beatwarping.

how do i get rid of the little bit of "grainy" sound in the highs??

it almost sounds like its adding in a bit of static in my highs on stuff that is warped much .....


overall, im really picking up ableton quickly though, its quite fun and mostly intuitive

it's a really fun program to get down. you'll be stuck with it for a while.

How much are you trying to warp the track? The more you warp the track the more it will add little 'chops' and 'stutters' to it. You can also make that sound happen by improperly setting the warp points. Here are some general tips for working in Live:

A) Once you get your track beat matched, section out the parts where you have no drums / percussion and adjust the warp method accordingly:

[Intro Breaks (Warp this with the 'Beat' Algorithm)] [Core Drum Elements (Warp this with the 'Beat' Algorithm)] [ First Breakdown (Warp this with the 'Tone' Algorithm)] [Meat of the Track (Warp this with the 'Beat' Algorithm)] [ Second Breakdown (Warp this with the 'Tone' Algorithm)] [Outro Breaks (Warp this with the 'Beat' Algorithm)]

The Beat Algorithm will slice out tiny pieces of audio at a specific measurement (Every Quarter, Eighth, Sixteenth, Etc.) This works -great- for drums, etc but can cause little glitches in tones, drones or synths.

The Tone Algorithm will slice out tiny pieces of audio based off the same technology that's used in Granular Synthesis. This works great for tones, drones and synths but will cause drums to become muffled and smeared.

It takes a little practice to find out where to slice your tracks but it definitely shines through in the end.

As for your warp points... This is probably the most important part. Pick the location where your beats really pick up and drag the first warp marker to the beginning of that waveform. Turn on the metronome and play the track. Once you've established that you're moving too fast / slow, drag the warp marker at the next four bar location till it sits right on beat. *** Do not double click (This turns the marker green) the next four bar marker and -then- drag it... Drag the marker first -then- double click it. *** If you double click the marker and then drag it... You'll find that your having to correct your warp points about every four bars (And that would suck.) If you drag the marker first, it will time correct the adjustment across the entire track and you should just have to set about 5 - 10 warp points at the key breaks in the track. (You can always go back in-between those key warp markers and add more when you want the track to be -dead- on beat.)

Once you've mapped a track, you should be able to see what it's original BPM was. If possible, try and automate the tempo so that you glide as close to the original as possible. This will reduce the artifacting.

Aite... That's all I can do right now... Hope this helps. =)

yeah i already got the hang of getting an entire track beatmapped perfectly with the metronome using only a marker every 16 or 32 bars, really awesome stuff.

could be my ears playing tricks on me, but it just seems like ableton introduced some static/grit type artifacts to some of the highs, noticably things like cymbals and washes, not a stutter from improper mapping, but just some i dunno, noise? lack of a better term....

anyhow, yeah having 2 tracks 100$% dead on for the entire length of an 8 minute track can be interesting... ill have to play some more i suppose


heres one for you

with a track that has the first downbeat like 60 seconds into the track, would you just chop off the ambient intro then butt it up against the mapped section seperately? or is there a way to have the intro be like 'negative time' and beat 1 still be at the downbeat?

make sense what im asking?

If your not planning on using the Ambient intro in the mix, just slice it off so that the track starts right on the down beat. If you want to use the ambient intro, slice it off, change the time stretching method ot 'Tone' and but it up right against the original piece.

If your getting noise... Try and play the .wav back without any mapping applied to it at all. If you still hear the sound you're talking about... It's gotta be in the .wav (IE, You should be able to load the wav into another program like Sound Forge and hear the same thing.) One last thing you can try is to hit the 'Hi-Q' button in the Sample Window. This will use a more rigerous method for time stretching so you get lets artifacting in the pitch shift (But also ends up using more proc. power.) I usually go through and 'Hi-Q' everything when I'm ready to do the final master / mixdown. Hope that helps. =>

yeah with the ambien intro part i needed it so i did what you suggested and sliced it as its own part.

the hi-q button i cant tell if it makes any diff, but ive got cpu power to spare so i just leave it on

as far as investigating if the aif has the noise or if ableton is introducing it, i guess ill have to track it down once i get home.

any other hot tips or techniques to check out with ableton?

im liking it now that ive played around a bit

Not off the top of my head... Probably just best to ask questions if you encounter a problem or need a shortcut on something.

cntrl-left click-drag for easy copy and pasting

The automation system is really intuitive as well. Easy to do nice and clean EQ cuts / sends / etc.

Lemme know if you hit any bumps and I'll help where I can. =]

live 4 is about to be in beta in the next coupla weeks, if not sooner....MIDI, VSTi's, and all of the good shit live is known for will be in this one.....say goodbye to cubase and logic

live 4 is about to be in beta in the next coupla weeks, if not sooner....MIDI, VSTi's, and all of the good shit live is known for will be in this one.....say goodbye to cubase and logic

Jell yeah Live 4 is going to be one of the best sequencers out there now that there is VSTi support... Shit i'm giving up Cubase most likely once 4 is out... I love Cubase but i just love the Live Interface and the ability to create on the fly. Live 4 > Cubase...