Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
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By scoobylol Sat Oct 29, 2011 10:37 am
Ableton usually detects the peaks and gives you a suggestion of where to put the warp markers.

BUT you can put them wherever you want.

1. Double click on your clip/sound/chunk of acapella, and it should appear at the bottom. On the left you'll have the Clip and Sample boxes. You can also access the Envelopes box there too.

2. Just above your clip but not on the main screen you should see a timeline bar that reads


1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2 etc...


If you put your mouse cursor over that you will see you can now use that area to zoom, and move around your clip. So go ahead and do that.

3. Once you've decided where you want to place your warp marker zoom right in, you might notice that Ableton has given a little suggestive line where it has found a peak, and if you run the mouse over those areas it will highlight them. But you can put your own marker in wherever you want by double clicking. Or you can right click and go to Insert Warp Marker, but I find that less accurate.

4. With something like an acapella I'd be tempted to turn the Fixed Grid off for fine tuning. So to do this again right click and at the bottom you will see your options for the grid. If you click Off you will see that you can now move the markers around freely but the grid is still visually present to help you keep things in time. So now get that 'pella going and experiment.

5. My last point is just to reiterate, it's much easier to chop the 'pella into bits and work on it gradually. You will notice that if you don't have enough Warp Markers in a piece of audio stretching it doesn't always make it fit structurally. It will be the same tempo, but that's not all you want.

6. Another important thing worth mentioning are the types of warping that are available, I won't go into each one in too much depth, because it's better for you to experiment with them. But on the left hand side of your audio at the bottom you will see the Clip box. At the bottom of that is a symbol that looks like a little sine wave. If you click that the Sample box should pop up. In this box you can tune your sample using Transpose and Detune. On the right you will see a little drop down box and it will give you the following options:

Beats
Tones
Texture
Re-pitch
Complex
Complex Pro

These determine how things are warped. For yours I'd probably use Complex or Complex Pro, but have an experiment and you will learn what each one does. Beats can be quite interesting, it will give vocal samples an almost gated sound which can be fun to experiment with if you like to chop up vocals in a Todd Edwards style haha.

Hope this has been of some help Ed.
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By bicedidit Sat Oct 29, 2011 1:57 pm
pretend u wrote the verse.

if u were a rapper, how/where would u start the verse?

listen to the instrumental and put a marker where you would start rapping if you wrote the verse your trying to blend.

get it?
By ed Sat Oct 29, 2011 9:16 pm
Scooby really can't thank you enough for all that info, hopefully someday I'll be able to help you out too but I seriously doubt it, sucks been a newbie :)
Bice if I'm on a turntable theres no problem with dropping n accapela on time just Iv only been using abelton for a couple of days so far and finding it really difficult to match acapellas
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By scoobylol Sat Oct 29, 2011 9:39 pm
Anytime ed.

I appreciate how frustrating it can be at first when you've got all these ideas you want to try but you don't have the experience with the program to get them out, and I'd much rather help someone so they keep an interest in music-making than let them feel disheartened and give up, for the most part anyway.

There are some comedy lazy newbies on here from time to time. How do I save? How do I load? Real bread and butter type of questions haha.

In all honesty though, there's nothing I've written there that's particularly awe inspiring. I've just broken it down as best I can.

The only thing I ask is that you contribute back to the forum at some point, in any way you see fit. :)
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By es-k Sun Oct 30, 2011 12:22 am
why dont u try finding the bpm of the original song and make yours the same.. u should b able to figure this out by a tap tempo function even.. if your song and the original are the same tempo it should make things a lot easier
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By nod records Sun Oct 30, 2011 7:30 am
There's a bunch of different ways to do it in ableton live. if you're using ableton live 8, i think this is the easiest way...

Ableton Tutorial - Remix Techniques - Lining Up Your Acappellas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxfYZH5YJco

Ask bboyspaz (Episode 2) [Lining up your Acappellas for remixing]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_P7X25l9I

first go into ableton preferences and make sure auto warp long samples is turned off. next i load the original song into itunes. open ableton, play the original song from itunes and tap the tempo in ableton. this way you know you're close to the original tempo. you can round it up or down if you want. then drag the acappella into ableton. go back and listen to the original. listen to where the acappella comes in on the first down beat. turn warp on for the acapella in ableton and switch it to complex. since you tapped them tempo you will be close. then find the part of the vocal that comes in on the first downbeat, hover over it in ableton and you'll see a grey warp marker above it. double click the warp marker to make it yellow, then right click on that warp marker and select set 1.1.1 here. now move the acapella to start on say bar 9, giving yourself room for the intro. drag the start marker in of the warped acappella in ableton back to the real beginning of it. you'll see your audio move in the arrangement view when you do this. now slide the acappella back in ableton so the word that hits on the first downbeat is at bar 9 again. now you should be good to go. i also loop up 8 bars and run thru the whole acapella with the click track on just to make sure it's on point, usually the start of every 8 bars might be a bit off. you can just click on the grey warp marker and drag it to snap to the nearest bar. do that with the whole acappella and you should be good to go. it seems like a lot, but watch the 2 videos above and practice, you'll get it down.

once you get it, your acappella should be warped tight and you can build a beat around it at the original tempo or change your tempo up and build a remix beat and the acappella will stay locked on point. it takes a bit of work and practice, but it isn't that hard. ableton is great for this. if anyone knows any better ways, let me know.

hope this helps.

also check these out...

http://www.jethroe.com/2010/01/28/how-t ... on-live-8/

http://www.jethroe.com/2009/10/28/the-f ... eton-live/

http://www.jethroe.com/2011/07/04/how-t ... eton-live/
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By nod records Mon Oct 31, 2011 2:58 am
peter

i know about that site. it def works good if you don't have any other way to tap tempo.

you can midi or key map the tap tempo in ableton to whatever you like. it works in 4 counts and you can tap as many times as you want. the more you tap the closer it is to being on.

ableton even gives you the in between number to get you really close on... like if the original beat was made on an mpc at 93.56 bpm.

tapping the tempo in ableton is crucial to the process, that way when you turn warp on for the acappella, it will be as close as possible to the original bpm.
By ed Wed Nov 02, 2011 12:36 pm
I'm thinking maybe would there not be a program like soundforge where I could mix n record the track n the acapella in abelton in one go??
By ed Thu Nov 03, 2011 2:13 pm
Found this comment on the bboyspaz video

Hi, another good tip is to warp the original song/instrumental version, then using the "replace sample" function in ableton, swap the song for the accpella, your manually placed warp markers used for the original/instrumental will obviously apply to the accapella!

Anyone know where the replace sample function is??
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By nod records Fri Nov 04, 2011 9:32 am
here's a tutorial on how to do what he's talking about...

http://www.jethroe.com/2011/07/04/how-t ... eton-live/

it's cool, but you're better off doing it the way he does it in the first video link i posted.

acappellas are different than the full track. you may have to nudge the warp marker of the word on the first downbeat of each verse to get it tight.