I would like to go fully digital, get a 4D/VCI SE and get into the 4 deck mixing.
But it’s painful beatgridding 2k tracks, has no-one designed a program that can do this accuratley yet lol.
I suppose there’s a risk of loosing your beatgrids too when doing a Traktor update?
I could always send my tracks to Ableton to be beatgridded for me. Think i saw a post on this here recently. Does anyone know if there are any downfalls to doing that apart from not learning myself? It just gives me a headstart
Nope, there is no program that can accurately do this. And there isn’t a risk of losing the grids when updating Traktor.
It’s not as bad as it looks. Eventually you’ll be able to grid an average track in under 20 seconds. But yeah, the main reason to do it is not to learn, but for security. If you’re focused on 4 deck mixing, the last thing you want to happen is drop a poorly gridded song into the deck and have the mix just collapse.
if you don’t like beatgridding just learn how to use the pitchbend and tempo fader like how you would on analogue tables. I used to do it that way exclusively but realised it took less time beatgridding than it did to get comfortable with my songs to the point that i could beatmatch them manually.
For one, if its mostly EDM or dance music of any sort it’ll probably have a fairly recognizable beat and probably be gridded accurately anyway.
Once you have a little practice you can often set a grid up pretty quickly. If I come across a track that I haven’t gridded then as long as i’m not doing any extra quick jumping between songs i can usually grid it there and then before i start the mix. Remember the time taken to grid it is then saved from the time it’d take to manually beat match it without a grid so its pretty much 50/50.
And as said, at the end of the day you should always keep your hand in at manually beatmatching just in case.
Rarely, if ever, does any BPM detection I’ve used catch the tempo to the .00. Usually it’s to the .99 or to the .01, and that’s when it’s not 20 or 30 bpm off, and that just gets frustrating.
Beatgrid as you go. It’s like when you digitise vinyl. I got over 2,000 records but i certainly didn’t dig them all. I just did the essentials and if i ever crave a tune I digitse it. But I don’t have enough time to listen / play my new music anyway.
Soz off topic.
what i’m saying is i wouldn’t let that stop you going digital, it’s a minor hurdle not something you will care that passioantly about. You can always manually beatmatch tunes or just grid it there and then. Once you get the hang it’s pretty straight forward.
it seems like a huge task now (I’m in the process of gridding my dubstep collection finally), but once you’re done, you’re done! if you grid as you go from then on you’ll never have to do it again (unless something goes horribly wrong)
LOL, on i’d say about 90% of the dance music in my collection it’s recognised and gridded it accurately on its own. Its only with the rock/guitar stuff and all the older cheesy and top 40 stuff where the beat is far less accurate that i have a problem and usually have to manually grid.
I do totally understand the pitfalls of expecting software to be able to recognise and grid beats properly, but thats just my experience maybe i’ve just been lucky.
it’s not as daunting as it seems… this is coming from a fool who has lost his stripe and cue data for his entire collection twice over the past year or so (yes, i have learned to backup).
i find that the task is easier if i’m beatgridding as i go along. i’ll spend a few three-hour long practice sessions setting grids as i load my tracks to play and mix them. this is rather simple because i’ve discovered that i actually find a good cue point and set a solid grid a LOT quicker than i can match beats by ear (about ten seconds to grid vs. about 30 seconds to a minute to beatmatch!).
after four or five sessions like this, i had a good portion of my current rotation of tracks done. i’d estimate that was around 300 tracks or so. i even got a lot of that done at the club for a residency i had at the time. before i knew it, a couple of months had passed and i had most of my 2500-strong track collection striped, gridded and ready for action.
so grid as you go over the course of a couple of months. it’s not too bad of a task if you are really committed to playing four decks with traktor’s full capabilities.
When I first got my 4D I dedicated an hr a day to beatgridding. I did my most played ones first. took me a month or so to go through 2k. It want’s too painful.
Yeah you should just beat grid as you go, do little bits here and there. You’ll pick it up quite quickly and be able to do it without thinking too much about it.
Gridding isnt the end of the of the world. It becomes second nature. I have my nanopad setup to handle basic gridding. It took forever at first to learn how to grid but Ean has an excellent video on doing it and the traktor bible has an amazing tutorial on beatgridding. I spin music with a 4/4 beat and the only genre that gives me any trouble is Hardstyle since it tends to be poorly produced and has floating beats, but even then Ive learned tricks for floating tracks. So have at thee!
Is lack of proper beatgridding the reason why I have 2 tracks playing, close in time, hit the sync button for one track and then that track jumps like 2 full beats ahead and sounds like a train wreck?
I have had this problem on traktor pro and virtual dj
I spin a lot of different types of music from hip hop to rock and roll, to motown and disco.
Live drums all over the place as well as different sound levels (some of the Motown stuff sounds like it was originally recorded in mono)
So as I struggle along with the beatgridding, should I just have ableton warp everything for me? I am sure they charge for this, don’t they? ( I have never used Ableton, sorry)
If you have a lot of live drums then yeah, you should have ableton warp it. That can take a LOT of feeling away from the songs, but it’s kind of necessary. I’ve been running into that issue of songs that can’t be gridded and I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to warp them.
You pay for Ableton Live, which allows you to warp, but they don’t charge per warp
i’ve been having good luck without beat gridding. I run TPro playing house basic 2 track mixing. TPro always seems to get the tempo correct. I haven’t had the situation where the tracks are drifting when I hit sync. But the kick drums are mis-aligned. So I just load the track, hit sync (to get the bpms to match), then hit play, then hit pitch bend a few times to nudge them, and im good.
