Belated thanks to both of you… after working with the tools, I think I’m going to be the hero after all!
I just want to say that I am amazed this worked. I used a kind of hybrid approach - reading thru your advice/links, and also some of the steps in this video:
Here’s what I did:
- Lined up the tempo track to the drum takes using the Timewarp tool. (Took awhile - I lined up every beat).
- Bounced the drums & set the definition from tempo.
- Re-lined up the tempo track to the piano takes (Timewarp tool again - took less time, as I lined up to just the 1 and the 4).
- Bounced the piano & set definition from tempo.
After doing this, the drums followed the piano perfectly.
But, as you suspected Earle - adding drums exposed flaws in the piano’s free-flowing tempo. Not all of it was bad - most of the free-flowing tempo was terrific - but certain sections were obviously wrong. So I locked just those sections to a solid, unchanging BPM by removing any free-flowing tempo changes from the tempo track (in those sections only). Easy…
End result is a very real sounding track that flows when it needs to, and is solid when it needs to be. Thank you both… again, I’m just amazed at how well these tools work. This approach worked so well, in fact, I’m curious when I would ever need to use the “slicing/quantize” approach to fix timing issues. I’m thinking this timewarp approach meets my needs perfectly.
A.j.