Audacity Forum

Hi,

I am a musician and use Audacity a lot, often to cut pieces out of music I like to listen to and loop them.

To this end it would be very helpful if there was some way of seeing where the beats are.

As it is I have to make an approximate cut, copy-and-paste the cut, listen to the result, cut again,
copy-and-paste again etc etc and even at that it's difficult to get it right to the point where there is
a smooth continuum.

The ear is very unforgiving as far as lapses in rhythm. If the beat is off by even a fraction of
a second it makes the skin crawl - it's horrible, certainly nothing you can ignore or overlook.

So; is there such a tool?

Thank you.
/Göran

Audacity does not have a bars/beats option for the timeline, though there is a feature request for this:
Let the Timeline display the detected time signature and bars (12 votes)
I can add your vote for this feature if you like.

Given this limitation, I wrote a plug-in that can create a label track with labels marking the bars and beats.
See here for information about labels and label tracks: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Label_Tracks
The plug-in is available here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 42&t=60534

To install the plug-in, put it in the Audacity plug-ins folder, then restart Audacity. The "BPM Labels" generator will appear in the Generate menu.
Audacity 1.3.x is required (recommended version is 1.3.14 http://audacityteam.org/download/)
I would welcome any feedback about the plug-in. Please post comments about the plug-in in the BPM Labels topic.

Hi Steve,

thanks for your reply. Yes, please add me to the request list. Curious that only you (with your plug-in), I and 12 other people seem to feel the need for this funcionality.

I really look forward to trying out your plug-in. Also, it would be a great help if the resolution of the time axis could be increased. One second is a loong time when attempting to edit in this way, is there any way of increasing it?

Meanwhile, are you aware of any software, commercial or otherwise, that does have the function I am looking for?

Thank you, kindest regards;
Göran

VenusAndMars wrote:... it would be a great help if the resolution of the time axis could be increased.
One second is a loong time when attempting to edit in this way, is there any way of increasing it?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Zooming

Thank you Trebor, just what the doctor ordered!

VenusAndMars wrote: Yes, please add me to the request list. Curious that only you (with your plug-in), I and 12 other people seem to feel the need for this funcionality.

Vote added.
The number of votes is not really an accurate representation of how useful, or even how popular a feature would be. Out of all of the millions of Audacity users, even the most popular feature request (Allow real-time effects) has less than a hundred votes.

Also, the feature request "Let the Timeline display the detected time signature and bars" is a relatively new feature request (June 2011). Previously it was "bundled" in with the "BPM and beat timecode detection with automatic beat matching" feature request. I argued that "While the TimeLine displaying bars and beats is related to BPM detection, it is not dependent on it. Time displayed in bars and beats is a useful feature in its own right. See also: "Snap To: Beats""

I have had difficulty in getting across to any of the developers how useful bars and beats on the timeline would be. If you would like to make the case for this feature please do so - this feature could be escalated to a "proposal" page on the wiki, but that is only really worthwhile if a feature has the support of real Audacity users.

VenusAndMars wrote:Meanwhile, are you aware of any software, commercial or otherwise, that does have the function I am looking for?

Let's see how you get on with the plug-in first. How close does that get to fulfilling the functionality that you're looking for?

steve wrote:I have had difficulty in getting across to any of the developers how useful bars and beats on the timeline would be. If you would like to make the case for this feature please do so - this feature could be escalated to a "proposal" page on the wiki, but that is only really worthwhile if a feature has the support of real Audacity users.

I would certainly put in my two cents worth on the issue if I knew how/where to do it as it is something I feel strongly about and am fairly knowledgeable about (being a musician as well as a techie). But of course I cannot say that such a feature would be of interest to the majority of the Audacity user base.

In fact, I doubt it. One of the reasons I liked Audacity from the get-go was its simplicity and ease of use as well as its powerful editing possibilities.

Of course if Audacity were to try to be 'all things to all people' then that simplicity would be compromised.

I have had difficulty in getting across to any of the developers you say. This seems to me typically an issue where you necessarily have to be musically inclined to some degree to understand it fully. Like I said before, it makes the skin crawl if the track is even a fraction of a second out of rhythm. Brrr!

Reversely, a well-timed, tasteful DJ remix can add a whole new dimension to music that was good to begin with. Fatboy Slim is a great example.

As for your plug-in it has installed fine and shows up in the Generate menu but with the holiday to-do/hysteria I haven't got any further as yet.

