Producers keep mentioning that they are having a hard time adjusting to the new interface of Soundtrack Pro 3 by Apple.
It used to be so easy to change the Tempo (BPM) and the Key. There was a nice dock interface very similar to Garageband that clearly showed your Key signatures and what Tempo your project was. If you wanted to change it, you would just click on them to adjust.
With the latest release of Soundtrack Pro 3 there are two ways of adjusting your Tempo and Key signatures.
1. Go into the preference panel under file at the top and adjust your project. ( This would make it a default every time you wanted to start a new project, it would always be in the same Key and same Tempo). No good (at least not for us).
We at Soundtrackloops.com like to hear what our loops sound like in all the different Keys after Acidized and Apple Looping them to assure the best quality and to make sure you, the end user, are receiving properly formatted loop files from us. We also like the ability to adjust our Key and Tempo when creating a demo, song, or soundtrack to a iMovie or YouTube video, and also hear the results instantaneously.
When creating a demo we want to play around with our Tempos and adjust the Key for ourselves while the multi-loop created song is playing.
So we set out to make a tutorial as easy and a painless as possible with images so you can understand quickly and get to making your next score at what ever Tempo and Key you want it to be at. Read the contents below to find out how you can do this on your own
Step one – Open Soundtrack Pro 3.
Step two – Locate your Window drop down in your tool bar at the very top.
Step three – Scroll down to your Tabs menu.
Step four – Move your cursor to the right so the Tabs menu opens up and you see Project Properties, highlight and click to enable.
Step five – Your Project Properties should now be in plain sight.
Step six – Now that you can see your project properties. You will first see your projects title, description, artist, copyright, genre and other information which you can edit. Now use the scroll bar to scroll to the bottom to find your current projects Tempo and Key signature it is in. ( I found default was the Key signature of G and Tempo at 120)
Step seven – Now adjust your Tempo to what ever BMP (beats per minute) you would like.
Step eight – You will now want to highlight your Key signature to adjust what Key you will want you song to sound like. ( a menu should show once clicked)
Step nine – One thing we like is the ability to put your projects menu where it is easily accessible. All you need to do is grab the Project Tab and drag to any of your viewing layout panes.
We like ours by our loop browser (as shown below)
There you have it. Easy as a bass beat pie.. feel free to comment or share any of your tutorials and or tips
Filed under: Acid, aif loops, aiff loops, apple, apple loops, beat phone, beat sequencer, Blogroll, chillout, cubase, downtempo, Fidget House, final cut, free aif loops, free apple loops, Free loops, garageband, iphone, iphone video, ipod, logic pro, looptastic, lounge, Mac, mainstage, mashup, motion loops, Music, podcast, podcasting, pro logic, Reason, recycle loops, Recyle, Rex loops, Soundforge, Soundtrack, soundtrack loops, steampunk, Studio Effect, Stylus, Uncategorized, Vegas Tagged: | BPM adjustment, Key, Key family, key signatures, Soundtrack, soundtrack pro tutorials, Tempo
How do you change the key and tempo of non loop files – for instance I want to play around with a piece of music I have imported from my film but I find that I cannot change the key or tempo or distort or anything – the program seems very limited to me
HI Annabel,
The first thing you want to do is tell your music file what key and tempo it is in. the quickest way to do this is to use the apple loop utility (provided with soundtrack or downloaded from the apple site for free.) In the apple loop utility you can assign a key and a tempo. Save it down as an .aiff and then bring it back into soundtrack. Once you assign it’s key you will be able to transpose it into any other key (although it may or may not sound too good depending on much you transpose your key signature. or change the tempo. it sometimes is best to cut up your audio to smaller chinks so you can really manipulate the sound even further.).
Or another thing you can do is use Audacity audio editor. (it’s a free download) in Audacity you can bring your entire file in and adjust the pitch and tempo. again it’s is much easier to get the effect you want by working with smaller chunks of audio.
Let me know if that helped.