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In lieu of me being able to afford a 3rd deck, I'm going to put together some basic bootlegs for use in a forthcoming mix. Nothing fancy, just acappellas layered over some tracks. Was thinking of using Ableton for this, and was wondering if someone could answer a few questions;

1) Is this what is called 'warping'?

2) Can this be done on Ableton LE (which came with my MIDI controller)

3) Does anyone have any experience on this and could give some advice?

I'm not after full blown tutorials or anything like that, I can google that myself later. Just wanted to make sure that I'm actually looking for the right thing in the first place.....

Warping is just a way of time-stretching audio so that it fits the groove of your project. You'll definitely be using this if you're just adding acapellas to instrumental tracks. It's the main feature of Live and it's included in LE.

No need to google tutorials, the ones included with Live are some of the best software tutorials I've ever seen, and they run right in the program so there's no clicking back and forth.

Wub wrote:In lieu of me being able to afford a 3rd deck, I'm going to put together some basic bootlegs for use in a forthcoming mix. Nothing fancy, just acappellas layered over some tracks. Was thinking of using Ableton for this, and was wondering if someone could answer a few questions;

1) Is this what is called 'warping'?

2) Can this be done on Ableton LE (which came with my MIDI controller)

3) Does anyone have any experience on this and could give some advice?

I'm not after full blown tutorials or anything like that, I can google that myself later. Just wanted to make sure that I'm actually looking for the right thing in the first place.....

i'm pretty sure Live LE can do that... heres a list of comparisons with the full featured version...

http://www.ableton.com/live-le-feature-comparison

the only tip i can give you in order to get your acapellas synched, is first warp the original of the song, the version with the beats and the vocals. then when you have that lined up, you can bring in a track next to it, with just the acappellas and line up the vocal lines. then remove the track with the beats and your acappella should be synched to the tempo of ableton, and whatever other tracks you bring in that are also warped.

This is how I do it (this only works on tracks w/ a constant tempo i.e. no live instruments.)

1. Load the song in a track in Arrangement mode

2. Double click the clip to see the Clip screen

3. Double click the #1 on the time meter above the waveform to create a warp point

4. Double click on the #5 the same way

5 create a 4 bar loop from bar 1 to 5, turn it on

6. Turn on the metronome

7. drag the 1st warp point right to where the 1st down beat would be (this can be tricky w/ accapellas, it can help to sing along and count to find where that 1st beat should be)

8. Hit play, and then drag the #5 marker left or right until the tempo lines up, and you have a good four bar loop.

9. Now look in the TEMPO box of the clip, this will give you a very good approximation of the tempo of the clip. Remember this #

10. Double click on the # at the very end of the clip to create a new warp marker here

11. Now enter the tempo value from above in the TEMPO box. At this point, you can delete the #5 marker, and turn off the loop. Almost done.

12. Hit play again and listen to see if the beat drifts out after a while. If it does, zoom in a on the last warp marker, and drag it left a bit to nudge the tack slower, or right for faster. You really only need to check the end of the track, because this is where the drift will be most obvious.

13. Once you get it matched nice and tight, you're done.

Repeat the process on a second track to layer an Accapella w/ an Instrumental.

Hope this helps you out.
It may sound like a lot of work, but really it only takes me about 20 seconds to warp a track like this. Good luck.

never forget to hit "save" in the "sample" section of the clip view after you have properly warped yer tune. if you forget this, it will be gone once you close out ableton.