How I slow a track down for a cool ending.

When I come up to the ending, I will generally do a slow down to a hold in 2 measures. I add a few measures. And make them all 2 beat measures. I found that if I try to slow down on a 4 beat measure, the speed drop is noticeable in that it's abrupt and not smooth. So if the song is at 120bpm, the first 2 beat measure drops to 110, then the next 2 beat drops to 100 followed by drops to 88 then 75... and finally a hold with fade to silence.

The drops can be non-linear as a slow down tends to increase in slowness.... This tends to give me a very smooth deceleration.

Dust on the Floor

This is just one song where I have used this very method to slow the song to a hold ending

edit: remember that when you edit the bar settings, everything that follows will have the same new settings. So, you will need to add or use following measures to pick back up and go back to a 4 beat bar....

Also..... I ALWAYS compose my songs in Band In A Box ( BB for short ). That's where I set the tempo, key, formulate the intro, structure of verses, choruses, and all the other goodies. I do my slow downs in there too. Then.....
I save and close the project in BB and reopen it in Real Band (RB). RB gives me all the tracks rendered to audio. AND.... I can add other instrument real tracks that may not be in the original BB style. Such as steel guitar in the LA Hard Rock style. I then export my audio tracks to Sonar which is my DAW of choice and continue to add vocal and live instrument tracks and do the mixing. All of the RB tracks will follow the template you build in BB including the pauses and slow downs.

Hope this is helpful.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 10/19/18 06:28 AM.
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