Megamixes - Warping older tracks, staying in time?
Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:57 pm
So I've been an Ableton user for a few years and love it. Still on 9.7.7 on Mac.
I am looking at doing some old school Megamixes especially disco and funk from the 70's and early 80's and as we all know (that million dollar question) they are not locked to a metronome, as they drift due to live drummers.
I did briefly try Mixmeister but i found it horrible and no-where near the flexibilty of Ableton in terms of keys, chopping up loops, samples, BPM etc.
I have gotten really good a full song warping on todays, house and techno in Live, and am really fast, but this baffles me a little when it comes to older stuff.
So I place the 1.1.1 on the first downbeat, and 'set 1.1.1 here'.
I usually "Warp from Here (Straight)" but this seems to drift?
What is the best way to warp for very slight fluctuating beats, (as well as) tightening up by eye and hand with yellow warp markers?
This seems to take me ages, as a 12" disco record could be 8 minutes, but I have to tighten every 8 bars! so its taking me ages - and THEN, it still jumps here and there due to the warp markers tightening up the beats?
I even selected a section of the track in the edit window, dragged over it and CMD+U to quantize it, so it had hundreds of yellow warp markers, on each bar - but again this fluttered around on and off the beat, which i suppose is understandable?
(a) Is there a simple way to do this, maybe with a different "Warp from Here (ie: start at 126bpm) or "Warp 126.0BPM from here) ? or warp as a 128-bar loop??
(b) Leave the full tracks as they are on the timeline unwarped so they just play, but only warp the last ''mix-out' points so they are in time with the next track? This would leave the original track alone (and not get the fluttering of warping) but not so great if I wanted to backbeat a solid loop all the way through a 10 minute mix to keep continuity and flow, as some megamixes do
Any help would be great! especially others who maybe have to warp and mix older dance / disco tracks
I am looking at doing some old school Megamixes especially disco and funk from the 70's and early 80's and as we all know (that million dollar question) they are not locked to a metronome, as they drift due to live drummers.
I did briefly try Mixmeister but i found it horrible and no-where near the flexibilty of Ableton in terms of keys, chopping up loops, samples, BPM etc.
I have gotten really good a full song warping on todays, house and techno in Live, and am really fast, but this baffles me a little when it comes to older stuff.
So I place the 1.1.1 on the first downbeat, and 'set 1.1.1 here'.
I usually "Warp from Here (Straight)" but this seems to drift?
What is the best way to warp for very slight fluctuating beats, (as well as) tightening up by eye and hand with yellow warp markers?
This seems to take me ages, as a 12" disco record could be 8 minutes, but I have to tighten every 8 bars! so its taking me ages - and THEN, it still jumps here and there due to the warp markers tightening up the beats?
I even selected a section of the track in the edit window, dragged over it and CMD+U to quantize it, so it had hundreds of yellow warp markers, on each bar - but again this fluttered around on and off the beat, which i suppose is understandable?
(a) Is there a simple way to do this, maybe with a different "Warp from Here (ie: start at 126bpm) or "Warp 126.0BPM from here) ? or warp as a 128-bar loop??
(b) Leave the full tracks as they are on the timeline unwarped so they just play, but only warp the last ''mix-out' points so they are in time with the next track? This would leave the original track alone (and not get the fluttering of warping) but not so great if I wanted to backbeat a solid loop all the way through a 10 minute mix to keep continuity and flow, as some megamixes do
Any help would be great! especially others who maybe have to warp and mix older dance / disco tracks