[Ardour-Users] Aligning Ardour's time line with a recorded track

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 17:05 -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Peter Desjardins
> <peter.desjardins.us at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi. I'm just starting out with Ardour and I have a beginner's
> > question. I hope you won't mind reading it here.
> >
> > Is there a function for aligning the timeline with a recorded track? A
> > friend of mine sent me a single track of drumming and I'd like to add
> > to it in Ardour. I'd like to be able to match the beats in the Ardour
> > time line to the beats in the track.
> >
> > The only way I can imagine doing this is by manually adjusting the
> > time signature and speed until it looks and sounds correct. However,
> > this must be such a common task that I'm guessing there's a function
> > that will do it more quickly and reliably than I can.
> >
> > Is there a beat matching function? Or is doing it manually just part of the fun?
> >
> > Thanks for your help. Please point me to documentation that covers
> > this if there is any, I couldn't find it myself.
> 
> its not well documented.
> 
> the two functions you want are bound to "9" (set-tempo-from-region)
> and "0" (set-tempo-from-range)
> 
> for the first one, select a region that represents 1 bar, and press 9.
> the rest should hopefully be obvious
> for the second, define the edit range (see the keyboard cheat sheet
> for info on this if you don't know about it) and press 0. same process
> follows.
> 
> the former works best if you are working with samples corresponding to
> 1 bar; the second works best when working with less structured
> material.
> 
> --p

IIRC there're also Linux applications that enable to tap the beat by a key and record the BPM changes, while listening to the song and perhaps after doing this, those apps become the MIDI time code master. I once asked for this at another list, but don't have access to the replies at the moment.

- Ralf