I know it’s been discussed many times, but I’m having beat gridding issues…
I’m just starting to beat grid my tracks and I’ve watched Ian’s tutorial on YouTube at least ten times so far. When I follow his tutorial I place the the first marker on the first kick hit. For some reason I just don’t like putting it on a snare hit. I can’t really explain why..
During my whole organizing workflow-- tagging, renaming the files, artwork if I can find it, and running it through mixed in key for the camelot key and BPM tags. BPM tags are stores in all my tracks.
So when I load a track and place the a cue point at the first kick then change it to grid, I follow Ian’s instructions by skimming through the track and usually the grids line up perfectly through the whole track. I rarely have to make any adjustments. When gridding I make sure the white line is just on the beat. I adjust the grid until all white lines JUST hit the grid, no extra.
But when I play two tracks together, the kicks sound SLIGHTLY out of sync on just about every track I’ve gridded.
I feel you on not wanting to drop the grid on the snare. The reason for this is because songs usually start with a kick on the 1 & 3 of a bar, where-as the snare is on the 2 & 4.
Visually beatgridding for me is never 100% accurate. So to make sure the grid is correct, I confirm it by comparing to a reference tune. So what I do is put a 4-beat loop on my reference tune (mine is Pjanoo because it has very solid kicks) and play the song I’m gridding over top.
If they’re synced and there’s drift (beats get increasingly farther apart) then you have a tempo issue with your grid and I suggest either tapping it out, or readjusting the grid further into the tune to nail the bpm.
If they are just out of phase when synced (you hear the ba-dum of overlapping bass kicks) then you need to adjust placement of the grid. Using the move left and move right buttons of the grid menu under your decks, adjust until the beats become one/you are satisfied with the sound.
By always gridding with the same reference tune, all your tracks will be right on time with eachother.
I always use the metronome click - always.
Takes me about as long as it does to do it visually, but I find it is a hell of a lot more accurate than just trying to line things up to a white line.
I also find that 9 times out of 10, if i drop a grid, then i have to pull it back by a far margin before it is spot on. Never really have to nudge it forward strangely enough.
I’m still having sync issues. I was about to try to metronome way that Dafe just mentioned but I can’t get it to work. I turn on the tick button then I hit the cue button for that deck but I get nothing.
Edit: Ok, so I wasn’t getting nothing-- the tick was there but it was hidden by the track that I had playing. I don’t get how this tick can actually be useful. It doesn’t help at all. It’s basically just a little bit of static instead of something audible.
Turning on click/metronome in external mode and doing it by ear works so much better than visually beat gridding. I use Ean’s method for finding a beat to drop the grid in the beginning of the song and then listen beginning to end to make sure it’s in sync the whole time.
I agree on all of the above and have tried,but what happens when it starts to go off at about 1 min in.I adjust it, then at 2 1/2 mins in, again must adjust,and by the time the song is close to the end its totally off yet again...I have lots of songs that for the life of me I cant grid,I must use multiple grid markers through out the song,is this normal? and how does it affect the bpms?(as Iam sure it does in some way)
I have tried using the FORCE but still nothing…lol
I like using mixmeister bpm to find the bpm then I just put those numbers in after snapping the kick on the grid, works pretty well so far. Afterward I compare it to the metronome.
well what kind of songs are you beat gridding? Electronic music usually maintains a constant tempo but if you’re using live tracks or rock tracks the tempo always changes.
Is it just me or is the click in Traktor the most anoying sound ever? Almost like nails on a chalkboard for me. I wish NI could use a different set of frequencies.
You can actually tell that the sync is off on both tracks because the rest of the elements sound off too.
And I can’t really nudge the grid forward or backward everytime I’m trying to mix. One of the points of converting to Traktor is to not have to worry about beatmatching. I would’ve just stuck to Serato.
I think it is. Or those knobx were greyed out and I couldn’t turn them, no matter if I was in internal or external mixing mode.
Everytime I sit down to play with Traktor I get frustrated because I can’t work this gridding thing out properly. It sucks.
House and techno.
It is. I wouldn’t even call it a metronome. A metronome is supposed to be a loud, recognizeable click that stands out. Ableton has a metronome, Traktor definitely does not.
How do you guys beatgrid-- do you do it Ean’s method and put the first beat grid on a snare/downbeat or do you put it on the first kick or beginning of the track?
I’ve been doing the kicks and I just can’t get things perfectly lined up. I’ve been hesitant to do the snare way because it just doesn’t feel right to me but I may have to try it.
Any tips are greatly appreciated! I’m just ready to get past working out a beatgrid method so I can get down to more fun business!
), turn up the cue volume and the click comes to smoother level