This function (found on the Do pop-up menu in the Audio editor) allows you to take a rhythmic piece of audio (for example a drum loop) and make it play back faster, without raising the pitch or performing any actual time correction. The trick is to split the Audio Event at each single “beat”. The new Events that are created by the operation, will each start playback at a specific meter position in the Song, so if you raise the playback tempo, the tempo of the audio will seem to follow! Proceed like this:
1. Select the Event in the Audio editor.2. Create Match Points and see to it that they are positioned on each single rhythmic “building block” (e.g. drum beats) in the Audio Event.
You may use the Get M-Points function, and/or add M-Points manually.
The Event is split at each Match Point.
4. Select all the Events, pull down the Do pop-up menu and select Group. We recommend you to do this, since if you don’t, you will find it hard to move or copy the entire piece of audio without losing the timing.
5. Try activating playback and raising the tempo.
Even though this will make each Event start playing before the previous has ended, it will not cause the two sounds to mix. This is simply because only one Event at a time can play on the same audio channel!
Raising the tempo. Note how the Events are moved together to overlap each other.Why not lower the Tempo as well?
Of course you can lower the tempo with this function. The individual Events will start at the correct positions, giving the impression of a lower tempo in the audio. But since the length of the Events doesn’t change when you lower the Tempo, there will be “empty space” between the Events, which in most cases will sound strange (see the figure below). Therefore, we cannot recommend lowering the tempo other than as a special effect.
The effect of dramatically lowering the tempo.