Hey how's it going I'm Ben Lindell and
today I'm going to be showing you how to
find the tempo of an audio track in Pro
Tools now often when you're working with
pop or hip-hop artists what they'll
bring in it's just a stereo track of the
instrumental and then record their
vocals on top of that if you know the
tempo of the track it'll make your life
a lot easier you can easily copy vocals
from one course to another and it can
also keep your delays in sync which is
great let me show you a couple of
different ways to do this the first way
to find a tempo of a track in Pro Tools
is to simply tap it in to do so I'm
going to disable the conductor track and
then select my tempo now instead of
typing it in I'm going to tap it in to
do so I just press T on my keyboard
repeatedly and time with the music now
sometimes you'll find with slower tracks
it's actually easier to tap in the
eighth notes instead of the quarter
notes it'll give you a more precise
result let me show you how to do this
okay now that I think I have the tempo
correct let me zoom in and just
double-check that the waveform looks
like it's locked up to the grid that
looks pretty good
most of the transients are right on the
gridlines the best way to double-check
those that you got the right tempo is to
actually skip further along in the song
and make sure the same holds true and
then look at that downbeat right with
the transient perfect
so sometimes tap tempo may just not work
for a track maybe the tempo isn't a
round number
maybe it's sixty eight point eight
seventy three point two you never know
but also a lot of times with sampled
music the temple may actually fluctuate
throughout the track so how do I find
the tempo unlock a track like that to
the grid I use the identified beat
function of Pro Tools let me show you
how I do that to do so I'm going to turn
the conductor track back on and zoom in
to the beginning of my song now I can
see that my waveform is starting right
at the beginning of my session which is
great that means that's the downbeat of
the first bar the song so what I'm going
to do is zoom out a little bit I'm going
to find the downbeat of the second bar
by listening alright so now I know that
this is the downbeat of the second bar
and just need to tell Pro Tools the same
information how do I do that I'm going
to make sure that tab to transient is
turned on and I'm going to place my
cursor just a little bit before the
downbeat and then press tab great now my
selector is right on the downbeat of the
second bar so then I press command I or
control I on a PC to bring them to
identify beat dialog so right now Pro
Tools thinks in my selection is at bar
to beat three and 340 thirds I know that
my playhead is actually placed at bar to
beat one I can do that simply by
pressing two and Pro Tools clears out
the rest for me press ok and there now
you can see on my tempo track Pro Tools
is inserted a tempo of 75 point five
zero
0-9 it's very detailed but that's
actually really close to the tempo of
the song a lot of times with
sample-based music you may find that the
grid doesn't always hold true to the
track so in that case just add some more
identify beat markers further along in
the song just zoom in give yourself a
little bit of playback find another
downbeat use tab to transient and then
place another identify beat marker this
one happens to be right on and just go
further along in a song and keep on
repeating make that 135 great now you
can see Pro Tools is guesstimating that
my tempo between this point and this
point should be seventy five point four
nine nine three I think it's pretty
obvious that this track was recorded at
seventy five point five so a lot of
times in this case I'll turn off
conductor mode and just type in my tempo
manually since I know what it is today I
showed you a couple of easy ways to lock
the grid of your Pro Tools session to an
audio file now whether you're using tap
tempo or identify beat establishing a
grid is a great habit to get into and
it'll make editing later on a lot easier
so until next time