Beatgridding on Traktor with tracks that drift

[dennisparrott]

I never thought that I would get to use that old acronym from my days coding Perl!

TIMTOWTDI == There Is More Than One Way To Do It.

It seems that a bunch of folks jumped back into this thread talking about getting two short beatgrids onto a "live" song so you can mix outro to intro easily.

This is a valid technique for sure if your goal is to mix outro to intro.

If you want to do beatjumping or phrase mixing or some advanced looping tricks between two "live" tracks (or perhaps between a "live" track and an EDM track) you need to warp the whole track in Ableton and bring the warped track into Traktor, set the beatgrid and mix away.

It seemed like folks were saying that you should just try to get two beatgrid fragments and that's all there is. I am saying that, depending on your goals, there is another way.

Whichever method meets your goals is the one you should choose...

dp

[djproben]

In my opinion, only go the Ableton route with tracks that have very little drift. The problem is that you will suck the life out of some tracks (particularly old funk and rock tracks) if you force them into a set BPM. This is not a good thing, even if it makes it easier to beatmatch.

Another thing is to make very sure you get a good look through the whole grid before you go warping tracks. Sometimes there will be a breakdown or a moment where the artist intentionally slows down the BPM for emphasis. Not only will you kill this moment with warping but if the track slows down enough your warping might throw everything else off. So be careful with this trick if you use it.

[scamo]

Um, maybe a noob question, but Stephan got me a bit confused.

Isn't the beat grid being in the right position for most of the track or what ever part of the track you need for a mix the most important thing in order to create a clean mix? I mean, the goal is to have a totally clean beat match no matter where you come into or out of a track for the mix and at whatever tempo you're running at (but relatively close to the track that is running/ master). What I mean to ask is, isn't the tempo of the beat grid actually negligible, as long as it isn't too far off from the tempo the mix is supposed to be happening at?

Or am I completely off the whole concept of beat gridding and matching with Traktor?

scamo

[mostapha]

When I've run into tracks like that, I figure out if they're worth buying again as a WAV file. If they are, I fix the timing in Ableton (or any modern DAW…Ableton is just the quickest at this particular task), bounce an edit, and convert it to whatever format I want (usually flac at this point).

Coincidentally, I also do that if I just want to change something or edit the track in any way as well. IMHO, it works better than any stop-gap solution like multiple grid markers that don't do that much.

In all honesty, Traktor's beat griding just isn't suited to these kinds of edits. It's one of its major flaws.

Alternatively, you could just delete the beat grid entirely, make a note of it in some way that you'll remember, and just not use sync on that track. If I'm feeling particularly lazy when preparing tracks, that's actually what I do. Beat matching manually with an X1 is far from the best solution, but if you've got something with a pitch fader, it works just fine.

[SirReal]

While I agree with all steps that have been presented, I can't believe no one has mentioned the original way to keep them in sync. Ride the pitch fader(If you have one) I know the OP asked specifically about beat gridding but it should be mentioned none the less. Also I'll say not every track has to be beat matched and mixed for 4/8/16 bars, it's ok, on rare occasions, to just drop the next track in on beat and slam it in. Sometimes that effect has a better result then trying to "force" a track into submission.