# Video tutorial : Humanization of the Tempo Track in Cubase



## Emmanuel Rousseau (Nov 27, 2017)

Hi everyone,

A few monthes ago, @NoamL made a very interesting screencast about his "Fawkes the Phoenix" John Williams mockup.

If you haven't seen it, here it is :



In this video, he explains how he achieved the most "human" flow, by automating slight variations in the Tempo Track rather than humanizing MIDI tracks individually.

I decided to give this method a try, and discovered an interesting way to do this quickly and naturally in Cubase. I've made a short video to explain the process.



Hope this can be of some interest !

Emmanuel


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## wbacer (Nov 27, 2017)

Great way of establishing a humanized tempo track, thanks for posting your video.


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## Rob Elliott (Nov 27, 2017)

One of the best tips I have seen in a LONG while. Many thanks - clever and fast.


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## Rob Elliott (Nov 27, 2017)

Arrrrrgggg! I may have jinx it commenting too early. I am experiencing 'pops and crackles' with this much tempo adjustment (when orchestrations get a bit heavier). The tempo results are WONDERFULLY human - BUT of course the pops and crackles (know problem with Cubase and multi VEPRO 5 slaves) are a deal breaker. Someone have a solution?


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## Rob Elliott (Nov 27, 2017)

Arrrrrgggg! I may have jinx it commenting too early. I am experiencing 'pops and crackles' with this much tempo adjustment (when orchestrations get a bit heavier). The tempo results are WONDERFULLY human - BUT of course the pops and crackles (know problem with Cubase and multi VEPRO 5 slaves) are a deal breaker. Someone have a solution?


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## lucor (Nov 27, 2017)

Rob Elliott said:


> Arrrrrgggg! I may have jinx it commenting too early. I am experiencing 'pops and crackles' with this much tempo adjustment (when orchestrations get a bit heavier). The tempo results are WONDERFULLY human - BUT of course the pops and crackles (know problem with Cubase and multi VEPRO 5 slaves) are a deal breaker. Someone have a solution?


Have you turned off the external tempo button in all Kontakt instruments within VEPro (or at least for all of those that don't need it)?


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Nov 27, 2017)

@Rob Elliott : Maybe this is due to some Time Machine Pro based articulations ?

I'm no expert but there MUST be a solution !


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## Rob Elliott (Nov 27, 2017)

lucor said:


> Have you turned off the external tempo button in all Kontakt instruments within VEPro (or at least for all of those that don't need it)?


Thanks for the reminder - yea ONE of the Kontakt instances was on 'ext'. Mo betta - still some but a higher latency took care of the rest.  (weird after a decade NI hasn't solved this issue.) I guess the 'scoring' side of this customer base is just too small to hit their radar. :(


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## wbacer (Nov 27, 2017)

lucor said:


> Have you turned off the external tempo button in all Kontakt instruments within VEPro (or at least for all of those that don't need it)?


Is your screen shot showing external tempo on or off?
Never mind..I figured it out...Off


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## Phillip (Nov 27, 2017)

Very good idea, thank you for sharing. What about

1. Recording Click track WITHOUT metronome or any music - just conducting the piece in your head while recording quarter notes on MIDI keyboard
2. Recording all the parts one by one to the click track.
3. Disregarding the fact that MIDI notes will not be on grid anymore
4.Editing the results?


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## Chris Richter (Nov 27, 2017)

Very cool, thanks a lot!
Humanizing around a set tempo helps. However I think that the point is to change the tempo completely. It's an _expressive_ tool. Therefore I think it can be even better, when interacting with the music.
It also would be interesting to import the original and analyze the tempo of it. I wonder how much of a tempo change(s) is in there.


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## benatural (Nov 27, 2017)

Rob Elliott said:


> Thanks for the reminder - yea ONE of the Kontakt instances was on 'ext'. Mo betta - still some but a higher latency took care of the rest.  (weird after a decade NI hasn't solved this issue.) I guess the 'scoring' side of this customer base is just too small to hit their radar. :(



This is the first I've heard of this trick. What do you loose from disabling ext?


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Nov 28, 2017)

CQrity said:


> Very cool, thanks a lot!
> Humanizing around a set tempo helps. However I think that the point is to change the tempo completely. It's an _expressive_ tool. Therefore I think it can be even better, when interacting with the music.
> It also would be interesting to import the original and analyze the tempo of it. I wonder how much of a tempo change(s) is in there.



Yes, you're right ! Now that the main "trick" works, I'm sure there are plenty of ways to push things further.

