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alright so i've been working with lots of old analog tunes lately, warping them so they're quantized in ableton and it's such a chore....
i wonder is there any tricks to speed up this process? as it is i'm basically just plotting in each warp marker one at a time on every bassdrum and snare hit and it takes a ridiculous amount of time.
am i missing something or what?
thanks.
I start with the 1st real kick drum of the song and set the warp to complex pro, right click from the 1st warp mark and warp from here. and make sure its lines up good. One song that took me hours to warp was Joy Division Love Will Tear Us Apart. it was everywhere.
okay i'll try that thanks man..... yeah so far each song has been hours long ordeals.... like soul crushing "i never want to hear this song again" type shit lol.
well, depends on the tune. i try to keep markers to a minimum.
^^i only bother warping old analog recordings that are near impossible to mix in traktor without warping in ableton first... classic rock/pop, old r&b etc. you know ones with fluctuating tempos and weird rhythm shifts...
Can you just warp sections like you would have a section that you might be mixing in to or out of do you have to warp the whole song?
sometimes that's the case but i like to warp the entire song so i have the option of say laying a heavier beat underneath for the duration of the song to give it more oomph, or to make 3&4 deck mixing a bit more doable.
it'd be really cool if Ean or one of the regular writers did an article on tips & tricks about how to warp these types of trouble tunes the easy way (if there is one).... there's gotta be a way... there's gotta be!!! :confused:
AFAIK, there's nothing you're missing. Some tracks are just really troublesome. I run into this issue where Ableton will take a big long section and lay the markers a little too far ahead of or behind the beat, even though another section is spot on. I don't know of a way to make it take "a closer look" at just one section, but maybe someone else has a secret technique...
Every online tutorial Ive seen is always using the simplest 1 click wonder..
for me its ear fatigue. The only solution Ive found with pain the ass tracks is to break the track up into parts and only sync the parts I can use.. but this is not the way..
Yepp, warping is a huge pain in the ass. Nothing you can do about it.
[ame="http://vimeo.com/8008872"]Warping and Splitting tracks for DJing in Ableton on Vimeo[/ame]
this video help me to warp tracks
repeating what everyone else is saying...
Electronic dance tracks with a solid tempo are suuuper easy to warp, however when you have tracks with a constant fluctuating tempo then your pretty much stuck to creating many many many warp markers - sorry i couldnt bring you good news !
check out the abletonlivedj forums…this comes up a lot over there. But, yes…it's tedious.
BTW, if you're putting a yellow warp marker on every bass and snare hit, you're going to break the time-stretching algorithm and wonder why it sounds bad. No, I'm not kidding.
sorry to tell you this duerr but i saw a vid by moldover years ago and he had untold amounts of markers.i've never understood how someone can warp all there tracks this way without headbutting something concrete till the concrete breaks.
good luck mate,
dont start with every beat straight off though,put them at maybe a minute each marker at first and then start adding and listening.the more you put in straight away the more of a headache it will be
yeah? what do you suggest thenQuote:
Originally Posted by mostapha
I have NEVER warped a track in Abelton in my life.
Gonna give it a go this week for the first time...
Im gonna hate it right..?
it's just really monotonous, time-consuming busy work...
the results are worth it though if you like mixing the classic oldies.
I was chatting to a mate about this last night - I don't and wouldn't warp a lot of the stuff I play (old soul/funk/hip-hop, etc). The slight imprecision in the beat can add a lot of soul to a track (though it does make it harder to cock about with a lot of clever Traktor tricks)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS!!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by calvin01
Honestly though I dont know why it would take u hours to warp a single track. I think the longest i have spent is maybe an hour and that was on Pink flyods another brink part 2 and Greast days of our lives (the track b4 brick 2). each of these tracks required markers on the bass and the snare drum.
Are u setting the first beat to 1.1.1??? that helps out alot.
Eeek, I don't think I'd try to quantize entire songs by themselves.
I usually edit a track to shorten it or rearrange the interesting parts, then only quantize the parts of the the edit I think I'd want to blend in/out/around.
Even then I'm marking every 1 or 2 bars at the most. 4 bars at the least, if I'm lucky.
I've never attempted to quantize a loosely drummed song beat for beat, but wouldn't the artifacting be really noticeable?
