Tutorial: Tempo Matching in Pro Tools

October 19, 2007 – 9:22 pm by Jonathan Grand

Now that Pro Tools 7.4 was announced for release very soon at AES, bringing the major Elastic Time feature, some would say this is not the best time to write an introductory tutorial about tempo matching “the old way” in Pro Tools. But it might be interesting to compare the tempo matching, time stretching and tempo mapping processes, which could not be fully included here due to their extensiveness, with the upcoming Elastic Time feature.

Kudos to all the folks & Jeff Rudisill at Telcom 147 (DAWs/Pro Tools) at Pasadena City College! Hope you enjoy.

0. Make sure the tracks have the same (or a compatible) time signature, musically. Matching a 3/4 with a 4/4 may not sound as you intended, even if the hits are perfectly matched.

1. Have the 2 tracks (the fixed “master track” and the track to time stretch) ready in a new session. Name the fixed “master track” “Song” and the time stretchable track “Beat”. We will match “Beat” to the “Song”.

2. Select Track > Create Click Track, with a Click plug-in on the inserts. Make sure to Mute that track for now.

3. Hit Ctrl+[1]/Command+[1] to open the Transport window. Make sure your Transport Window shows all the needed controls (go to View > Transport, and make sure at least “MIDI Controls” and “Expanded” are checked). Make sure the Maestro icon is on (Tempo Track enabled). - See below (click to enlarge)

4. Let’s find the average tempo of at least a part of the Beat. It helps if the beat has a constant tempo.
Listen to Beat, pick a part of it you want to match, and while playing press the down arrow on the keyboard when a music bar starts, count the beats until you have 8 figures (if you’re using an actual song, that’s usually a whole chorus) and make sure you hit the up arrow key exactly when the 9th figure starts. This is important, so that the resulting selection will be of exactly 8 bars. 1 bar is usually the smallest “block” that you can split a song or loop in, still being able to loop it in a way that still resembles the original rhythmic structure. The more bars you select, the more precise will be the estimated tempo, so 8 is a good balance. Try again or adjust the selection the way you want, until you get it perfect. - See below (click to enlarge)

5. While it’s still playing, press Ctrl+E/Command+E to split the region at the selection. You can now stop playback and have a separate region of 8 bars. Now, with that region selected, press Ctrl+I/Command+I to bring up the beat markers dialog. Insert the time signature in both Start and End, beat Start (10| 1| 000 for example) and beat End (Start + 8 bars, or 18| 1| 000 in this case). Click OK. - See below (click to enlarge)

6. If you now look at the tempo bar in the top, when the region starts, or at the transport window, you will see the exact number of bpm (beats per minute) of the region section you just beat marked - see below (click to enlarge). Write down this bpm number so you won’t have to look for it again in the tempo track!

7. Do the same thing (steps from 4 to 6) in the Song track. 8 figures, and write down the bpm (see 2 figures below - click to enlarge)

8. Select all the Beat track region(s). Select AudioSuite > Other > Time Compression Expansion (I’m using basic Digidesign’s TCE for the example, but you can use any Time Compression plug-in you want: Serato, Time Shift, …)

9. In the row labeled TEMPO, type in the Beat tempo in the SOURCE column, and Song tempo in the DESTINATION column. Click process. (see 2 figures below - click to enlarge)

10. You should now have the Beat track time-adjusted so that you can align it in time with the Song track. If it doesn’t, you either have different time signatures or something went wrong in the process. Some basic knowledge of music theory is advised, not only to understand this tutorial, but to self-correct any mistakes and be able to understand if you really did select the correct number or bars.

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