Essentially, what I want to be able to do is adjust the bpm of the song that I have cued, ready to mix into the song that’s already playing out. I.e just like a turntable/cdj, adjust the bpm of the tune that I’m mixing in but without that bpm adjustment affecting the tune that’s already playing out.
I can assign a knob to control the master tempo and I can change the bpms throughout the set by typing the bpms I want in each row in master tempo in clip on the right hand side, but these methods only allow me to change the tempo of everything that is playing out through the speakers, rather than change the tempo of the cued track which is what I want to do.
Or if this isn’t possible, is there a way for Ableton just to bring in each new tune at a bpm that I’ve specified? Will I have to warp them at the bpm that I want to mix them in? Rather than just warping them at their native one?
You need to warp all tracks to DJ in live - once thats done every track will be in the time of the master tempo.
A Warp means you can play the tracks at any BPM and a track can be warped live regardless of the master BPM.
Autowarp works fine for house tracks 99.9% of the time, other genre’s can get messy, once you have the start beat indicated “warp from here” - choosing the warp method is the trickier part as they all have pros and cons (unless you use re-pitch).
I tend to have a pitch bend button mapped just in case things drift slightly.
I’ve seen people use APC 40s by just clip launching everything, how are the beats being matched there? The only way i can seem to match beats throughout a set is by changing the master tempo on the right hand side by typing in the BPM i want each scene to move to and pressing the scene launch to launch each clip. (the set lists that ive been making variate between 120 and 140 bpm)
Once again - Learn about Warping - google, youtube it theres a million tutorials.
Warping will take those 120 / 140 BPM tracks and “sync” them all to exactly the same BPM (maybe 130)
There is no beat matching involved from track to track and no need to adjust the master tempo unless you are intending to beatmatch to an external source like a turntable or CDJ ?
Where (and why) are you typing the master tempo ? .. in the clip properties ?
For me even when the tracks are warped, ableton doesnt speed or slow them up according to what bpm the current/next track is, it just syncs them straight to whatever the master tempo is.
Say for example the tune playing out is 128BPM, and im going to bring in a tune thats 126 BPM, ableton wont change the BPM of the tune im bringing in to 128 to compensate or change both to 127 , it will just change the tune to whatever the master tempo is set to. If the master tempo was set to 100 BPM then it will play both tunes at 100 BPM. If the Master tempo was set to 130 BPM then it will play both the tunes at 130 BPM.
You can really ignore setting Ableton’s tempo before warping for the Majority of Tracks IMHO and just do a “warp from here - Straight” unless you are making massive jumps in tempo.
Then Just rename the Scene to xxxBPM or right click the Scene Cell and “Edit Launch Tempo”.
Everything is explained pretty well in the video though (with the exception of right click).
ah many thanks, i didnt see that right click, now i can launch clips in the scene and they come in at the tempo that is set from the master, was just missing out the semi colon in front!
is there any way to assign the pitch control to a fader on the APC? since they start at the zero mark at the bottom maybe i could assign pitch + to one fader and pitch - to another? or is this not possible?
Ah, would there be such a thing as a VST to control the pitch, and so I could be able to assign a fader to that? I’ll have a look around now.
Yeah your’e right about not needing a pitch fader if I’m using the BPM marked launches, I just wanted to see if I could actually beat match in Ableton with my APC40 lol.
You mean Beatmatch per track ? .. No, its completely pointless.
The only time you might need to Beatmatch is when mixing into another DJ, and this would be using the master tempo only. Simple method? Tap tempo and then nudge
If you really want to beatmatch manually run mixxx/traktor routed into Ableton channels via Soundflower or Jack
Buy CDJ’s if you really want to beatmatch or map your APC to Mixxx/Traktor or something similar
Ok, the problem is still here. Whenever I press a pad to launch a clip it still comes in at what the master tempo is, even if I right click in the scene and set it to launch at another tempo. I wanted to be able to press a clip and for it to come in at a tempo that I’ve specified..?
For the tempo to change you need to trigger the scene not the individual clip in your case that would mean an individual track or selection of samples per scene. Individual clips will always be triggered at the master tempo.
There might be max patches that would allow you to assign a Master BPM change per clip.
