Solution found! - Reliable realtime BPM analyzing

[cosmowe]

Hey guys,
I just wanna share something with you.

Last week I was on a Job with a lot of spare time.
I've sat beside the light guy and we talked about how frustrating it can be do a sync light and video show for Top 40 Bands with inconsistent tempo.
"Tap Tap Tap Tap Re-Sync" every 30 seconds. meh

The audio technician behind us listened us and asked if we already tried the almost new tempo "Follow" function of Ableton Live.

Unbenannt.PNG (6.74 KiB) Viewed 4090 times

Ableton added this feature to real-time sync the tempo of an Ableton project to a live played instrument insert. That way for example a percussionist plays the tempo he likes and the composition is following him instead of he the composition.

That sounded a bit to unreal to me.....nice feature...but this can't work well from my experience I gained over the years while trying to find a reliable real-time BPM analyzer.

But... like I said, I had a lot of spare time at the job so I installed Ableton Live and wired the stuff up.

1.
Live Audio >> Focusrite Audiointerface IN >> Ableton Audio Track Audio from Ext. In

2.
Make sure Ableton is in ► mode and "Follow" function is active.
You should now see the Bpm in Ableton keeping up with the audio from your input.

3.
Install a virtual midi cable like LoopBe1

4.
Let Ableton send the Midi Clock to Virtual LoopBe1 Cable + let Resolume receive the midi clock from the virtual LoopBe1 cable.

Voilá!

This technique in general is not special or new....the amazing thing here is that the f***ing algorithm of Ableton actually works outstandingly well, reliable and fast! It's not very sensitive to inconsistent volume, it does not freak out when the music stops, it can even differentiate between music and non-beat stuff like spoken words between songs.

As you might know Resolume supports "Ableton Link". There are two downsides with that..... when linked, the option to resync a clip to the beginning of a four quarter beat in Resolume is disabled + The "Follow" functions in Ableton is not active. So I cannot use it here.

The only thing you need to do in Resolume is to Re-Sync to the beginning of a four quarter beat.

To be clear.... This technique will not keep you spot on sync the whole night but for round a bound 80%. And this is much much more than any other way I tried before.

I hope this information is helpful for someone.


Best wishes
cosmowe

[Arvol]

There's also this :
https://pixelparty.gumroad.com/l/beat_d ... ixel_party

[cosmowe]

Thanks for showing that.
But just by stepping through the first 30 minutes of their tutorial video it feels to me that using their tool don't actually makes it easier to follow the bpm....it adds a whole new layer of complexity to this task.
Even in their tutorial video the beat detection does not work properly. It's all over the place.

Arvol....please... give the "follow" function a shot. I am quite curious what you think.


Best wishes
cosmowe

[Arvol]

Will this work on the $99 version of Ableton? I might try to catch it on sale later and give it a shot.

[cosmowe]

Yes, this function is available in the Intro, Standard and Suite version of Ableton 11.

[murc]

I had some success with:
https://www.bigfug.com/software/audiobox/
together with:
https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html

[2bitpunk]

While Resolume are fixing this... If you are on a Mac one simple (cheeky) trick is to send Ableton Link from VDMX to Resolume. If you don't have a VDMX licence just run it in demo mode. But for a more granular approach you can use VDMX built in Waveclock and Audio Analysis plugins to send MIDI commands or buy Waveclock/Wavetick from http://wavesum.net.