Changing tempos

Your project can incorporate all kinds of tempo changes, including step changes from one tempo to another, gradual increases (accelerandos) or decreases (ritardandos), and almost any other type of change you can imagine. The tempo changes you add to your project become part of the project and are saved with the project file.

You can add tempo changes to your project in the following ways:

Clicking the tempo display in the Control Bar’s Transport module.

Using the Project > Insert Tempo Change and Project > Insert Series of Tempos commands.

By drawing tempo changes graphically in the Tempo view.

Inserting tempo changes in the Tempo view’s Tempo List pane.

The Process > Fit to Time and Process > Fit Improvisation commands can also be used to introduce tempo changes into your work file. For more information, see Stretching and shrinking events and Fit Improvisation.

When you change the tempo of a project that contains audio, SONAR allows you to stretch or shrink audio clips when you have converted them to Groove clips and have enabled the Follow Project Pitch option in the Loop Construction view. Otherwise, the MIDI tracks will speed up or slow down while the audio tracks will play at the same speed. For more information about Groove clips, see Working with Groove Clip audio. Audio clips that are not Groove clips change in size when moved to a part of your project that has a different tempo.

Sometimes you don’t want to adjust the speed of your audio. Here are some examples:

If your project contains background music and a voice-over, you might want to change the tempo of the background music without altering the voice-over.

If you’re trying to modify the speed of some MIDI tracks to match a sampled drum groove, you want to leave the audio unchanged.

When you change the tempo of your project, clips having stretching enabled change tempo along with the project, while those that do not have stretching enabled do not. For more information about stretch-enabling clips, see To set the tempo of a Groove Clip.

Tempos set when the clock source is set to MIDI Sync do not have any effect, because SONAR follows the external tempo. For more information, see Synchronizing your gear.

See:

Using the Transport module

Using the Tempo commands

Using the Tempo view

Automation time base