Using a little common sense while keeping an eye on the Seg. BPM box can be a powerful way to check your work. Here are a couple of examples: Let’s say you’ve done your basic warping, and you’re about to check your work by ear. First, take a look at Seg, BPM. It’s not uncommon […]
WARPING 101: ABOUT SEG. BPM
When you look at the Seg. BPM box as I’ve suggested in a few tips, you may find it grayed out, looking like this: To enable Seg. BPM so you can manually type in a value, you first have to click on a Warp Marker. In the case of steady-tempo clips where only one Warp […]
WARPING 101: THE SEG. BPM METHOD
When warping a bunch of audio that I know (or strongly suspect) to be steady-tempo, I’ll often skip dragging around transients and just go straight for the Seg. BPM box. Let’s say I’m warping a bunch of techno and electro. I’m gonna park Live’s master tempo at 128 because this within a couple BPM of […]
WARPING 101: THE LOOP METHOD
As you warp a wider variety of material, you’re going to encounter stuff for which the methods described so far simply don’t work for. In the process of making my hobotech mixes, I work with all sorts of old acoustic music that not only fluctuates in tempo, it often includes no percussion, so there’s a […]
WARPING 101: THE NEGATIVE BARS
Regardless of what warping method you use, I usually recommend that you get the Start Marker placed at the first clear downbeat of the audio before you start warping. This means that you’ll be leaving out any intro material from the clip. In order to have that material play back, once the clip is warped, […]
WARPING 101: EASY ACAPELLAS
It’s common for folks to get stuck on warping acapella tracks (solo vocals). The obvious problem with acapellas is that there is no easy time reference such as drums to line up with the beat time ruler. However, given that acapellas are typically from sequenced music with a steady tempo, it’s often easier than you […]
WARPING 101: TRICKY ACAPELLAS
The number one reason it can be tricky to get an acapella working right is that it has an odd amount of space at the beginning. You might have the overall tempo set correctly, but the vocals don’t land in the right place relative to the other clips you’re playing. Fixing this is similar to […]
WARPING 101: MULTIPLE WARPGASMS
There are some cases where you have to do the impossible: warp a file with no time reference (such as an acapella vocal) such that it lines up with another file (such as a drum track) that has tempo fluctuations. This means that the vocal track would have to have multiple warp markers to correct […]
WARPING 101: SIZE MATTERS
Sometimes when attempting to warp multiple clips, you’ll see this in the clip view: This is telling you is the main caveat of warping multiple clips simultaneously: they all have to be exactly the same length. The solution is (not surprisingly) to make both clips the same length. This is easy to do, provided that […]
WARPING 101: WRECK THE GROOVE
It’s all very well and good to warp with the minimum number of warp markers in order to preserve the original timing of a sample, but there are times when that just won’t do. Sometimes you have to subtly (or radically) alter the timing of a piece of audio to get it to sit right […]
