Creating A Midi Tempo Map - Akai DD1500 User Manual

SYSTEM - MIDI - 22

CREATING A MIDI TEMPO MAP

To create a tempo map, use SONG 01 as the starting point. You will see that there is a
tempo and t.sig (time signature) entry at the start of the song. These determine the map's
starting tempo and cannot be deleted. You may edit them, however, to something more
suitable simply by moving the cursor to the VALUE field and entering the tempo and time
signature as appropriate.
The first thing you should do when creating a tempo map is identify the start of the song
and reset the start time so that the song starts at bar 1, beat 1, clock 1 (this may be
before or after a count in as you wish). Locate to the start of the song and carefully jog
over it until you have the exact start point. Now press RESET START in the TEMPO MAP
page. You will see this prompt:
Press EXECUTE to set the song start, EXIT to cancel. All tempo changes and/or time
signature changes you enter into the map will now be referenced to that song start point.
Failure to mark the song start correctly will mean that tempo changes and time signature
changes will not appear at the right point and so may cause sync problems with your
sequencer.
After that, to build more steps into the map, first play/spool/jog/whatever to the point
where you want the first change to be and press the ADD key (F3) - this will show this
prompt:
You should respond accordingly, press F5 to add a tempo change or F6 to add a time
signature change. Pressing F5 will show this prompt:
You may abort this by pressing EXIT.
Pressing F6 will show this prompt:
Again, press EXIT to abort.
NOTE: Because time signature changes can only occur at the start of a bar, adding a t.sig
step will place it at the nearest bar boundary.
The cursor will automatically be placed on the step you have just created and you may
edit it's value (the default step value for tempo is 120.0 BPM and for t.sig it is 4/4 - these
should be edited as appropriate).
When you add tempo changes and or time signature changes to your map, you will note
that these are shown on the 'locate bar' of the GRID:
A 'T' is shown to indicate the position of a tempo change and a 'B' (beat) is shown to
indicate the position of a change in time signature.
NOTE: When you are zoomed in vertically on the GRID, when you add a t.sig step, you
may not see the 'B' appear. This will be because the bar boundary is off the screen. When
you zoom out, you will see it.
Continue adding tempo changes and new time signatures as you need through the
project.
Version 2.00 - March, 1996 Page 229