Questions & Answers

How do I keep midi tempo constant when I adjust Studio One tempo?

+8 votes
4,730 views
asked Jul 6, 2019 in Studio One 4 by martinhughes (1,620 points)
I recorded a live performance consisting of audio and midi which was played at 106bpm. Unfortunately I left Studio One tempo at its default of 120. I would now like to edit the track and it would be useful if the grid correctly indicated the bars. If I adjust Studio One tempo to 106, the audio is displayed and plays correctly. (I have timestretch disabled.) However, the midi speeds up to 120 bpm.

Is there a way adjust the tempo in studio one without altering the tempo in the midi track - I guess what I'm looking for is something like the 'Don't Follow' function in the audio tracks

4 Answers

0 votes
answered Aug 27, 2019 by frankbaker1 (430 points)
MIDI events are always going to be transmitted to the instrument according to the song tempo track as defined in the Studio One song file in terms of measures and beats - that is what MIDI is. If you convert your midi tracks to audio (either by rendering a plugin track or recording an audio track from an external synth) then copy the clips to an audio only track - you can deal with it as audio without sensitivity to the tempo track.
+2 votes
answered Oct 11, 2019 by timlewis6 (440 points)
I agree!  a MIDI track "don't follow" option would *really* help me out.  I'd like to be able to play a MIDI piano track freely and then go back and adjust the tempo map to fit the MIDI track.  But the closest thing I've found is the MIDI "Stretch" feature, and this feature has problems -- the most significant is that it only stretches the notes, but ignores controllers like the sustain pedal.  It's practically useless for my MIDI piano tracks.  But the fact that this feature exists says that the developers *could* make a "don't follow" option on the MIDI tracks and allow us to scale the time independently.  Right now, the only thing I can do is convert the MIDI to an audio track and use the "don't follow" option that way... but I lose all my ability to edit the notes.
asked Dec 13, 2021 in Studio One 4 by ameerko2u (160 points) don't follow please to midi tracks pleasee
+8 votes
answered Jun 15, 2020 by fatman11 (590 points)
Hello @martinhughes i’m not sure if you ever figured this out. But I found out if you select the track and open the inspector and choose seconds for your timebase the midi will not move
+1 vote
answered Aug 12, 2022 by ebowden (190 points)
I ran into this problem, too. A midi was recorded "free-style" in another DAW (against a .wav reference track), thus the midi bpm was left at the default 120 bpm. Importing that midi into my project, which has the real bpm tempo track configured, caused the midi to be stretched. It would really be nice if you could import a midi in the "seconds" timebase, rather than "beats" so it doesn't try to conform to the project's tempo track.

As a work-around, I inserted 200 measures of silence at the beginning of my project, and set the tempo of those 200 measures to match the bpm of the midi (120). Dropped the midi into that region. (It's important that the midi fits in the region completely, so scale the number of silent measures accordingly before dropping it in.) Then changed the track timebase from beats to seconds. Finally, I shifted the midi data over from the dummy measures into the actual project region, and the midi data preserved the original timing with no stretching. Finally I trimmed out the 200 measures of silence to clean things up.
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