Hey guys, first post here. Just wanted to ask a general question.
I use Ableton Live for mostly all of my production and I just started playing around stretching songs. Now I usually use the Warping function and I stretch the song out so the BPM is in basically half time and the song is twice as long. However it seems as though doing this makes the entire song off-beat when you want to add in your own drums and synths and what not.
Any tips? Should I do my instrumentals to the normal BPM and stretch that out as well?
Drag Edits
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Anton Maiof
- Posts: 266
- Joined: March 31st, 2011, 2:54 pm
- Location: Berlin
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Re: Drag Edits
depends what you are trying to do.
For modern techno / house / 4 to the floor stuff Ableton can be pretty useful at detecting the BPM. If it is this kind of stuff try unwarping it and then warping it again.
So anything with live drums that weren't recorded to a click, well it won't have a steady bpm, hell even if everything was slaved to a real drum machine things will drift. Egyptian Lover's stuff, man the 808's timing moves around like crazy.
Then we add on where are you getting the music from: Are you ripping it from CD? Are you ripping your own vinyl? If so can you trust your turntable? Is it an mp3? where did that source come from? Online vinyl rips of old rare stuff, even stuff friend's have kindly sent to me had weird tempo movement. Add on the fact people used to edit imperfectly on tape! There are a wealth of reasons why timing may be off, even in electronic music, which is supposed to be more reliable...
Essentially there is no easy fix with abelton, especially when dealing with non "4 to the floor" rhythms. Using ableton on it's own, be prepared to be moving warp markers around for half an hour or more.
The only surefire method I've ever had any joy with is a combination of Traktor and Ableton. Traktor's tempo detector is generally better (not always however) than abletons. Stick the file in Traktor, select grid mapping, move the grid around until it's more or less consistent, make a note of the bpm. I used to pitch it down in Traktor too and export it. -17% is more or less the simulation of a 45 record played at 33rpm (so -25% is "33 rpm - 8" / -9% is "33rpm +8" or "New Beat Style") -35% is a 45 record played at 16rpm.
Now I have the tempo I stick the exported track in ableton and edit if there is no need for warping. If there IS a need for warping I try and only quantize the main snare and even then minimally with hip hop stuff, you don't want to lose the groove, ESPECIALLY when doing draggy chopped n screwed style stuff, the beauty of slowing that music down is the nuances within that groove come alive, undulate in weird ways and sound really really awkward. But that is my personal taste. If you just want to stretch it out then there is a little *2 button which just doubles the length. Always use "complex" warping and not "beats".
You probably know about all these functions, so I didn't mean to sound patronising, just being thorough.
For modern techno / house / 4 to the floor stuff Ableton can be pretty useful at detecting the BPM. If it is this kind of stuff try unwarping it and then warping it again.
So anything with live drums that weren't recorded to a click, well it won't have a steady bpm, hell even if everything was slaved to a real drum machine things will drift. Egyptian Lover's stuff, man the 808's timing moves around like crazy.
Then we add on where are you getting the music from: Are you ripping it from CD? Are you ripping your own vinyl? If so can you trust your turntable? Is it an mp3? where did that source come from? Online vinyl rips of old rare stuff, even stuff friend's have kindly sent to me had weird tempo movement. Add on the fact people used to edit imperfectly on tape! There are a wealth of reasons why timing may be off, even in electronic music, which is supposed to be more reliable...
Essentially there is no easy fix with abelton, especially when dealing with non "4 to the floor" rhythms. Using ableton on it's own, be prepared to be moving warp markers around for half an hour or more.
The only surefire method I've ever had any joy with is a combination of Traktor and Ableton. Traktor's tempo detector is generally better (not always however) than abletons. Stick the file in Traktor, select grid mapping, move the grid around until it's more or less consistent, make a note of the bpm. I used to pitch it down in Traktor too and export it. -17% is more or less the simulation of a 45 record played at 33rpm (so -25% is "33 rpm - 8" / -9% is "33rpm +8" or "New Beat Style") -35% is a 45 record played at 16rpm.
Now I have the tempo I stick the exported track in ableton and edit if there is no need for warping. If there IS a need for warping I try and only quantize the main snare and even then minimally with hip hop stuff, you don't want to lose the groove, ESPECIALLY when doing draggy chopped n screwed style stuff, the beauty of slowing that music down is the nuances within that groove come alive, undulate in weird ways and sound really really awkward. But that is my personal taste. If you just want to stretch it out then there is a little *2 button which just doubles the length. Always use "complex" warping and not "beats".
You probably know about all these functions, so I didn't mean to sound patronising, just being thorough.