Track separation

hello everyone- this is Paweł :wink: (I’m a new one on the forum…)
I have this little problem, I wonder if anyone got over it.
I play with my friend music tgthr. every time we meet we improvise some stuff and I use some parts of the tape for the loops-so we make few tracks/ideas at every trial. Then I make a back up at home. Sometimes I would like to put on the tape our best performances from different meetings just to practice what we had best. How to do it?
I was trying to make a “mix” in third party apps(egz Audacity) but once its back on the tape I lose the track separation and it is hard to find those exact beginning and ending points of each loop. Each track just shows a long line without any marks…
Also the different BPM of each track is an issue.
How do You manage this?

Hi. Interesting use case.

If I were going to tackle this, I think I’d have to start compiling the tape tracks in a DAW and not Audacity. Why? To get precise starts for each loop according to its bpm.

Put your first four loop stems flush with the beginning of the project. Then set the tempo of the project to the bpm of your second set of stems. Turn on snapping and make sure they all line up with the beginning of a blank measure of the project in that new tempo. Repeat for all the different stems and tempos. Then export each track separately from the DAW and move them to the OP-1.

At least this way, if you set the tempo in the OP-1 correctly, the loops in that tempo ought to fall neatly onto the markers and allow you to loop or play back with a click. Remembering the bpms and actually finding the loops on the tape strips without a visible waveform will still be a problem.

I can recommend Waveform from Tracktion as a good free DAW, if you need a recommendation.

Good luck!

Thank You for the advise… I hoped I could stay away from a DAW but it seems to be necessary to dive in…
Best wishes…

I had an annoying problem at the very beginning with this waveform DAW-
I drag and drop four tracks. After seconds there is "rendering"icon on every moved track and then they have different lenghts and don’t fit with one another.When I make them having the same lenghts by pullin with the arrow on the right side of each track, they still don’t play together how they were recorded…
Do You know whats going on? Is this some “import” feature which exist and I cannot find?

I’ve never experienced that. That kind of files were they and what platform are you on?

Edit: I think you might also want to look at some kind of setting that changes the length of imported loops and sounds to try to match the tempo of the project. The more I think about it, the more I think this must be it!

Ohh I guess I found it-it was under “tempo change remapping” in the Waveform settings. It was messing around with the 4 tracks matching together…
I also finally put some old gigs together on one track exactly how You’ve advised me and it seems to work. I really appreciate your suggestions :slight_smile:
To my surprise it shows the takes separetely. The only concern is when I deal with a songs with some unknown strange tempo setting. But since the takes are shown separately at least I can find the begginng and the end by turning off the tempo match and using Shift+Loop.
Thanks a lot angusofstockholm

Glad it worked for you.