Traktor S4 BeatGriding

[tricks]

Ean's track mapping is awesome for beatgridding your tracks. Here's the link!


http://www.djtechtools.com/2012/07/2...n-mapping-tsi/

[MoeHawk]

yeah i need to dl and try that out.

[squidot]

Yes. Import your tracks, right click, analyze. Traktor will analyze bpm and make a grid. Sometimes its close sometimes not. The new 2.5 seems to get close. But if it makes a bpm like 140.006, double click, and type in 140.

i would just add a caveat to not always blindly change the bpm when it is .0xx amount off because sometimes that is the correct value for it to be on the grid properly throughout the song. that's not always the case, but it's something you should definitely check before you change it.

i stopped using the metronome or another track to grid and do it solely by sight at this point. i was spending way too much time worrying about songs being right on time with the metronome, only to have my ears start messing with me after a period of time. in my experience, some tracks sound better at various points of the metronome click, which don't always line up exactly with the grid thus sounding off with other songs. with my sight only gridding, i almost never have to do any adjustments while playing, though i have buttons mapped in case i need to make live adjustments. here's what i do:

01. i find the first downbeat and zoom in to see how close the grid is (don't always judge the whole grid by the first downbeat though as every now an again that is not the same as the rest of the song...see step 3).
02. if the grid is way off i will delete it and make a new one.
03. i do a beat jump by 16 bars all the way through the track to make sure there is no drifting (just hold the button down to scroll).
04. if there is drifting (rare for me) i will adjust the bpm as needed to get it as close as possible.
05. if fine adjustments to the grid are needed i will make them.
06. i go back and set my load marker and cue points at various points in the song
07. i always set cue 3 where the bassline comes in and cue 6 where it stops.
08. if i find a song to be too long or boring in parts, i set up cue points to skip sections if i feel the need.
09. i give the track a star rating, an energy rating from essentially 1-10 in a comment field, sometimes put notes, and sort into playlists.

occasionally, it can be hard to tell visually where the grid should go on the kick, so in these cases i tend to look at the snares if they are more apparent. i have been playing pretty much only house music at this point and this method has been working for me very well though your mileage may vary.

[MoeHawk]

Very well put dude. I didnt think about that and adjusting bpm to line up. I do the same aswell with jumping by sixteen or thirtytwos and checking the grid. I do the same with cues and gridding by sight aswell.

I do alot of elctrohouse/dubstep/trap and seems to be okay, pretty lights music seems hard to to grid with how he samples stuff n its so wildly put together.

[squidot]

yeah, when i read about the beat jumping that really helped me out. before i would just mouse click to random spots throughout the song, but jumping gives you a really good visual concerning drifting.

i am still working on my house songs, but i will start getting to my downtempo and glitch hop sounds at some point. i haven't really tried any pretty lights stuff yet but i had a bitch of a time with some of my older hip hop songs. i think i may just have to go back to good ol' beatmatching on these things since i really don't want to warp everything in ableton first.

[MoeHawk]

yeah, when i read about the beat jumping that really helped me out. before i would just mouse click to random spots throughout the song, but jumping gives you a really good visual concerning drifting.

i am still working on my house songs, but i will start getting to my downtempo and glitch hop sounds at some point. i haven't really tried any pretty lights stuff yet but i had a bitch of a time with some of my older hip hop songs. i think i may just have to go back to good ol' beatmatching on these things since i really don't want to warp everything in ableton first.

yeah PL stuff is such a wide variety of BPMs its quiet hard to play. Ive noticed in his sets hes basically just playing his songs all the way through and just kicking the next track on at the end of the playing one. I can mix some of his stuff but i just keep the bpms withing 5-10bpm or so and just use tempo faders to match bpm and they seem to blend okay.