Your going to hate it as much as chilly giving you a titty twisterQuote:
Originally Posted by Karlos Santos
Its not that BAD. Jesus its really easy. If u know how to beat match two tracks then ull b fine. Shouldnt take u that long.Quote:
Originally Posted by JesC
But i like Chillys titty twisters, its his love bites i dont like. Hes got a BIG mouth, you may have noticed hahahaQuote:
Originally Posted by JesC
If you mixed the music I play you would understand. Check out Joy Division any track, The Rapture - Out to the races..., or The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. All recorded live with bpms that drift.Quote:
Originally Posted by Djtom420
Oh jesus!Quote:
Originally Posted by Karlos Santos
You really should only be spending more time warping in Ableton if you are mixing in a song that was recorded by a real artist... If it is an electronic track then 99.9999% of the time the bpm is dead nuts across the track. Just fine tune the BPM to the nearest whole number and let it do the auto warping for you.
I think you should invest in this vid for $22 on sale on DJing with Ableton Live: http://www.groove3.com/str/dj-with-live-bundle.html Get Vol 1. only. Vol 2 is a bit blah for what they teach you.
I have it and got some good pointers. They talk about warping in depth.
The way I was taught ages ago was to set your 1.1.1 marker then add your next marker after 8 bars, then 8 bars agian then start doubling them, so 16 bars, 32 bars, 64 bars, etc then one at the last beat.
This means you will always have markers at 1 - 9 - 17 - 33 - 65 - 129
You sometimes have to add another marker in between the long parts i.e. 97
I always use this way and it takes about 5 minutes per track.
I also have a loop from a sample pack playing in another track instead of the metronome - find it makes it easier to check.
The picture explains it much better than I just did.
I feel like this method works pretty fast.
1. Load your track and click warp, let it drop the first marker by default.
2. Find the "One" downbeat that is a good indication of where the song begins. Drop a maker in the "ONE."
3. Delete the default marker.
4. From the "ONE" make a 4 or 8 or 16 bar marker on the downbeat. Warping that first little segment pretty close.
5. Let the song play with either a metronome, or a drum track you have made to warp to, as opposed to the metronome. You should be able to follow ahead of the track, dropping makers on the snare hit's that happen after the first downbeat of every 4 or 8 bar increments. You may need to stop here and there to drop markers when the song gets wacky out of time. But you can restart from the marker you just dropped.
6. Plow on through the rest of the tune this way. Keep in mind, only drop markers when it's starting to shift a bit. Do this till the end of the tune.
7. If there is an intro part before your first marker, warp backwards from the first marker. The previous warping you did from the first marker, should have gotten it kind of close already.
8. Now play the track again. Stop it to fix or fine tune the spots that need it.
One of the best tips, I learned was to warp the first solid part of the song. If possible go as far forward as I can to drop another marker. Drop as few markers as you can in a first pass. Then go back to do the clean up where needed. After warping the first inital part of the tune (usually the kick drum), try warping the rest of the song on snares that happen after the "ONE" (downbeat). They are easy to see, and seem more important that they have a solid marker. Kick's can drift a bit and still sound good. Also, you dont have to wait for the play head to catch up if you get far ahead, or you can visually see things panning out, you can restart the playhead from where you are at. Once you get faster with this method you will find yourself blazing through complex tracks on the first pass, and spending "less" time on cleanup.
I usually have a live set saved that's titled something like "FUNK WARP" dedicated to warping my funk library. After getting used to this method, it only takes me about 5-10 minutes to warp a track. After rendering them out and using them, if I find one that has some bad spots in it that I missed, I can always go back into that set and fix it pretty fast.
Glad this was posted as i'm about to warp Peter Frampton's Do you feel like I do. Probably won't after warping his track :D
Some tracks just take time. Sometimes I will warp 100 tracks or more in one sitting. I fell like I got pretty quick at it. Wake up on a weekend morning, make some coffee and warp new tracks for about 2 hours.
Do not warp everything in an unquantised song. You will lose all the feeling and the magic and your mixes will come out sounding like henrik schwarz. just warp in the sections you want to mix.
some good pointers for speeding up the workflow in this thread, right on right on. much appreciating for the cats who dropped proper knowledge.
i will try using less warp markers in places that i can get away with it, but like i said i only bother warping tracks that have constant shifting tempo, tricky rhythm changes or overly loose/humanized rhythm so unfortunately it's not an option of say just throwing one warp marker in every 16 measures or whatever - otherwise i'd just mix those songs in traktor with manual beatmatching.
we all have a different way i suppose mate.the reason i put the markers every min or so at the start is because then your only changing between those rather than from the marker till the end of the track,then when i feel i need to i delete whatever min marker(sometimes 2) i put in and carry on.
you probably know this but the further away you can get between markers the less your gonna hear of the timestretch.i sometimes would rather a rap-like vocal slightly drift but sound like it should.thats what i like about warping aswell because its you can add the quirks that no-one else will.
it works for me but could be a slow way compared to others.im fairly new to it myself so any advice will be appreciated:)