REAPER and detecting track tempos

bryan_kilco

Member
Nov 22, 2007
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Poconos, PA
Sorry if this has been brought up before but I can't find anything to help me.

Here's my deal:

2 years ago, made click tracks for 9 songs. Said clicks just sat on my external drive for all this time. When I created them, I did all 9 songs in 1 session. Big mistake now that I can't seem to copy/paste time sig markers.

I have all of these saved as WAV files (click source) and all I want to do is import them into REAPER and be able to quickly detect the BPM for each song so that the grid in the DAW matches the clicks. Otherwise, editing drums will be a complete nightmare.

I tried the "create time signature from selection" thing and it doesn't seem to work properly.

Any quick workaround to this or am I better to just start over from scratch and manually input time sig changes where needed?
 
Can't help with the Detect Tempo function. but depending on how complex your tempo-map was, you could use the tap-tempo function and tap along the track. That should get you in the ballpark very quickly.
I've done that on some projects that weren't my own, where the artist didn't know the exact tempos anymore, and from the tap-results it was usually very easy to guess what the exact original tempo was, since many people seem to work with full numbers. So if I would get 182,82, it was probably 183.

Can't remember how to set up that function, but I think it was just a built-in Reaper action that you can bind to a key.
 
See, I'd imagine there's a quick way to detect simple stuff like a click source. The transients are totally obvious. I guess I'll have to manually just go through all these tracks and map it out again. I DID however find the old session file with the time sig markers. Just wish there was a quick roundabout instead of having to switch between 2 projects a few hundred times.
 
Don't know if this helps, but...

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=14737

...I seem to recall going through this process a while ago and that thread was incredibly useful.

[Had to register just to post the link; I remember spending WAY too long trying to sort this thing out and the thought of anyone else going through that makes me cringe.]
 
Select 4 bars and look at the speed of the selection in BPMs
But, you have to do it a few hundred times ???? you switch BPM 50 times in a single tune ??

time_select.png

Nah, my bad, just an over-exaggeration.

Thanks for the tips though guys.
 
(needs SWS extension v2.3.0 #13)

Here's one way to do the tempo map:

Press "tab" to move edit cursor to next transient in item (shift+tab moves to previous transient) and add a marker (shortcut "m"). When all the markers are set, convert them to tempo markers (SWS/BR: Convert project markers to tempo markers):

tempomap2.gif