I want to perform a piece via a MIDI keyboard without listening to a click track, and then go over it and align tempo/beats/bars to the recorded MIDI region(s).
Is this possible?
In other words, can I ‘hard-lock’ a MIDI region so it will completely disregard what I’m doing with the Tempo and Time Signature areas above?
I’m going to guess no, because this likely goes against how MIDI itself functions in Ardour… -___-
The one alternative I can think of is just exporting the MIDI performance as audio, then importing that and using that as my reference. But it would be more efficient to not have to do that.
I cannot check it right now, but I think that when you use the “Y” shortcut to align the grid the MIDI region will stay the same. For sure not by adjusting the BPM / tempo markers.
That would not really be practical for a complete performance, just for small bits, I guess.
Rendering the guide track to audio is how I’ve been doing this. Adjusting the grid would affect the MIDI as you suggest - I discovered that to my cost during my first foray into freeform/non-click recording back in early 2024 and I don’t think it’s changed since.
I don’t record straight to audio in case I need to do any slight tweaks to get the guide part just right.
As Piergi says, the ‘Y’ tool (grid tool) allows you to move the tempo map without changing the midi or audio playlists. It does exactly what you’re asking for.
This is an amazing feature but you need to be rigorous and keep lots of snapshots during the process so you can revert to a working version if things go wrong.
One specific hint is that “session->properties->misc->time domain” will change whether markers move along with the grid, or not. I sometimes find that I have to toggle this setting to meet my needs. For the intial tempo mapping you probably want markers to stay glued to the point in (sample) time. But if you have Cue and Section markers then you probably want them to move with the grid when you are later tweaking exactly where the beat lands. YMMV.
