Hi CK - Thanks in advance for any assistance you can give. I apologize for the wordiness. The attached image should helpHere goes...

Often when I'm working on a song that I want to keep more organic, I will allow a good scratch performance (generally voice & guitar) recorded without a click track to dictate the tempo. This means the song tempo fluctuates throughout the song rather than following a strict grid like a lot of modern music. This varying tempo map is then used by me as and anyone else who contributes a part (i.e. my remote "session" musicians) as the song gets built out and produced.

Step 1 - My workflow requires me to line the good scratch recording up to start at bar 1 in Pro Tools. I then tap along with my keyboard adding MIDI notes every quarter note (if it's 4/4 time for example). The important thing is that this MIDI track (with a sidestick virtual instrument on it) is set to a sample base (not tick based). This means the MIDI notes won't move as I adjust the tempo.

I then wind up with an audio track of the song and next to it, a MIDI track with notes every quarter note.

Step 2 - Starting at the beginning, I move through the MIDI notes stopping at the downbeat of each bar (every 4th note in this case), using the "Add Bar | Beat Marker" window to tell Pro Tools what bar that is.

The process is CMD-I to open that window, typing in the bar number (let's say 1), hit return to close the window, right arrow 5 times to move 4 MIDI notes, hit CMD-I to open it again, type in the next bar number (let's say 2), hit return to close the window, etc., etc.

Having the MIDI track be sample based and not tick based keeps the MIDI notes from moving. This process is making Pro Tools to adjust the tempo map so it ends up looking like the image above.

 

I've built a macro that will close the Add Bar | Beat Marker window, hit right arrow 5 times (to move 4 MIDI notes), and open the Identify Beat window.

This saves me a lot of time as it is but I'm wondering if there's a way to start the macro at bar 1 and have it runs in a way that it opens the Add Bar | Beat and types in the bar number (1 at the start), closes it, moves right 4 notes, opens it and enters the next number (2), closes the window, move right 4 MIDI notes, open the Add Bar window, types 3, closes it, etc.

In other words, executing the macro at bar 1 would tempo map the entire song. I suppose the necessary function would be having Keyboard Maestro know to enter a number one more than the previous. Would something like this be possible?

 

Thanks so much!