Making up tempo maps- any tips?

[if6was9]

So far most of the recordings I've done have either been with people tracking playing with each other live or else with a member playing along with the drummer. I've done a few with clicks but not much in the way of changes tempo or time signature wise.

I'm gonna be recording my own band in the next few weeks and we wanna do it to a click, we're a prog metal band so there's lots of tempo and time signature changes so a tempo map is a must.

Any tips for making up tempo maps. I've heard that for songs generally all at the same tempo to bump the chorus's up by a few BPM and drop it back down for the verses. Any processes ye go through to get everything right? It's something I really wanna get right for this recording since I plan on working to a grid

 

[James-Doolan]

Depends but try record yourselves playing through the songs live then map that tempo track and you will see where you naturaly push and pull the song for verses chours ect then you can adjust this tempo track for any irregularity's and use it for tracking. Other option is to use guitar pro and see what sounds best

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

I always try to make the tempo changes mathematically correct, call me obsessed but it really makes the changes more natural.
Say you're playing a mid tempo beat at 144 and change to an uptempo part that's somewhere around 220, I try to look at the relation between the two tempo's. In this case I would make the uptempo 216 if the mid tempo is 144 (144 / 4 x 6 = 216) That way a triplet note in one tempo is exactly the same as a quarter note in the other tempo.

 

[Zool2107]

We've recorded our song playing live, then I told our drummer to get a paper & pen, get a bpm counter and listen to the recording and check the tempo/time signature/number of bars and write down those on the paper. So it was like "135 bpm 3/4 12 bars, 170 bpm 4/4 32 bars...." It was a long list, because we use lots of tempo and time signature changes too. After that I've made the tempo map of all songs based on that paper.

Edit: for counting bpm: http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm
You can save this page on your harddrive, so it can be used offline too.

 

[James-Doolan]

if your using cubase

http://www.steinbergusers.com/vids/XML_players/cubase/cubase_videos_content.html

check out the timewarp video

 

[if6was9]

Reaper user here, but I watched the vid anyway. there's a way of doing something similar in reaper- you can build your grid around the existing audio.
I've got a few live versons of the songs we'll be doing so I think I'll figure them out with them and some trial and error with playing along, then I'll play the click out through the P.a at practise so everyone can agree that its right.
When we tracked before for our last demo we figured them out on the day of tracking and ended up dropping 2 tunes from the demo after drum recording because they weren't actually how the song was supposed to go, so I wanna make sure I get them spot on this time round and save time and hassle

 

[doclegion]

Im just looking for a quick way of doing it

 

[C_F_H_13]

I'm actually doing this exact same thing right now...here's what I did with great success. It does however take a little workf rom the band.

Get a 2 track recorder, or better yet, one of those ipod mics and have the band record their jams for 3 different nights.

Import all the audio in to your session and go through all 3 versions of the songs. Figure out bar by bar the tempo (Protools makes this insanely easy with the Identify beat function) and meter for each section. Look for a consistent pattern for each song by taking averages from the 3 jams. Then what I do is I figure out a round number average and make a click track. I then (for reference only) stretch each bar of the original performance to this click track and send it to the band, as well as a click only version.

They'll be able to tell you if it's all right or not.

This sounds like an insane amount of work, but I was able to do a whole record's worth in about 12-14 hours of work.