When I do I am sure I will have occasion to come back at you with further questions

Ah dude,
You need to figure out things like the BPM of the loop.
Then you use that information to figure out how many measures are in the loop.
Then you divide by 16 to get the "button length".
After that, you place labels at each button length.
You got to think of how it was composed, 16 buttons = 1 measure
Every button might have a sample/samples that play.

For instance, I have a loop that is: 5.818118 seconds long.
Now, I keep a spreadsheet of BPM to loop lengths...you can see
a pic of it at: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 39&t=62332

I look it up, and that matches around 165 bpm for 4 measures.
I divide by 4 and get a 1 measure length of: 1.454530 seconds
I divide that by 16 and get a button length of: 0.090908 seconds
Now I know exactly where to cut to keep the loop in-time with the original sequence.

Kind of tough to think about, but you get the hang of it eventually.
BTW-I have some label making Nyquist plug-in tools that I just posted in the Nyquist
section you might could use. Not sure if/when they might be "approved" by the
Kominzars though.

Also, check out this loop "calculator" I just made: It calculates loop lengths and button lengths. The idea is to keep the window small
while you're working. I use the Spread32 spreadsheet program, so it might look bad
in Excel. It's also in a beta untested version, but maybe you could get some ideas?

BTW: End button times = beginning button times of new measure in the xls program, so if the time
says 5.818118, then you enter 5 below it as this is the time of the START of measure 5, not the
END of measure of 4. Ha ha...gangsta CJ!

I just love making spreadsheet programs these days.... Regards...

Hey, they posted my plug-ins so maybe you can check them out.
That's cool. Hopefully yer on the same network, huh?
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 42&t=62776

Anyways, ANOTHER looping technique (which is similar to yours) has to do with actually just
listening to the loop play and trying to find a good "stopping"/looping point.

I used this recently (a few months ago) when I was doing an early 1990s techno remix project.
You see, I got all these early 1990s techno tunes from mix CDs (such as Zoo Rave 1) and
wasn't really liking the tunes on them.

However, some DID have some pretty keen segments, but (after deleting the crap) I usually
was left with a bit over a minute of audio to work with. So, the solution was to loop the
cool audio by finding where a "segment" of music would logically end.

It's usually all trial and error at that point as finding the bpm of composed pieces is usually
pretty difficult. You select, fade in/out both ends then paste, and hopefully the tune
still sounds good. Works well for deleting "crap" in cool segments as well. Cut out the
affected audio, loop over it.

That and slowing down early 1990s tracks that have been sped up.

But for loops, I definitely use some math....

Hello loopman,

thanks for your reply. You've really got this looping business down to a science! I am reminded of the story about the teacher saying to his class: "this may seem like a simple and straightforward proposition, but just let me explain it".

Seriously though; how explain a complex issue in a few words that, say, a fourth-grader could understand? It is not doable, as the pol's say.

I think, at first glance, that your approach is just the thing for getting it exactly right. Not sorta, kinda, but exactly and that's the only way to go. The musical ear is very unforgiving of anything short of perfect time and perfect pitch.

(Yet a drummer who plays exactly on time sounds very square, sort of. You have to so to speak hang on the beat - just a tiny fraction of an instant to make it groove, swing or whatever you want to call it thus creating a delightful tension.

It’s the difference between a rubber band and a piece of string. Musically it’s the difference between a musician and a player.

In hopes of not getting into some copyright-infringment-issue I'll attach to this post a 13 second clip from an instrumental break out of the Earth Wind & Fire song 'Serpentine Fire' which could be used as an example of what I mean by 'hanging on the beat' for want of an exact vocabulary.
Listen to Fred Whites bass drum - it is not exactly dead-on the beats, rather there is an infinitesimal latency giving the tension I mention above. This is a masterful drummer who provides a rock-solid foundation for the others to play on.

It's such great playing, it's as relaxing to listen to as sitting down in a comfortable armchair. This passage still raises goose-bumps on my skin after these 34 years.)

Getting back to loop editing, If one doesn't take your scientific approach to creating loops running simultaneously to the same basic beat but 'play it by ear', you just might get it right but it will then have been a fluke or else will have taken an inordinate amount of time and patience.

As for your calculator - I have only recently rid myself of Microdorks suffocating grip as far as spreadsheets and word processing and now use SoftMaker Pro, a great, German-written Office clone and the calculator looks fine.

Thanks for the calculator (you are obviously a competent coder as well as musical); nice knowing ya loopman!