Dubstepforum.com

Hey guys, I was wondering if there's any real "advice" that can be given to help with matching the tempo of your track to a source song's bpm...I'm talking about songs that don't have a "listed" bpm that you can find on the internet, and songs that don't have a nice even bpm, but rather stuff like 121.06 bpm. How do you find the EXACT bpm? Because if it's not exact, when I try to layer a beat over the original drum pattern, it might start off in sync but will slowly drift away as the track carries on :/

I don't know, I'm at a loss and all the micro-tweaking to the bpm, trying to make it fit, and not getting it is making me want to rip my hair out. I have a lot of cool ideas in mind for remixes of classic rock songs (like for example Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing), but I'm having a ton of trouble translating what's in my head onto my DAW...And I can't even get to the more exciting ideas because I can't even get the tempo right to safely build on.

just keep microtweeking down to the last milli-bpm, if thats a word

sounds like tempo isnt the issue.. its that the classic rock tunes like the one you mentioned are played by a real drummer, and as such they have fluctuation in the tempo and (lack of) quantization.

if you use ableton, you can use lots and lots of warp markers to get audio like this quantized BUT you are going to end up making the rest of the track sound weird if you start fucking with it just to get the drums to hit on the grid.

Truth..I don't know why I didn't realize that sooner :/

I use FL so that's pretty much out of the question. I think the point here is to avoid remixing stuff involving real drummers and/or only use bits of source songs involving live rhythm...Mehh

the more threads i read the more i wanna shoot myself. WTF

Grimenoceros wrote:Truth..I don't know why I didn't realize that sooner :/

I use FL so that's pretty much out of the question. I think the point here is to avoid remixing stuff involving real drummers and/or only use bits of source songs involving live rhythm...Mehh

i didnt notice that you were talking about rock songs...then in that case, try putting the track in the clip area of the playlist and use the slice tool to manipulate the track. on each downbeat, slice and realign the track so that it stays with your daw's bpm. i use fl, so if you have any trouble, just ask me and i may be able to help

Lethal_Dose wrote:the more threads i read the more i wanna shoot myself. WTF

Uh, please do? Christ, what a uselessly douchetastic comment.

jrisreal wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:Truth..I don't know why I didn't realize that sooner :/

I use FL so that's pretty much out of the question. I think the point here is to avoid remixing stuff involving real drummers and/or only use bits of source songs involving live rhythm...Mehh

i didnt notice that you were talking about rock songs...then in that case, try putting the track in the clip area of the playlist and use the slice tool to manipulate the track. on each downbeat, slice and realign the track so that it stays with your daw's bpm. i use fl, so if you have any trouble, just ask me and i may be able to help

Hey man thanks for the willingness to help, it's much appreciated especially in light of these other grumpy asses on the board. I've heard a lot about beat slicing but never really got into it because I was worried it'd get really messy, just stuck to straight sound clips or sliced only in chunks. I might look into it, I'll probably have to learn more about it first.

Grimenoceros wrote:

Lethal_Dose wrote:the more threads i read the more i wanna shoot myself. WTF

Uh, please do? Christ, what a uselessly douchetastic comment.

jrisreal wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:Truth..I don't know why I didn't realize that sooner :/

I use FL so that's pretty much out of the question. I think the point here is to avoid remixing stuff involving real drummers and/or only use bits of source songs involving live rhythm...Mehh

i didnt notice that you were talking about rock songs...then in that case, try putting the track in the clip area of the playlist and use the slice tool to manipulate the track. on each downbeat, slice and realign the track so that it stays with your daw's bpm. i use fl, so if you have any trouble, just ask me and i may be able to help

Hey man thanks for the willingness to help, it's much appreciated especially in light of these other grumpy asses on the board. I've heard a lot about beat slicing but never really got into it because I was worried it'd get really messy, just stuck to straight sound clips or sliced only in chunks. I might look into it, I'll probably have to learn more about it first.

ive never actually done this but it seems like something relatively easy to do. and i dont think beat-slicing is the word for it (isnt beat-slicing when you take drum recordings and slice the individual sounds up for sequencing in a piano roll?)
anyway, good luck

You can warp it with Ableton Live.

Grimenoceros wrote:Hey guys, I was wondering if there's any real "advice" that can be given to help with matching the tempo of your track to a source song's bpm...I'm talking about songs that don't have a "listed" bpm that you can find on the internet, and songs that don't have a nice even bpm, but rather stuff like 121.06 bpm. How do you find the EXACT bpm? Because if it's not exact, when I try to layer a beat over the original drum pattern, it might start off in sync but will slowly drift away as the track carries on :/

I don't know, I'm at a loss and all the micro-tweaking to the bpm, trying to make it fit, and not getting it is making me want to rip my hair out. I have a lot of cool ideas in mind for remixes of classic rock songs (like for example Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing), but I'm having a ton of trouble translating what's in my head onto my DAW...And I can't even get to the more exciting ideas because I can't even get the tempo right to safely build on.

