Simple Looping in Arrangement Mode

[jiffyliub]

I spin house music on CDJs. All I want to do is loop the intro so I have more to work with.

Usually I move the warp marker so that it's placed just before the first beat, then I select the first four measures and loop (ctrl-shift-d duplicate time), listening by ear. I also play the original song thru the CDJ to determine if the looped song and the original are keeping in time (they never are, as CDJs fluctuate tempo). I hate doing it this way, and I go crazy listening to the loop over and over again; I start second-guessing myself, wondering if the loop is accurate or not...

I'm wondering, what is the most accurate way to create a loop?

thanks,
Ben

[pete1]

I spin house music on CDJs. All I want to do is loop the intro so I have more to work with.

Usually I move the warp marker so that it's placed just before the first beat, then I select the first four measures and loop (ctrl-shift-d duplicate time), listening by ear. I also play the original song thru the CDJ to determine if the looped song and the original are keeping in time (they never are, as CDJs fluctuate tempo). I hate doing it this way, and I go crazy listening to the loop over and over again; I start second-guessing myself, wondering if the loop is accurate or not...

I'm wondering, what is the most accurate way to create a loop?

thanks,
Ben

cdj's dont fluctuate that much in such a short space of time, sounds like you havent warped your tune/loop correctly

your first warp marker should be on the first beat not before it (thats probably why your loop is drifting out of time), zoom in and place the first marker on the up wave form of the first beat, just use a 1 bar loop to start with a make sure it keeps with the cd, its best if you dont warp tunes to a cdj though, import a track into a ableton and warp everything to the same 1 bar drum loop

seems expensive to purchase ableton just to do an extended intro to your cd's cant you just use the loop feature on the cdj ?read the manual and do the tutorials and soon you'll get the nack of it

good luck

[segue]

if you play Daft Punk you have nothing but one loop for hours on end so maybe do an intro with anything theyve ever produced

[jiffyliub]

CDJ 800s have a loop function, but it's not accurate enough. You can set the end of a loop at either, say, 6:46:05 or 6:46:06; one value will represent a loop that's too slow, the other one will produce a loop that's too fast.

I'm assuming when you say to place the warp marker "on the up wave form of the first beat," you mean what the reference manual refers to as "the onset" of the waveform, which to me means just before the first beat hits (just at the beginning of the squigglies of the first beat), so I think I'm placing the warp marker correctly . I then set the project tempo to match the song tempo.

Then I do one of two things: Hit the Loop switch, and I set it to loop one bar. Or I just select a region in the Track Display area and select the "loop region" button up top.

But for some reason, it always drifts ahead of the cdj when I play the looped version in ableton alongside the original in the cdj...wtf?

-B

[andrewbrewer]

you might be struggling with different audio-clock rates. without any kind of intervention to keep machines in sync, you will never get a perfect sync, even w/ digital machines.