Included in the Audio File Player plugin is a MIDI metronome optimized for working with short loops. Tell the MIDI metronome the musical length of a loop and it will generate MIDI notes for a metronome. The MIDI metronome does not do tempo detection and is unrelated to the audio metronome.
MIDI metronome settings can be seen on the screenshot below (indicated with the yellow rounded rectangle):
Follow these steps to use the MIDI metronome:
1.Click on the Metronome button (1) to show MIDI channel and note settings for the metronome (indicated with the yellow rounded rectangle).
2.Load a sound file into the audio player (2). You can either load a single sound file (indicated with the blue arrow) or load a full directory of audio files into sample lanes (indicated with the red arrow). Note: if you want to play multiple sample lanes in parallel, click on the Multi button (3). In Multi mode, the longest file will be designated as the Master and used to calculate the metronome.
3.Enter the duration of the loop in bars into the Bars field (4) on the lane of the Master track, by typing it in directly or using the +/- arrows beneath the field.
4.Enter the number of beats per bar in the loop into the Beats field (5) on the lane of the Master track, by typing it in directly or using the +/- arrows beneath the field.
5.Choose or add a plugin as the sound source for the metronome. Choose the sound you want to use for the metronome and set a MIDI channel for it. Don't forget to make audio connection from the sound source to your interface outputs.
6.In the Wiring view, connect the MIDI Out port of the Audio File Player to the MIDI In port of the plugin you want to use to generate the metronome sound.
7.Define the MIDI note, velocity, and duration (Length) to be used for both the Accent and Beat metronome sounds (6).
8.Set the MIDI Channel field to the channel number of the metronome sound (7).
9.Click the Play/Pause button and the metronome will play, along with the audio files (8).
Note: The MIDI metronome assumes the loop contains an exact number of bars, with the beginning of the file being bar 1, beat 1. If this is not the case, the metronome may not sync correctly with the Master track.
Related topics:
Metronome
How to create a custom metronome with visual feedback
