you have BIAB 2018, there are timebase adjustments you can make for double or half time to RealTracks and now RealDrums.


BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
There is a command to do this in BIAB. I think it’s called Reduce Duration of Chords...


Thank you very much ! I did a search for the feature you gave me "Reduce Duration of Chords" and I came across a video that explains exactly what I want to do, the video talks about Biab 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWME6_CbaQk

The function has been moved to Biab 2018 and is now on: Edit / Song Form / Reduce (or) Expand

Click to reveal..
I also came across the request to add this function in this forum in 2002 and you voted for smile
We can say that you participated in the addition of this very useful function ^^

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=358655&site_id=1

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Of course, if your chord progression includes quarter note chords, the result can't go any lower than that (8th note resolution is not supported).


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What John said.

massichat, I'm glad you found it. I'm not always at my BIAB computer and have to try to remember these commands.


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Sounds like you have a handle on your fix, but I am trying to understand what you asked. Do you want to take a song in 4/4 and make it be 2/4? I ask because I had one like that that I wrote in cut time and for the drums I needed it to be in 4/4. I had to save it to a wav, export it, import it into a new session, use the time stretch function, save it to another wav and then import it back into the original song. Never again will I record anything that way! LOL!

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Originally Posted By: jford
Of course, if your chord progression includes quarter note chords, the result can't go any lower than that (8th note resolution is not supported).

I do not know the theory but I think I know what you mean, there are chords that disappeared in the bars that contain more than four chords, but it does not matter, this function does most of the work and we can rewrite the chords lost in the DAW.

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Originally Posted By: eddie1261
I ask because I had one like that that I wrote in cut time and for the drums I needed it to be in 4/4. I had to save it to a wav, export it, import it into a new session, use the time stretch function, save it to another wav and then import it back into the original song. Never again will I record anything that way! LOL!

Lol, as soon as there is a similar operation to do (stretch, export, reimport), the problems are not far ^^

Originally Posted By: eddie1261
Sounds like you have a handle on your fix, but I am trying to understand what you asked. Do you want to take a song in 4/4 and make it be 2/4?

Sorry I do not know the musical jargon (4/4 and 2/4), but I think so.
That's what I wanted to do: halve the duration of EVERYTHING (including changing chords) without touching the rhythm or its speed.

Before, I had to do:
A- either: delete the DRUMS track, because it was accelerated (2X speed) to follow the tempo and the chord progression.
B- either: export it to audio, stretch it and reimport it.
C- either: leave it as it is (accelerated) and stretch the MIDI data from the DRUMS once the track imported on FL, but if I had to return to Biab to change something, I had to do the work again.

But with this function, you do not need all that, just advance the chord change (half a bar) and everything is in order smile

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Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
massichat, I'm glad you found it. I'm not always at my BIAB computer and have to try to remember these commands.

Thank you, this function would be even more impressive if it was available individually for any track, but without touching the chords this time: just change the speed of the phrase of a track by for exemple : doubling (2X speed) or slowing it down (1/2 speed).
I saw it in "track settings", I tried it but it had no effect, it concerns maybe just Real tracks.

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Not sure this is what you want, but as I mentioned above, experiment with different timebase settings when choosing individualRealTracks. It may not be what you need now but it’s great to know about this trick if you are experimenting as you are. I’ve found some very interesting sounds by using half-time or double-time RealTracks and Real-Drums.


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