As you may or may not know, as of Studio One version 3.5, we got some new options for importing Tempo Maps. In fact you may have caught my recent article which shows the 3 ways we can now import Tempo Maps in Studio One. If you haven’t already watched the video, I’d recommend doing so.
But for those who haven’t watched it, Ill break it down really quickly. Essentially there are 3 different ways in which we can import a Tempo Map:
- By Opening a MIDI file in Studio One (more on this below)
- By dragging a MIDI file to the arrange window whilst holding down option+Command [MAC] or alt+Control [PC]
- By dragging a MIDI file to the tempo track in Studio One
So the short version is this; if you want or need Markers, a Tempo Map, and Time Signatures – you’d use the first option. If you need the Tempo Map, and Time Signatures, you’d use the second option. And if you ONLY require the Tempo Map, you’d use the third.
As a side-note, while I was doing the video, I inadvertently discovered that if you drag a MIDI file right on the border of where the tempo track meets the arrange window, it would give the option to open the MIDI file, essentially being the same as step 1 above. So after I had finished the article and video, I asked myself, I wonder why PreSonus did this? was it an oversight? If it was, is there any way that it benefits users?
Although I dont think this was their intention, I did find a useful feature hidden away which to my knowledge was not there in Studio One Version 3.3.4 and below.
Copy & Paste Markers, and Tempo Maps
As far as I know, this option was not available before 3.5, so essentially what this means is that we can open either the tempo track, or markers track in Studio One, Copy it, by right clicking, or using a shortcut, then paste it into another song.
So with that in mind, I thought to myself, that this would be a pretty easy way to import Markers into an existing song, if I had already begun working, and used option 2 above to import my Tempo Map & Time Signatures. I could simply re-open the same MIDI file as a new song, copy the Markers, and paste them into my existing song!
Have a look below to see the workflow in action
Drag MIDI File from the Studio One Browser to the black Horizontal line between the tempo track and the arrange window – or simply drag to the start page to open the MIDI file as a new Song.
Click the Markers icon to expose the Markers track – and drag across all the Markers to highlight them. Remember that you don’t need to highlight the “Start” Marker, as it will already be in your existing session by default.
Navigate to your original song, and place the cursor at the appropriate bar where the 2nd marker needs to be placed, and Paste
2 little things to be aware of
First off, Studio One defaults to 44.1 when it “auto” creates a session from opening a MIDI file, so depending on your song setup – for a split second, your sample rate may change. If you regularly work at 44.1 – this obviously isn’t an issue, but if you’re at 48khz, it would be. But no worries, as it changes accordingly based on which song is open. Secondly, you have to make a note of exactly which bar your 2nd marker resides as, and make sure that you manually place your cursor at the same spot before you paste the markers from the MIDI file into your existing session. But other than that, everything works as can be seen above!
So although I do wish Studio One would give the option to import markers without creating a new song – I now feel there’s no need to get upset that you can’t import markers into existing songs because with this workaround, its no longer an issue.
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