Remix and beat mix club/dance/hip-hop

[Perfectsounds]

Ok...I am getting the hang of warping, adding beats and making beats. But I am still having a challenge with making clips out of sections of pre-recorded dance/hiphop/ or any songs. I am sure that Live works this way...I just can't seem to do it. I have the APC 40 and the Axiom 49. Here is what I would like to do...please advise me if you know how to do this or if there is another method to do it.

• Select and copy sections of music, warp them and make clips out of them to load into the APC40.
  Then Add beat elements I create in MIDI as clips so they sync with the music clips.

My MIDI beats play fine until I try to sync them with loops or pre-recorded warped music. They start to go off beat as the song progresses. Should I convert my MIDI beats to wavs then warp the wav?

Any help it greatly appreciated...looking forward to getting busy over the weekend!!!

Thanks all

[zalo]

your midi doesnt drift, it must be your warping, just keep trying, youll get it

[Perfectsounds]

Yeah...I have to agree with you about the midi being locked in time, but I have read just about everything on the planet about warpping and can't seem to make this software work like I want. I understand the concepts and have have no problem placing warp markers, adjusting transient markers, warpping from here, warpping from bmp, the whole thing. But when I bring in another song or other midi elements I can only catch the beats for a little bit and then it sounds like a train wreck.
I use PCDJVJ for my mobile DJ rigs and I can mix like I was back in 1980. I thought Live would give me professional remixing and beatmatching capability. I have spent countless hours reading and watching tutorials and I don't know why I can't make this work. My business partners in the same boat. But when I watch some of the perfomance videos I hang in for another day because I am amazed at the capabilities of Live. I am open to any help, resources or advice anyone can give me. If we can't start to make this sing we are going to have to find something else. Acid Pro was great to work with, but I felt it lacked the depth of Live and Live seemed to becoming the "remix standard". That is why I jumped on it. I have spent so much time in my studio that my kids and wife thought I left town.

[zalo]

if i could give you a tip,

make a four on the floor drum loop with midi

warp everything with that playing,

also in the beginning

warp 4 bars at a time, you get the hang of it and will be able to do a whole song in one shot, but wait for that

loop 4 bars, make sure its all synced up to the midi drum loop, then move to the next 4 bars, you start to learn exactly where everything should go

[Zygi]

or post a screenshot of sample file you warped, some of them are more complex to warp than you'd expect

[anachroschism]

Im trying to do the same kinda stuff with ableton and also having the problems you mentioned. 8s warping seems a bit better then 7s IMO, but i still take forever to try and warp something.

I agree, doing 4 bars at a time is a good way to go, it takes a while to do a whole track but it produces better results.




Ive also found that looping a section after its warped, then hitting record will produce a section in arrangement view that you can then save(thru clip view button, next to Hi-Q) to use just that section for later. Good for capturing vocal sections or breaks.

[Perfectsounds]

Great tip anachroschism...I am going to try that right now. I have actually made some great progress overt the last two days. I am warpping 4-8 bars at a time and seem to have the best luck when warpping "straigt from here". I was warpping to the bmp..."warp here to bmp". The straight warp seems to lock it down to the grid, so strategically placing markers along the way and warpping as I go is getting me great results. My midi clips and loops sync perfectly and APC 40 is launching everything seamlessly. I have been using the loop brackets to isolate vocal breaks and familiar sections of songs to drop into projects. I knew there had to be a way to save them as a wav or mp3. I tried the "slice to midi clip" but that produced too many slices...not sure how to use that function effectively yet. I also tried the looper tool, but could not control the content of what records into the looper. It seem like you could isolate a section of an audio track and get it into that looper tool. Another thing to work on . Next I have to find out how to record the mix. Do you know how to do that? I want to save a mix as an mp3 or wav.
Thanks again...let's keep in touch.
Tom-Perfect Sounds

[anachroschism]

Im not sure of the exact differences between them but Ive been using war straight a bit and without touching it syncs to metronome a very well. until better advice I will stick to that and give the track a run through to verify.

There are a few methods of recording longer sessions, just hitting Rec on the transport bar up top saves everythng you do to arrangement view, which you can then go back into and easily edit. its pretty basic knowledge but seemed more complicated to me, and im still sure there are better ways. then render all and save option under file will finalize it and save the finished product.

I keep the settings at 48000 and 16 bit, seems standard but i know not highest quality, and ill be burning cds. still hazy on this as it applies to ableton but this helped...http://www.tweakheadz.com/16_vs_24_bit_audio.htm