Bit of a bodge technique, but it might help;

- Play original song and calculate the BPM of it
- Load the original song into Audacity
- In Audacity, select Effect > Change Tempo. Enter the current BPM of the song, and the BPM you'd like it be changed to.

Standard trial & error, practice practice comments apply.

Ableton is your friend.

wub wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:Hey guys, I was wondering if there's any real "advice" that can be given to help with matching the tempo of your track to a source song's bpm...I'm talking about songs that don't have a "listed" bpm that you can find on the internet, and songs that don't have a nice even bpm, but rather stuff like 121.06 bpm. How do you find the EXACT bpm? Because if it's not exact, when I try to layer a beat over the original drum pattern, it might start off in sync but will slowly drift away as the track carries on :/

I don't know, I'm at a loss and all the micro-tweaking to the bpm, trying to make it fit, and not getting it is making me want to rip my hair out. I have a lot of cool ideas in mind for remixes of classic rock songs (like for example Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing), but I'm having a ton of trouble translating what's in my head onto my DAW...And I can't even get to the more exciting ideas because I can't even get the tempo right to safely build on.

Bit of a bodge technique, but it might help;

- Play original song and calculate the BPM of it
- Load the original song into Audacity
- In Audacity, select Effect > Change Tempo. Enter the current BPM of the song, and the BPM you'd like it be changed to.

Standard trial & error, practice practice comments apply.

That..Isn't too bad an idea haha. But I expect that from you. Well I think the hard part would still be figuring the song out to the exact BPM :/

jaydot wrote:Ableton is your friend.

Sorry for the double post. But yeah, would you say it's worth it to double up on the DAWs? I think I've read that before, that some users will create on one DAW (FL for me) and use Ableton for precision/Live tweaking? For example, i reallyyyy want to automate the sync'd LFO in Massive (because it just sounds better when it's in exact fractions) and just tweak it in real time to get the wobble sequence I want, but you can't do that in FL. Can I do that in Ableton? Because I might look into acquiring it as well as a side DAW, kinda like Audacity which I use for bulk editing of a track and other minor touch ups.

I like this tool for finding BPMs it usually works pretty nice

http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmanalyzer/bpmanalyzer.asp

monte-m wrote:I like this tool for finding BPMs it usually works pretty nice

http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmanalyzer/bpmanalyzer.asp

O_O why have I never heard of that before?? That sounds like just what I'm looking for...only thing is I just dl'd it and tested it out on a track I'm thinking of trying, it gave me 103.16 (which I like that it's very specific, that's what I want) but, testing it in my daw with the metronome on it didn't really seem to line up :/

Grimenoceros wrote:

jaydot wrote:Ableton is your friend.

Sorry for the double post. But yeah, would you say it's worth it to double up on the DAWs? I think I've read that before, that some users will create on one DAW (FL for me) and use Ableton for precision/Live tweaking? For example, i reallyyyy want to automate the sync'd LFO in Massive (because it just sounds better when it's in exact fractions) and just tweak it in real time to get the wobble sequence I want, but you can't do that in FL. Can I do that in Ableton? Because I might look into acquiring it as well as a side DAW, kinda like Audacity which I use for bulk editing of a track and other minor touch ups.

actually you can automate the synced lfo speed. heres how (i dont use massive anymore so some of these things may be a little bit off)

In the top left corner of the massive window click FL's drop down menu and then click "Browse parameters"
Now change the setting of the parameter you would like to change (lfo speed) and it should automatically jump to that parameter in the explorer thing on the left of the daw (if not, then find the parameter titled "Modulator 5 Denominator" or similar or it depends on which modulator you are using)
Then click edit events, create automation clip, or link to controller...whichever it is that you are wanting to do.

jrisreal wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:

jaydot wrote:Ableton is your friend.

Sorry for the double post. But yeah, would you say it's worth it to double up on the DAWs? I think I've read that before, that some users will create on one DAW (FL for me) and use Ableton for precision/Live tweaking? For example, i reallyyyy want to automate the sync'd LFO in Massive (because it just sounds better when it's in exact fractions) and just tweak it in real time to get the wobble sequence I want, but you can't do that in FL. Can I do that in Ableton? Because I might look into acquiring it as well as a side DAW, kinda like Audacity which I use for bulk editing of a track and other minor touch ups.

actually you can automate the synced lfo speed. heres how (i dont use massive anymore so some of these things may be a little bit off)

In the top left corner of the massive window click FL's drop down menu and then click "Browse parameters"
Now change the setting of the parameter you would like to change (lfo speed) and it should automatically jump to that parameter in the explorer thing on the left of the daw (if not, then find the parameter titled "Modulator 5 Denominator" or similar or it depends on which modulator you are using)
Then click edit events, create automation clip, or link to controller...whichever it is that you are wanting to do.

Oh no I know how to do all that, it's just you can only do it manually with the LFO rate, moving the whole knob. I want to automate just the sync'd LFO rate, for whatever reason you generally can't do it in FL with Massive :/

Grimenoceros wrote:

jrisreal wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:

jaydot wrote:Ableton is your friend.

