So after reading some posts about various drum VSTi's, I thought I might push my experience with BIAB and RB a bit further by substituting a few drum tracks.

So, here's where I'm stick. As a start, I've downloaded a midi song from the net in RB, its got melody, leads, rhythm guitars but no drum track. Perfect I thought, this would be a good one to start with. So, I go to the RT drum picker, search for a 4/4 time, 120 bpm track in the right genera and load it on an audio track.

OK, I know that the original MIDI might not be exactly at 120 bpm, a little variation is OK. For now, I just want to get close. I know I'll have to play around with timing by sliding it around a bit to get it to line up but the problem is the RT I pick is too fast. So I pick another RT, maybe this one is too slow. So, I go into the time stretching function and play around with that. That seems to work some...but after repeated guesses as to what the timing should be it's been compressed and expanded so much that all I get is artifacts and muddled sound out of it.

So I'm lost. I guess I could build up a MIDI drum track, done that before but with all of these RT's it would be nice to learn how to do this. It would make sense to start with a drum track and build the song up from that..start with the drum track, add bass, add rhythm etc. But there must be a way to add a drum track to an existing song.

How do you guys do it? How do you pick a RT track and make it fit your song?

Just a beginner in this area and want to learn,
Jeff

How I'd try to solve the problem -
First make sure your MIDI track has an accurate Tempo map

THEN try to find a RealDrum track
In my experience the RealDrums will follow the Tempo map when provided.
If your Tempo map defaults to 120 BPM then the MIDI is not including the Tempo for the RDs to follow (most likely)
You can try to have RB analyze the Tempo, or use the ACW to make a Tempo map if needed (so the RDs have something to follow)

ACW = Audio Chord Wizard above,
and if you pay attention to the check boxes as it opens you can tell it to find a new Tempo .. and once open, tell it the Tempo you want by hitting the F8 key on the '1' of every measure as it plays ..
Getting the Tempo right is crucial for the RDs to line up

Otherwise you may need to work in reverse; have the RD track as it's own SEQ file, then run the ACW on it and adjust the Tempo map as needed in the ACW .. after that you should be able to import the MIDI using File-Special, and it should now follow the Tempo map you created in the ACW
but it sounds to me like the Tempo map is not right, get that right in the first place and you shouldn't have to time stretch stuff, etc

Good advice Rharv. I just assumed that the tempo that real band indicated was correct. Perhaps it's not. I'll try running the ACW and see if that helps.

You mentioned that real band could analyze the tempo. I'm assuming that means without using the ACW. How is it that real band can analyze the tempo? What is the procedure to do this?

Thanks for your continued help Rharv.

Jeff

I *think you may be able to do that with the new-fangled Click Track feature, but I haven't tried it much .. I tend to just open the ACW as a habit.
I remember seeing an option for 'auto-detected' beats or something like that.
Like I said, I haven't tinkered with it much, so I may be wrong on what it does.

If you figure out how that works please enlighten

.. or you could just tap the Tempo keys to set a tempo manually .. yet another option, at least you'd know if the original was off a bunch