proper way to beat grid
hey guys…does anyone have a video tutorial on how to beatgrid? i know there are articles online, but they are very hard to understand…i am a visual person!! ( hence traktor )!!!
anyone able to help?
thanks in advance
The Traktor 3 tutorial DVD contains a video about beatgrids. I don’t think it does a very good job explaining it though. I would suggest reading the manual actually… if you still can’t figure it out… dj tech tools forum all the way!
Beat grids are pretty simple, but error prone if you are a little careless.
In Traktor, when you set a grid of 64 bars, you are making a promise to the player that the music that you have highlighted is in fact 64 bars of music. This is great when the beattracker can’t find any rhythmical events to sync from, you’ve provided just he information needed to keep the track in sync. Problem is, if you accidentally grid 63 bars and tell the player that you have gridded 64 bars, the system goes to hell. The longer your grid is, the more chance you have of getting this off-by-one problem and not noticing for ages. The trick is to grid using the beat-jump keys. That way you stay in sync, taking 8/16/32 bar steps as you lay down grid points.
Ableton Live is the same system but more flexible (and one I greatly prefer) - not only can you grid sections of the track, but you also have the chance to go in there and fix up drifting tempos on a case-by-case basis. Heck, you can even remove or add shuffle to a track if the mood takes you. There is still the problem of telling the player that 63 bars is in fact 64 bars and cocking it all up, but Live also has beat-jump keys you can use to stay on the grid as you lay down your grid anchors.
Hope that helps. Go back and RTFM and try it with a simple minimal techno track first before trying to grid that live recorded Salsa track!
Here’s how I do it:
- Make sure tick is on
- Set an 8-beat loop on a beat
- Set grid marker
- Play the tune and adjust the beat marker left and right to align with the beats (I assigned SHIFT + left/right keys for this)
- Let go of the loop and advance through the tune using 32-beat BeatJump (midi button assigned for this)
- When grid drifts, adjust the BPM up or down (assigned SHIFT + up/down for this)
- Unload track, write tag. Voila.
Although lately I haven’t been using the 8-beat loop, but “jump-to-cue” button instead. Also, depending on the track, you may want to adjust the EQs accordingly. Usually, I have the lows almost all the way down and the mids about halfway so there’s some punch but not enough punch to overpower the tick.
Some tracks have perfect grids and Traktor detects them right away. Some are way off. Some drift in segments - multiple beat markers help here
And some have their tempo so messed up, you just can’t grid them.
word up. i appreciate your help guys thanks for the input. i will try it out.
Sorry i couldnt find any traktor youtube beatgrid entries but i found one for ableton -
Provides some good info on getting your markers in the right spots while avoiding clicks and pops in your loops 
should we do a post on this???
ok- I am working on a video.
Míle buíochas Ean; a video would be excellent. To the rescue yet again.
If you could, include beatgridding tracks with changing beat structures. I listen to lots of Amon Tobin, Four Tet etc. and would like to try using them in a set, but they’re so damn poly-rhythmic.
posting a video would be VERY VERY helpful!! there are no videos on google vids or youtube.
i think alot of people would benefit as this question is asked countless times on the NI forums as well.
No matter how much people try to explain it thru any written form, I dont get it, we really need a video explaining this method.
Great idea on the video…I had my head around it and jumped over to abelton…now I have to reteach my brain.