Is It Possible To Fine Tune Bpm?

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
1

Hi. I’m looking for a way to fine tune the BPM in Renoise.

For example if I want BPM of 233.08 or 261.63.

I imagine this is possible through using a combination of the F0xx and F1xx commands.

But does anybody know how to calculate the actual BPMs of the combinations?

Or is there some sort of scripting that will allow me to do this?

2

Just type 233.08 (or whatever) in the Beats / Min. field, it’s just rounded of when presented in the gui. but it’s actually the exact tempo that’s being used

3

I think he means that he want to alter these kind of bpm values through the Renoise effect columns, but the effect commands aren’t that sophisticated unfortunately.
You should be able to use this type precision with OSC and Lua scripting though.
Specially for calculating, you are better off by using lua scripting.

4

233.082 Hz = A#3
261.626 Hz = C-4

Do you mind if I ask exactly what you’re trying to do by setting the BPM to musical frequencies?

I’m asking because what you’re trying to achieve may be possible via a much easier method.

5

I think you just uncovered a satanic conspiracy. :unsure:

6

Sounds indeed like a case of “Sync” is the requested functionality…

7

Oririnao?..

Please do tell.

You pretty much nailed it Suva…
Bwahahaahahahahha!

WAT? What does this mean?

8

It’s difficult to say anything without knowing more about what you’re trying to do.

For example, maybe you’re using an LFO to generate new waveforms or something like that, and since the LFO is linked to song tempo you’re trying to set the tempo to a precise frequency to control it?

Or perhaps you’re doing some kind of mathematical based composing?

Or… something else?

All I’m trying to say is… if you’re using Renoise to generate some interesting sounds in this way, it might already possible another way, and I might be able to give you some tips, or maybe not.

But maybe it’s just a co-incidence that you happened to give two precise note frequencies as your example tempos, I don’t know.

9

Yep. Just a coincidence :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

10

Coincidence? You surely meant to say CONSPIRACY!

Either way, if you are fine with the tempo being constant throughout the song, then you can just type this into BPM box. It supports BPM’s with a decimal point.

11

Now the question is how many decimal places are accepted?

12

well, i assumed it was more than once decimal, i wrote in 223.08, 223.1 was shown, but when i edited the value it showed me 223.08.
But i guess taktik or some other developer might have a more definitive answer.

13

The BPM field allows up to 3 decimal places, but it will be rounded to 1 decimal place simply for display purposes.

For example, it will accept 123.456 and will then display that as 123.5, but if you double-click the field to edit it again, you’ll see that it still actually contains 123.456

vV was referring to the Sync option found in the Instrument Settings:
http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Instrument_Settings

This lets you synchronise a sample to an exact number of pattern rows, so that it will always stay perfectly locked to the song tempo. Depending on what you’re trying to do, this may be a more sensible option in the long run.

If you have some sample loops with a weird tempo like 120.021 BPM, for example, then it might be better just to Sync them and let Renoise warp them to fit its own tempo. In other words, it’s probably more desirable/sensible to work at a “standard” tempo like 120 BPM instead.

It really depends on what you’re doing though. You may not even be working with loops or standard forms of music at all, for example. Perhaps you are actually creating soundscapes or ambient music for art/performance pieces, or something interesting that needs to evolve over time in a very specific and exact way?

Are you working on something that must be set to a very precise tempo (for whatever reason), or are you simply trying to synchronise some existing loops?

Typically when people ask about how to finetune the song tempo to exact values, they usually want to do one of two things:

  • 1: They want to synchronise their breakbeat loop or something similar so it precisely matches the song tempo, and they simply don’t know that the sample Sync function exists.
  • 2: They want to use Renoise as a more creative sound generator, to create/render musically tuned sounds and effects, and because of this they need to run at very precise tempos or frequencies.

I immediately started to think you might fall into the 2nd category, simply because you listed the frequency of a Middle C note as one of your example tempos, and the frequency of an A#3 note as the other example.

You already said that this was just a coincidence, which I was a bit surprised by to be honest, but maybe you’re just looking to sync your loops after all :)

14

Sync will actually pitch the sample a little too, which can make the samples sound a bit out of tune.

15

2 is pretty close to what I’m planning to do. I noticed while working at 220 bpm that everything seemed to fall into Amin. Especially when something of another note was 09ed to oblivion, everything seems to have a hum of A. So I wanted to try this at all the other note frequencies and see what happens.

And of course it really wasn’t a coincidence. :)

16

Aha! Cool :guitar:

Yes… as you start doing a lot of extreme manipulations with things like sample offset and especially retrigger, at the faster speeds you begin wandering into the territory of grain-like synthesis. You can definitely do a lot of interesting and weird stuff here.