studioq

I was aware of this. I had to rearrange certain elements manually in order to preserve the intended sound. Slowly - piece by piece. Not the way I want to work in the future. I settled on a 3/4 time at 60bpm and arranged the "bass" notes to align with the timing - allowing the other more 'ethereal" notes which extend for (almost) 4 bars to ride along over-top of them. It was a great learning experience - and I'm now a little more confident to get started with instrumental arrangements as opposed to more synth related sounds full of reverb and effects. I appreciate the feedback here. In the future - when I want to record something that is a little more open-ended as far as timing is considered - I'll set my DAW for 40-60bpm while recording and try to stay within some sort of window while laying down tracks. Vangelis - Beaubourg - is an album which comes to mind when I try to consider how to keep time during free-form performance or recording.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. In looking at my DAW (Ableton) - the closest I can come to rhythm/time signature that most closely matches what I was doing by ear - is a 3/4 at 55 BPM. I plan on taking the midi tracks and rearranging them to fill that pattern - I guess "manually quantize" the arrangement and see if it still has any of its organic feel left. Part of my challenge is to preserve the feeling and emotion of the recording while still coloring inside the lines as far as tempo. This is a really inspiring pursuit for me - and it's just the beginning. I appreciate you being so helpful. I'm going to rearrange the audio and report back. I have so much to learn. Thank you.

Hello. I have a million questions - and I'm sure I'll try to ask them all at some point - but I'll start with one first; it relates to timing. Often times I "audition" various instruments and synth sounds - and even record some ethereal pads that turn out to be quite long and loosely timed - with little to no real concern for time signature. If it ends up being something I like - and want to work on further - the difficulty I'm running into is - how to pick a tempo/time signature that makes sense and fits - once I decide what I'd like to do with the piece once it's recorded. I realize this is 'cart before the horse" kinda stuff. Really. So what I'm trying to learn - is how to, BEFORE I start to record, choose the proper time/tempo/bpm to apply to longer, slower material so that I am at least following some sort of recognizable pattern to the music. For example - single notes that are between 7-10 seconds long. (or - the opening 30 seconds of Beethoven's 9th) - I have not a clue how to even begin to approach putting them into some sort of musical framework. At best - I need some really good "101" type resources to read.