Ableton question

grandslamsmith

Hey,

I'm trying to mess about with a completed track I have imported - it's an old Nina Simone number.

I'm trying to add drums, beats etc but I can not for teh life of me get the tempos to match.

Working in Live 7 by the way - maybe some of you guys are doing something liek this?

Help!!

Slam

SteveDon

Is this the actually Slam? haha only joking

Em youll probably have a hell of a lot of difficulty trying to do that, youll probably have to do the track in sections. As the nina simone track probably (just guessing here) isnt perfectly in time, because its such an old recording.

grandslamsmith

Hiya Stevedon

Yip - it's me Slamington McSmyth

I'ts a track from her best off so it's all perfectly in time - I just can't get her track and my beats to marry up. I'ev tried warping the beats clip and warping the Simone track - no joy at all!

What I'm trying to do is something like what david Hoplmes did on the Elvis track 'Little Less conversation, little more action' remix he did.

Stumped!

Slam

krd

Warp doesn't always perfectly match. Over a whole track it may mistake some beats for their actual position or take a percussion hit or something as a beat.

But. if you break the Nina Simone track into segments, you can move the warp markers onto the right hits. So the segments will be warped to the right time. The tempo on a Nina Simone track would vary a huge amount - she didn't record to a click track.

It takes a little practice but once you get the hang of it, it's easy peasy. I downloaded a pack of drum breaks and the guy who did them hadn't neatly cut them. So I practiced fixing them in Warp. Move the first marker onto the first beat and then align the other markers with say the 8th marker - it's easier than it sounds, you'll see the markers line up with the beats and when you loop it, it will sound perfect. And any beats you run against it will be in time.

grandslamsmith

Nice one, I'll give that a lash! Should keep me off the streets for a few months!

Slam

Quiggers

also Nina didnt always do 4/4 time, so listen to the track, count along to the phrasing of verses and chorus and make sure its in 4's.

dyer

not sure what version of ableton you use but in 8 things are a little different.. this tutorial should sort you out http://www.medwaystudios.com/Ableton-8-Tutorials/Ableton-Live-8-Warping-Tutorial.html

ableton should grid the beats fairly well but you might wanna go through and check them with the metronome on. if its a vinyl rip you have, its bound to be affected by some drifting which youll have to fix manually with warp markers.

there's an option in ableton's preferences that sets certain warp options automatically when you import a sample.. you might wanna check that or disable it completely.

krd

Quiggers wrote: »

also Nina didnt always do 4/4 time, so listen to the track, count along to the phrasing of verses and chorus and make sure its in 4's.

That's something I just remember. She didn't do everything in 4/4 - Jazzy stuff can have very weird time signatures. Something like Dave Brubeck's Take Five is in 5/4 time. And there's also always a tempo drift. There can't not be one if the players are not playing against a computerised clock.

Something I've been wondering. Listening to stuff on chart radio - I haven't had my computer for a few weeks but I was matching a drum machine thingy with a midi display to the radio by tempo tapping (on the tempo tap button). The verses of stuff on the radio seem to be 128bpm for intros then jumping to 130bpm for chorus - 128bpm for breakdowns coming up to 130 for out the breakdowns - then 128bpm for the outros.

Is that just my imagination? Is there really a bpm variation on the chart stuff. I had no way of checking only the midi clock on the thingmy I was tap matching to.

Quiggers

for band type material its very common, it adds energy to the chorus, rihanna and her clones dont, they generally add more stacked saws, pitch the vocals up a tone or a fifth.