Syncing live and sequenced parts with a changing tempo

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Anybody got any tips or tricks for this? I'm finding it to be a real bitch.

What I want to do is have live guitar and mandolin with sequenced percussion (and perhaps strings and accordion). Normally I'd just play with a click track, but all my mixes so far have kept the same tempo throughout.

What's the best way to synchronize parts like this when the tempo isn't constant?

[Moseph]

You should be able to set up a tempo map in your DAW so that the click track will follow the tempo changes. After that, you should be able to record as usual.

[Arcana]

Depending on your Program you migt be able to beat match on an audio part that is played live, and use that to trigger the tempo changes in your track.

[OverCoat]

do the sequenced parts first, lol

[Zephyr]

I've been wondering about something like this lately too, it seems like something that should be easy, but apparently not.

[prophetik music]

programs like finale and cubase have the ability to change the tempo of everything via a foot pedal or controller. i'd use that.

i say what SOC says. whenever i've wanted to do that, i just write the sequenced stuff first.

[Moseph]

Like Arcana said, if you do want to do the live stuff first and don't want to play it to a click track, there should be some kind of tap-to-tempo feature that will let you define a tempo after recording by inputting a beat with a MIDI controller that follows what you recorded. I just used this in Sonar (not very intuitive, but it works) to sync a MIDI file with a video of me conducting the music. I recorded a tempo map that followed the conducting.