Sorry for the double post. But yeah, would you say it's worth it to double up on the DAWs? I think I've read that before, that some users will create on one DAW (FL for me) and use Ableton for precision/Live tweaking? For example, i reallyyyy want to automate the sync'd LFO in Massive (because it just sounds better when it's in exact fractions) and just tweak it in real time to get the wobble sequence I want, but you can't do that in FL. Can I do that in Ableton? Because I might look into acquiring it as well as a side DAW, kinda like Audacity which I use for bulk editing of a track and other minor touch ups.

actually you can automate the synced lfo speed. heres how (i dont use massive anymore so some of these things may be a little bit off)

In the top left corner of the massive window click FL's drop down menu and then click "Browse parameters"
Now change the setting of the parameter you would like to change (lfo speed) and it should automatically jump to that parameter in the explorer thing on the left of the daw (if not, then find the parameter titled "Modulator 5 Denominator" or similar or it depends on which modulator you are using)
Then click edit events, create automation clip, or link to controller...whichever it is that you are wanting to do.

Oh no I know how to do all that, it's just you can only do it manually with the LFO rate, moving the whole knob. I want to automate just the sync'd LFO rate, for whatever reason you generally can't do it in FL with Massive :/

Yes you can. Right click the bottom sync number (the denominator) - midi learn. Like he said if it's LFO5 then the parameter you're looking for is modulator 5- den. When you automate it it's synced.

EDIT: If you're using a cracked version *naughty naughty* that's pre 1.1.4, this function is not available. (i think)

Grimenoceros wrote:

jrisreal wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:

jaydot wrote:Ableton is your friend.

Sorry for the double post. But yeah, would you say it's worth it to double up on the DAWs? I think I've read that before, that some users will create on one DAW (FL for me) and use Ableton for precision/Live tweaking? For example, i reallyyyy want to automate the sync'd LFO in Massive (because it just sounds better when it's in exact fractions) and just tweak it in real time to get the wobble sequence I want, but you can't do that in FL. Can I do that in Ableton? Because I might look into acquiring it as well as a side DAW, kinda like Audacity which I use for bulk editing of a track and other minor touch ups.

actually you can automate the synced lfo speed. heres how (i dont use massive anymore so some of these things may be a little bit off)

In the top left corner of the massive window click FL's drop down menu and then click "Browse parameters"
Now change the setting of the parameter you would like to change (lfo speed) and it should automatically jump to that parameter in the explorer thing on the left of the daw (if not, then find the parameter titled "Modulator 5 Denominator" or similar or it depends on which modulator you are using)
Then click edit events, create automation clip, or link to controller...whichever it is that you are wanting to do.

Oh no I know how to do all that, it's just you can only do it manually with the LFO rate, moving the whole knob. I want to automate just the sync'd LFO rate, for whatever reason you generally can't do it in FL with Massive :/

works fine for me...i opened up me ol' massive 1.1.4 in fl studio 9 and it worked fine and it was set on sync mode

Kodachrome wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:

jrisreal wrote:

Grimenoceros wrote:

jaydot wrote:Ableton is your friend.

Sorry for the double post. But yeah, would you say it's worth it to double up on the DAWs? I think I've read that before, that some users will create on one DAW (FL for me) and use Ableton for precision/Live tweaking? For example, i reallyyyy want to automate the sync'd LFO in Massive (because it just sounds better when it's in exact fractions) and just tweak it in real time to get the wobble sequence I want, but you can't do that in FL. Can I do that in Ableton? Because I might look into acquiring it as well as a side DAW, kinda like Audacity which I use for bulk editing of a track and other minor touch ups.

actually you can automate the synced lfo speed. heres how (i dont use massive anymore so some of these things may be a little bit off)

In the top left corner of the massive window click FL's drop down menu and then click "Browse parameters"
Now change the setting of the parameter you would like to change (lfo speed) and it should automatically jump to that parameter in the explorer thing on the left of the daw (if not, then find the parameter titled "Modulator 5 Denominator" or similar or it depends on which modulator you are using)
Then click edit events, create automation clip, or link to controller...whichever it is that you are wanting to do.

Oh no I know how to do all that, it's just you can only do it manually with the LFO rate, moving the whole knob. I want to automate just the sync'd LFO rate, for whatever reason you generally can't do it in FL with Massive :/

Yes you can. Right click the bottom sync number (the denominator) - midi learn. Like he said if it's LFO5 then the parameter you're looking for is modulator 5- den. When you automate it it's synced.

EDIT: If you're using a cracked version *naughty naughty* that's pre 1.1.4, this function is not available. (i think)

Ah!!! Finally!!! I did not know about the midi learn step...Brilliant!! No sir, I have the full version like a good boy

Thank you so much! Finally that little annoyance has been solved....I don't know if you guys agree, but I think it just sounds better when the wobbles are pre-measured. By-hand automation leaves too much potential for off-beat wobbling to occur.