Don't think I would've bothered with Ableton if I'd known...

[Splosion Right]

Hi there

Please spare me certain death for strolling on in here and asking what is probably the most overasked, idiotic question that sees noobs fried on a regular basis in vats of verbal spite.... but what the hell is all this warping business all about?

Before I spend hours getting to grips with this frustrating process, I just wanted to be clear on something: if Ableton can change the tempo of a track, can't you just play track one at the master tempo and then adjust the bpm of track two before you mix it in? Say you play a record at 130bpm - surely you just set the next one to start at 130bpm and then cue it in with a marker?

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?



Thank you.

[djamp42]

I think your thinking too much.

Bottom line is, if your going to use ableton, you need to know how to warp. Once you learn it, the skies the limit, you'll quickly learn why.

There are so many guides out there, with a little bit of practice, it should only take a couple of weeks to understand the concept.

If you don't want to learn warping, then there are a ton of other software dj programs on the market that do exactly what your saying.

[Johnisfaster]

the thing he's missing is that warping is designed for music that has tempo fluxuations, if the song is a perfect tempo then you could probably just adjust the clips tempo and it would play in time with the master as he was saying but if the song fluxuates at all or if you don't know the correct tempo then you can use warp markers and zoom in real close and place them in the correct spot.

I think thats the issue he's having anyway

[Fidel]

From my experience, Warping is not the best solution if your just using Live to mix different tracks together like a DJ would. Warping from my viewpoint is absolutely essential if you are using it to remix tracks like say a long piano piece or a song where you don't want to change the structure. In a DJ setting I personally use Deckadance, But I'm sure all the other dj software apps have basically the same functionality. Deckadance you can load as a vst and works great under Live. For me this is best because I can see the waveform and tell by sight if the downbeat is in the correct place before I mix it in.

[snakedogman]

the thing he's missing is that warping is designed for music that has tempo fluxuations, if the song is a perfect tempo then you could probably just adjust the clips tempo and it would play in time with the master as he was saying but if the song fluxuates at all or if you don't know the correct tempo then you can use warp markers and zoom in real close and place them in the correct spot.

I think thats the issue he's having anyway

well even if you're just "setting the tempo" you're still technically warping the track. You're just using less markers than with a complex track.

You actually cannot mix anything without warping.

[snakedogman]

Hi there

Please spare me certain death for strolling on in here and asking what is probably the most overasked, idiotic question that sees noobs fried on a regular basis in vats of verbal spite.... but what the hell is all this warping business all about?

Before I spend hours getting to grips with this frustrating process, I just wanted to be clear on something: if Ableton can change the tempo of a track, can't you just play track one at the master tempo and then adjust the bpm of track two before you mix it in? Say you play a record at 130bpm - surely you just set the next one to start at 130bpm and then cue it in with a marker?

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?



Thank you.

you cannot set the tempo for tracks individually. Ableton always plays everything at the master tempo. You have to warp the tracks, and make the grid in the clip view line up with the actual beats in the track. For most dancetracks you can do this very easily by setting only the markers at the start and the end, but please use the search for more on warping techniques. Once you've got your tracks warped, Ableton knows what the tracks original tempo was. This way it also know how much to speed it up or slow it down to correspond with the master tempo.

[djshiva]

basically warp markers just tell ableton how to play the song.

global bpm will stay the same, so it would be damn hard to mix two tunes without warping them.

to the original poster:

while intitially confusing, once you figure out warping, it's easy as pie. and once you take the time to warp your tunes, you will find numerous ways you can be MUCH more creative with the music than just beatmatching it all together. it allows you to spend more time basically doing your own edits on the fly, making loops, triggering effects, throwing in beats made on the