What you're saying about importing the original track is funny, because that's exactly what I did in the first place when I started the mockup. I tried to match the audio file to my session bar by bar, using the Warp Tool, and started from there. There were plenty of slight variations ! Once I was done, I deleted all these extra tempo changes and kept the fixed tempo of 142bpm. But that definitely gave me the hint to do some research, and try to give that "sparkle" back


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## NoamL (Nov 28, 2017)

CQrity said:


> It also would be interesting to import the original and analyze the tempo of it.



I'm very curious about this as well considering it's a Zimmer track?... Be right back.


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## NoamL (Nov 28, 2017)

Yep this the surefire sign of a piece recorded to click - when the musicians are staying exactly on top of a steady click for 10+ measures - it would never happen in real life without a click track.







It really shows that you can still have a lot of energy in the music with a click track.

I like your idea @whitewasteland, as I've mentioned before I like to have curves between tempo points often:






It hasn't caused me any problems in Logic.

Here is the complete tempo track from the Fawkes mockup if anyone is interested. It is very closely based on the performance conducted by (I think?) William Ross (because @Grim_Universe and I were using that recording to do A/B mixing).






What's funny about this recording is that the only tempo change notated in the score is "rit." before my marker "FINALE"; as you can see, that is far from being a uniquely drastic tempo change in the piece... All of the other tempo changes are completely absent from the score and arise from musical interpretation.

It would be lots of fun to do this with a movement of a Beethoven symphony... considering the academic controversy over his metronome markings - does it even matter? Does an orchestra stick reasonably close to one metronome marking over an entire movement? whoever has the time, go for it!


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Nov 28, 2017)

@NoamL : I do agree with you about curves between tempo points. I'm still using Cubase Pro 9, but can someone with v9.5 can confirm you can do Bezier curves on the Tempo Track ?


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## NoamL (Nov 28, 2017)

Here's another HZ piece. Anyone recognize it? 






This one is fascinating because there's two tempo ramps in the piece. And this piece was composed in 2013-14. So I guess it was possible in Cubase then?


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Nov 28, 2017)

Before v9.5, you could do that :






Now, you can do that :


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## desert (Dec 9, 2017)

Nice work @whitewasteland - now try and do it in logic pls 

Would be awesome if you could assign the mod wheel to the tempo track and gradually ride it


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## jononotbono (Dec 9, 2017)

Play with no click, then tap the tempo on a midi track. Then use “Tap from Tempo” (in Cubase) to put that data into Tempo track? Voila a Rubato Click? I’m obviously missing something if things are this easy?!


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## zolhof (Dec 9, 2017)

desert said:


> Would be awesome if you could assign the mod wheel to the tempo track and gradually ride it



You can actually do this but it's not straight foward. Open the Tempo Track, click on the little cogwheel at the top right and enable "Tempo Record". Now you have a tempo slider that you can ride with the mouse cursor or wheel. Unfortunately you can't assign a MIDI CC to the tempo slider. Yeah, total bummer. Feel free to spam Steinberg btw haha The good news is that you can use Bome MIDI Translator to convert MIDI data to the mouse wheel, and voilà. I use an endless encoder for that.



edit: This also turns any knob, fader or whatever into a free AI knob.


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Dec 9, 2017)

jononotbono said:


> Play with no click, then tap the tempo on a midi track. Then use “Tap from Tempo” (in Cubase) to put that data into Tempo track? Voila a Rubato Click? I’m obviously missing something if things are this easy?!



It's not "play with no click", it's "play with a static click". Never said it was complicated 

If you want to record without a click and add one later, the approach is a little less straightforward. I think you have to use TimeWarp to align a a grid to your notes.


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## jononotbono (Dec 10, 2017)

whitewasteland said:


> It's not "play with no click", it's "play with a static click". Never said it was complicated
> 
> If you want to record without a click and add one later, the approach is a little less straightforward. I think you have to use TimeWarp to align a a grid to your notes.



No, if you want to record without a click it is as simple as I have exactly described. Play. Tap the tempo on a midi track. Hit the Tap to Tempo Button. Adjust time sigs in Tempo track. Done. 

Interesting what you have done with a static Click though. Thanks.


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Dec 10, 2017)

jononotbono said:


> No, if you want to record without a click it is as simple as I have exactly described. Play. Tap the tempo on a midi track. Hit the Tap to Tempo Button. Adjust time sigs in Tempo track. Done.
> 
> Interesting what you have done with a static Click though. Thanks.



Yes my bad ! I was actually thinking about adding a grid to something recorded without a click... But without the whole "tap tempo in a MIDI track" thing.


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## jononotbono (Dec 10, 2017)

Yeah Time warp is such a great tool for lining up sync points and getting downbeats right (not forgetting sorting timing out in a drum kit for example).


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