What am I missing..? BPM

[luism]

Doing a dj set and it seems counter intuitive.. or I am doing something wrong.?

I want my set to be 127..
Track A I know is 131 Track B i know is 124. ( from beatport)

Please tell me:.. how do I make it so when I import these into a live 12 session they conform to 127 automatically.
Its 2025 and I am sure we don't have to tap tap tap and guesstimate the bpm of every track we want to use in a prepared dj set??
Do we? I did a search and only one person dared ask in 2011.. he got correct answers for live input..
I am a little frustrated. Isn't bpm something that is basic by now?

Its an amazing program but I am not seeing this..

Thanks.

[Magagaia]

Hello! have look to "Warp audio" in tutorials! ( sorry for my english )

[Exie]

You need to prepare the tracks first in an empty project. I wonder if this can be improved, it always confused me that bpm of an unwarped clip cannot be edited manually.

• Drag track file to audio track from the browser
• Unwarp a track if it's already warped (it's so by default, can be changed in Live options) with "warp" button
• Set the expected track tempo (131, 124, ...) as project tempo
• Warp a track with correct tempo with "warp" button (you can see it in clip "bpm"), choose "yes" if it asks whether the current timing should be forced, make sure warp mode is "complex"
• There should be at least one warp marker (orange) in warped clip, and there's already warp marker #1 at 0:00, so add #2 at the first beat after the intro by double clicking a transient mark
• Remove #1 by double-clicking it, this will prevent the tempo from unwanted changes
• Drag #2 to the start of a bar, can be bar 1, so the intro stays in negative bars for clarity
• Leave start marker where it is to skip the intro, or drag it to the beginning of the intro with leading silence being skipped
• Make sure the tempo is correct, i.e. beat transient markers are aligned to the bars to the end, otherwise fix this with more warp markers or by clicking on a warp marker and changing "bpm" value
• Drag a clip from audio track to the browser to save it for a set

This is what it's supposed to look like

[luism]

OMG I Just saw this.. thank you so very much and I am sorry if I came across rough..

I will make time to do this later.
But last night I was trying to figure out why one of my tracks was wobbly in the middle and after googling saw that I needed to uncheck "warp long tracks".. I do club music (so wobbly is not part of the show..)
I unchecked it, but somehow I must have done something else because when I tried to re insert the track ( after i adjusted that setting) It was still wobbly (the beautiful angelic trance vocal became a chipmunk ).. So tinkering I figured maybe some sort of cache stays.. so i did something that i think should have cleared it and nothing. At this stage no track that I added was warping to the main bpm.. as they had done before I changed the setting.. ergo the post.

Thank you very much again for the write up. I wish that some dj set-friendly options were made easier to use or more apparent. I think there is a market for us.. probably small.. but faithful.

[Exie]

OMG I Just saw this.. thank you so very much and I am sorry if I came across rough..

I will make time to do this later.
But last night I was trying to figure out why one of my tracks was wobbly in the middle and after googling saw that I needed to uncheck "warp long tracks".. I do club music (so wobbly is not part of the show..)
I unchecked it, but somehow I must have done something else because when I tried to re insert the track ( after i adjusted that setting) It was still wobbly (the beautiful angelic trance vocal became a chipmunk ).. So tinkering I figured maybe some sort of cache stays.. so i did something that i think should have cleared it and nothing. At this stage no track that I added was warping to the main bpm.. as they had done before I changed the setting.. ergo the post.

Thank you very much again for the write up. I wish that some dj set-friendly options were made easier to use or more apparent. I think there is a market for us.. probably small.. but faithful.

You're welcome. I'm unaware of the cache you described, there are automatically created .asd files but afaik they store wave preview data and not warp points. Anyway, the problem with wobbling is what "Unwarp a track if it's already warped" is about. Yes, it makes it easier to disable autowarp long tracks in options as you did

[luism]

You need to prepare the tracks first in an empty project. I wonder if this can be improved, it always confused me that bpm of an unwarped clip cannot be edited manually.

• Drag track file to audio track from the browser
• Unwarp a track if it's already warped (it's so by default, can be changed in Live options) with "warp" button
• Set the expected track tempo (131, 124, ...) as project tempo
• Warp a track with correct tempo with "warp" button (you can see it in clip "bpm"), choose "yes" if it asks whether the current timing should be forced, ((make sure warp mode is "complex"
  Exie: This ask will only pop up if the fresh of store tempo is different that the dj set tempo that I set in the upper left corner.. correct?
  
