Ableton Forum

Hello. I use abelton for djing and Everynow and then I get a tune that for some reason wont stay in sync no matter what. Starts off fine and then part way through the song it goes completely out of sync.

Im not talking about about beats gradually drifting out of place. They are bang on with each other then all of a sudden completely out. So I zoom in to see whats happened and sure enough warp maker is out of place. I line it back up and its ok for about 4 beats then goes out again. When Im zoomed in only a little all the markers look bang on the beat. But when I zom in more its as though the sound wave suddenly jumps to the side becoming out of place.

Really bizarre problem. Impossible to warp tune correctly no matter how many warp points i place. Should point out that firstly it only happens on certain tunes. Secondly all tunes I use are downloaded from beatport etc so I know tunes themselves should be completely fine. Is this a bug or something Im doing wrong.

Please help.

more than likely this is whats going on:

the track was written so that somewhere along the way in the track the producer didnt follow a predictable pattern ........ ie coming out of the break he dropped the track on an odd beat (81.3.1, say) or something similar. thereby effectively changing the quant of the track.

this is one of the obstacles to DJing with Live that has no easy solution, you definitely have to test all of your tracks mixing to make sure you dont get one with this problem (a mix of 'Lake/Blades - Filth' comes to mind)

the only solution ive found in this case is to edit the track in question so that you bring it back in line. easiest way to describe this (without an essay) is ...

you need to choose a section, chop it, and make up the extra time by extending it out to cover what was lost.

for instance ... if the track dropped a half bar early coming out of the break (81.3.1) ... drag the track to arrange, chop a clip out at at 83.3.1 - 84.1.1 (1/2 bar) ... pull the remaining section of to track to the right to leave a half bar space, then double your 1/2 bar clip to cover the empty space.

then consolidate it all to a new clip, making sure you either do all this at original tempo or a new tempo/warp setting that doesnt screw with the sound of the file too much.

if this isnt the problem, then it could be a bug. but most likely thats whats going on, its fairly common
.

Thanks for the advice but I dont think this is the problem. Not with all the tunes anyway. I say this because my brother has some of the same tunes on his computer and they work fine for him so tune itself shoud be fine.

Thanks though for the reply

Any other suggestions??

some tracks are tricky and some are just f*cked.

you need to listen to the whole track though one time before you play it

and don't forget to save

i'v warped skips out off recordings from vinyl, as well as over severe tempo changes it's all do-able

Gtrance wrote:Impossible to warp tune correctly no matter how many warp points i place.

my friend, nothing is impossible.

wilxon wrote:

Gtrance wrote:Impossible to warp tune correctly no matter how many warp points i place.

my friend, nothing is impossible.

Agreed. Some are easy (brainless 4-on-the-floor comes to mind), while others are challenging to make into constant-tempo 4/4. Some of my tracks have the occasional 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 measure. There are lots of different techniques, including some easy ones, such as doubling up a 2/4 measure. Another useful technique is to stretch or squash a non-4/4 measure into a 4/4 measure (easy when there's no rhythmic content). I've even taken a 5/4 measure, and put in 3 beats of silence, or beat-repeated, delayed, or reverbed in the 3 extra beats. Some tracks that have a 2/4 measure in a chorus, for example, will come back around after the second chorus. Tempo changes in the track automatically force themselves to a single tempo when you warp (I hope the Abes change this!), and if you want to regain the original tempo change, automate the tempo in a CC clip, save it with the track, and IAC it back into Live as automation.

Some of the times I thought my warping was going crazy, it was because I forget to hit the 'save warp' button.

Nothing is impossible. (Didn't somebody already say that?)

i recently warped a song sung by a choir, and a choir alone.

the problem here is the only time keeping was amongst the members of the choir, so the tempo was shifting up down, they were holding notes and singing some to quickly, and generally were not tight to time.

they were tight together, which helped.

took me about an hour and a half to do a 6 minute song.

a warp marker placed on every note and occational half note.

now the choir piece is remixed techno choir piece.

Techno choir... brilliant!

Another technique to warp difficult material is to record your finger tapping to the beat, warp that track, and apply the warp settings to the original track. Just make sure the two audio tracks are the same length.

That's what I love about this program. You're only limited by your imagination (and CPU!)

i dont know if you heard it (the chior that is) on radio 1
Scott mills played it, a vocal choir group covered i predict a riot, i recorded it of the listen again pages, warped it, and added some bass.

wicked.

only got halfway through it though before i got bord and started next project.

Hi Gtrance,
what you experience IS a bug! I guess the tunes are 320 kB tunes, very recent stuff? There must be a problem with a codec wich is used by the downloadsites like beatport and trackitdown for the moment, it happens only on recently downloaded stuff for me.
The only thing you can do is hit the replace button in clip view, go to the decoding cache and load the respective .wav from there and hit save. Then the problem has gone, no matter if you use quicktime or not, it´s definately an ableton bug. Don´t forget to move the wav and there .asd´s from the decoding cache to the desired location and put your mp3´s with their respective .asd in a folder called "buggy mp3´s for the moment" until this one is sorted out.

Here is another thread about this bug:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

and not one word what it could be from the Abes!

Greetings

do you think its a copyright bug included in the mp3's

Haven't seen this particular problem... then again I don't use MP3s...

hambone1 wrote:Haven't seen this particular problem... then again I don't use MP3s...

Me neither, just wav's, they do take a lot of disk space, but a bit of careful storage works fine

Thanks to all the replies and suggestions everyone.

I think seretoninsteve is has got it right for the problems im experiencing. All my tunes are 320kbps and all recent stuff from beatport and trackitdown. Also having read the other thread that is exactly what im on about.

If i understand you correctly i need to play clips from the wav file created with its asd file to fix the problem and move my mp3 out the way for now. I will try this.

A very annoying problem but im glad to know it is a bug. was beginning to think i was being a complete retard with my warping.

thanks everyone

i havent grabbed anything off of beatport in january, but i did in december, and all is well with those..