Ableton Forum

I have some Drum 'n' Bass tracks that I can't find the BPM on. If there a way to determine this before taking them into live?

for osx.

Why? Live will do it for you.

If not, try The Tapper.

www.refusesoftware.com

Hey man,

this is the way I beat match/warp all my tracks for live use..
I know everybody does the autp warp biz.. but sometimes that ain't so good.
Load your track, key map the track to whatever key.. I use Q. (but any will be fine..)
So..
1.load your track
2. turn OFF warp.
3. put start marker to the first beat.
4.press play (do not activate clip yet)
5.Now, hit play on track on beat with the metronome. for dnb bpm will be what 160-175?
6.Listen to track play on beat with the metronome. if it's slow. Stop and speed ableton bpm up or down as much as you think needed.
7.Hit play again (do not activate clip yet) blip blap, Bam, activate clip again from beginning, and see if it's now on beat with the bpm..
(i do this a few times until the first 17 bars or so are in synch)

8. so now you think you've found the bpm. Now hit warp, click in the BPM you are playing at. No warp is much more accuurate, and will need much less moving markers..

Done.

or
1) take an unwarped loop of 8 measures and note down the time in seconds , let's call it T

2) 8 measures = 32 beats

3) 32 / T = amount of beats in 1 second , let's call it BPS

4) BPS X 60 = BPM

--> 32 / T * 60 = BPM

and if you do this with a nice calculator or write a quick javascript for reuse you can have your BPM precise up to 0.000000000000000000000...

Here's how we did it in the old days:

1) play your unwarped loop

2) take a look a the clock

3) count 1,2,3,4 - 2,2,3,4 - 3,2,3,4 - 4,2,3,4 - 5,2,3,4 - ...

4) stop counting after a minute and see where you've arrived. Or stop after half a minute and multiply by two.

keymap any key to the TAP function in LIVE

play your track

tap along on the downbeats until you feel you're really on the beat

then just look up top and see what the TEMPO display says. in the clip view, type this number in as the clip tempo. adjust if necessary, but you should be pretty darn on it at this point anyway

peace

this is also a simple way to figure out tempo's of unusual clips, and you can choose the pulse (or feeling, of this clip in your music) by tapping on the downbeats, or in doubletime, or halftime, or triplets, etc.