• There should be at least one warp marker (orange) in warped clip, and there's already warp marker #1 at 0:00, so add #2 at the first beat after the intro by double clicking a transient mark
• Remove #1 by double-clicking it, this will prevent the tempo from unwanted changes
• Drag #2 to the start of a bar, can be bar 1, so the intro stays in negative bars for clarity
• Leave start marker where it is to skip the intro, or drag it to the beginning of the intro with leading silence being skipped
• Make sure the tempo is correct, i.e. beat transient markers are aligned to the bars to the end, otherwise fix this with more warp markers or by clicking on a warp marker and changing "bpm" value
  Exie: So I got lost with warper instructions above.. I think a visual would help me immensely, can you recommend and youtube videos that demonstrate this?
  
• Drag a clip from audio track to the browser to save it for a set

This is what it's supposed to look like

[Exie]

This ask will only pop up if the fresh of store tempo is different that the dj set tempo that I set in the upper left corner.. correct?

Likely so. Just click "yes" any time you want to re-warp it.

Here's a video of what I described above. The expected bpm is imprecise (142.01) to demonstrate how this can be fixed with marker #3 at the end being added to some beat and dragged back to the grid

[luism]

Hi first of all for being so patient and helpful. So I downloaded the app u used to share videos.
I am linking 2 videos 1 minute each. Thats the free version restraint.
So using the method u showed i did markers for a track to be at 122

The session I want to use it in is 124
So when I drop it in it says 122 but after i click warp and the warp again to match the session of 124 it changes
But the track doesnt it stays at 122.. hopefully you can see it in the videos i linked
I am sure I missed something..

Thanks
1st minute
https://jmp.sh/cZfrLWi0
Second minute
https://jmp.sh/Bb5NalIS

[yur2die4]

I looked up the track you are loading in the video.
It is supposed to be 122 bpm.

This means when you warp it, warp it as “122 bpm”

This tells Ableton Live that the original audio that it is referencing is 122 bpm. Always warp clips so that the warping reflects the Actual bpm of the source audio.

Then when you drag that 122 bpm clip into any set of any bpm, Live will automatically force the clip that is designated as ‘122 bpm’ to play at 124 bpm, or whatever other bpm the global tempo is, 120, 130, etc

If you warp the clip as 124 bpm.. you are telling Live that the tempo happening in the Original clip is 124 bpm…. So if you play it in a set that has global tempo of 124, your clip will Not be stretched or compensated… you told Live via the warp markers that your clip is already 124…. But it’s not. By setting the marker to 122, Live will stretch or compress the time of the track to force it to play at 124.

[luism]

I looked up the track you are loading in the video.
It is supposed to be 122 bpm.

This means when you warp it, warp it as “122 bpm”

This tells Ableton Live that the original audio that it is referencing is 122 bpm. Always warp clips so that the warping reflects the Actual bpm of the source audio.
To make sure I am getting this correctly:
Warp the track in its own session with the global session bpm matching that from beatport and at the same time inputting this bpm into the little bpm window on the left. Once the markers are set we click save and then reopen the dj set session and import the one I just marked.. then it should blend with with any global session.

(Isn't this a lot of work for 1 track? What magic do cdjs have that they blend so effortlessly when playing live?? I would figure doing it in a program would be easier.. ( sorry if you are not a club dj what I just said wont make sense) )

So by doing this the track will work any any global tempo that i choose lets say 130 BPM is the vibe then my warped track will adjust accordingly when grabbed from the directory in the left thats because I already set the markers.


Then when you drag that 122 bpm clip into any set of any bpm, Live will automatically force the clip that is designated as ‘122 bpm’ to play at 124 bpm, or whatever other bpm the global tempo is, 120, 130, etc

If you warp the clip as 124 bpm.. you are telling Live that the tempo happening in the Original clip is 124 bpm…. So if you play it in a set that has global tempo of 124, your clip will Not be stretched or compensated… you told Live via the warp markers that your clip is already 124…. But it’s not. By setting the marker to 122, Live will stretch or compress the time of the track to force it to play at 124.
gotcha

[yur2die4]

I’m pretty experienced with warping. You can practice a bit by dumping a bunch of tracks in and just warping them all. The global tempo doesn’t matter so much. The ‘warp from here’ is a shortcut for most modern music but results may vary… and I personally don’t trust it 100%.

I’ll usually get a good downbeat. Have no other markers to start off. Then kinda push the grid in line with the beats and check every 8-16-32 or so bars (the visual of the track should be a good reference.

A ways down, maybe 32+ bars, I might add an actual warp marker After I’ve been aligning this stuff.. and then maybe a bit further down. See if the beats ‘drift’ off grid or not.

Practice makes it such that Most standard dj tracks should be a breeze visually. Sometimes it helps to do it audibly too (wave squiggles can be tricky)

Learning it now can save you headaches later.

But yeah. Once your warped tracks are saved, they’re good to go… then comes cue points hahaha

Also. I usually don’t even know the bpm of the clip til After I’ve personally warped it. When I do it myself it is the most precise and expected results.