From the course: Audio Foundations: Delay and Modulation

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Setting the delay time by tempo

Setting the delay time by tempo

From the course: Audio Foundations: Delay and Modulation

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Setting the delay time by tempo

Approximately 99.9% of the time, and I'm just guessing here, it might be 99.99%, echo should be set to a time that makes musical sense. You don't simply pick a random delay time and mix away. A musical delay time is carefully dialed in, should it repeat with a quarter note rhythm, an eighth note, a triplet, it's worth thinking this essential step through carefully. Sometimes in our search for a specific musical time value, we calculate a delay time. How is this calculated? It's time for a useful bit of algebra. If the tempo of the song is known in beats per minute, shown here as BPM, and the duration of a quarter note delay in milliseconds is desired, let's call it Q for quarter note, perform the following calculation. In music a song's tempo is notated in beats per minute, BPM, but how many minutes are in a beat? First convert beats per minute into minutes per beat by taking the reciprocal. BPM, beats per minute, becomes 1 over BPM minutes per beat. Time and minutes now needs to be…

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