Just a question about Traktor’s beat gridding - I’ve started doing the following when tracks drift in BPM.
Set:
Cue 1: Load
Cue 2: Grid (in same spot usually)
Cue 3: Grid (about, say, 16 bars in)
I then get the space between grid 2 and 3 gridded, then repeat further down the track.
Any thoughts on this method?
Sometimes I notice that stuff I’ve done later in the track (in between cue 6 and 7 for instance) effects something eariler in the track - how would this be the case? Surely each section’s grid should be somewhat independent?
Nope… every grid on the track will be the same cus Traktor can only use one BPM on a track so no matter how many grids you apply they will all be of te same BPM.
Not always… A trick i use is to put a grid at the start of a track if the first bar or 2 bars are on the grid and use this to bring the track into a mix.
The grid will drift throughout the track.
The put a grid at the end of the track for the last 2 bars. You very often find that the 2 grid will be the same its just the middle of the track where it goes all out of whack.
Doesnt always work but it often does and it give you an Intro and an Outro to sync to other tracks.
Obviously synced FX dont sound great but…
I dont bother warping tracks cus if im that fussed ill just beatmatch but warping is a good solution.
I’ve been a “mobile DJ”; weddings & parties. Recently elected to take Dubspot’s “digital DJing” course online.
My goal was to take what DJ Endo refers to as “live music”, that is, stuff played by humans and mix it (phrase mixing). I was struggling to get a decent beatgrid onto old school dance music.
The advice he gave was to warp the track in Ableton and then bring it into Traktor to do your phrase mixing.
I understand what Karlos is saying about putting grids on intro and outro so you can go from one to the next. BUT if your goal is doing phrase mixing with your “live” tracks you really need to go the Ableton route.
Interesting. I was watching the video below from Ean trying to learn more about beat gridding and to the right of the blog noticed this thread in “Hot Topics in the Community Forum”.
I think this video actually is explaining the same thing prettyconfused is asking about.
Basically you need to set grids in smaller parts of the tracks so they match to the beat as closely as possible. As I understand it, with “non-quantized” musik it is more difficult to beat grid as the drummer or the band’s rythm sways and could actually change dramatically over the length of the song, as shown by Ean with the Led Zeppelin classic. If the beat grid is properly set for the parts of the track you want to sync, you shouldn’t have any issues with the mix.
I set two grids markers like Karlos does and will usually start a loop at both of those. Alot of that older house and stuff that drifts you can also nudge into sync.
Set a grid marker in the beginning, set the bpm so the grid is rock solid for the first 4-8 beats or so (depending on how much beats you need to mix it in), and write that BPM in the grid marker (you can add comments to cue points). Then find another 4-8 beats at the end of tune where the beat is pretty stable, add a grid marker then and find the corresponding BPM and add it to the comments.
Whenever you want to mix that tune in, change the BPM to the BPM of the first grid marker, as soon as it’s in you change the BPM to the BPM of the second marker and mix it out when you reach that marker.
Ean made a video about this, I believe it was with Killing In The Name Of.
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…
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.
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?
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.
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.
