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Songwriting
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Joined: Aug 2024
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OP
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Hi Forum,
Couple of questions, one technical and the other songwriting specific but both related:
I've working on a song with a tempo change and I can't seem to nail it. For one thing, I don't understand what numbers to put in the boxes for tempo change criteria in bar settings. What's it based on? There's nothing specific in the manual. It just says, "put in the tempo change you want". Do they mean, for example, 97bpm? Or do they mean 10% slower...or faster?
Also, in terms of songwriting, I'm wondering how to make the transition itself. Is one bar of something...like a count in...enough or ? (in which case how would I do that?) I'm open to any and all advice or redirection to other resources...or if someone has done this successfully and can share a link to their music, that could be useful too.
Thanks!
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Songwriting
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Joined: Jun 2012
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There are two different settings for Tempo Change:
The "Tempo Change to" value is entered as Beats-Per-Minute (BPM). So it you wanted your song to change from existing 120 BPM to 100 BPM at that specific bar, you would enter a value of 100. The song tempo will now change to 100 BPM at that bar.
The % Change In Tempo has a similar effect but changes the tempo by a specific percentage based on the previous tempo. So if you want to increase the speed of your song by a further 15%, you would enter the value 15. If you wanted to slow the song down by a percentage value, you would enter -15.
You select Bar Settings at the appropriate bar (function key <F5> ) to make these adjustments.
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Songwriting
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Joined: Aug 2024
Posts: 798
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OP
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Thanks, AudioTrack. That's what I figured and yet my results were inconsistently unexpected. I assumed I did something wrong, but now I'm thinking it was a techno-glitch or something not playing nicely with BIAB.
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Songwriting
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Joined: Aug 2011
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The % change in tempo works smooth but it might work different from what you're thinking. Let me give you an example.
Lets say current tempo at bar 12 is 100 BPM. You want bar 13 to REALLY slow down so in bar 13 F5 bar settings you enter a % change in tempo value of -50. Minus 50 tells BiaB to slow bar 13 by fifty percent or half the tempo which is 50 BPM. Now in bar 14 you want the tempo to slow down to about 40 BPM, what % change in tempo value do you enter? Did you think 10 because 50 - 40 = 10? Nope. The answer is -20 because you want bar 14 to slow down to 40 BPM. The minus sign tells BiaB to slowdown and the 20 is 20 percent of 50 which equals 10 and 50 BPM minus 10 BPM equals the 40 BPM we want in bar 14.
Now you know why many people say music is math.
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Songwriting
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Joined: Apr 2017
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Expert
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Expert
Joined: Apr 2017
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DAWs and dedicated audio editors usually have tools that allow for gradual tempo changes, say 50% over 30 seconds. If BIAB can do that, I've never seen it but there are inexpensive tools that can do this with your finished audio.
As has been mentioned, you're still doing math so that you can calculate the finished result.
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Songwriting
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There have been multiple requests for Ritardando and Accelerando to be based on something less than bar-by-bar. I don't believe that this has ever been implemented though.
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I've used the bar settings to do slow downs at the end of a couple of songs. For it to sound natural, you should do the slow down, Rit, at the end of a song across 2 measures. However, to make it smooth and not sound like steps.... I make a few other changes. I make sure I have enough measures. Then I change the last four measures to 2 beats rather than 4. What I'm doing is spreading the tempo change across more measures, but with only 2 beats per measure it's effectively still only 2 measures (of 4 beats) in the context of the entire song. I then decrease the tempo by 10* +/- bpm in each consecutive measure with a hold on the last 5th one. this gives me 4 unique, closely spaced and reasonable tempo changes in the space allotted without any noticeable and obvious abrupt tempo changes. So for example... the normal tempo is 120.... first 2 beat measure is 108*, next is 98*, next is 85*, next is 75*, and last is a hold. What you want is a smooth natural tempo change. my song Dust on the Floor is a great example of what I just described. Feel free to listen to the entire song but the section I'm referring to is right at the end. https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=13017714* the actual amount of the decrease will be dependent on the tempo of the song and what actually sounds the best and most natural Rit at the end of the song. You might need to experiment to get it right. I know I had to change the tempo a few times to get it right. Edit: I am pretty sure you can use percentages but that gets complicated so just use the number you want.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Songwriting
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Joined: Apr 2009
Posts: 10,645
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There have been multiple requests for Ritardando and Accelerando to be based on something less than bar-by-bar. I don't believe that this has ever been implemented though. You have 2 choices. 1. Just set the new faster or slower tempo. It will be an abrupt change. 2. Ramp up or down. This will naturally happen over a specific time length in the song. To do this within the space of one measure or less, the option is to add measures but change them from 4 beats to 2 beats. This gives you room to accomplish a tempo change that is not as abrupt as just changing it. I'm not sure this practice would work with a one beat measure. I've never tried it but it just doesn't make sense that it would be effective but you could try it. Worst case, it doesn't work, best case it works and gives you what you need.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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