What do I get wrong with Traktor Pro 2 ? I can't get conrol on the tempo...
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What do I get wrong with Traktor Pro 2 ? I can't get conrol on the tempo... Posted on: 02.07.2011 by Dj Tykarma Note : To those who don't want to read the whole thing, just check-out the part in bold, it says it all...Hi everyone, As user of all the previous versions of Traktor since version 1.x, I'd like to share you my feelings after trying to get used to the Traktor Pro 2 + S4 combo. For now, the experience I have is overall pretty negative since I upgraded to the latest releases. Not because of bugs or performance issues but because of the experience of mixing in tempo. Now let me be factual. I just spent an hour and a half to try to record a simple beat-matched mix of dance tracks, just for fun and it ended being less funny than expected. Why ? Because I wanted to make things simple and just couldn't : - I created a list of pre-analyzed tracks with manally checked beatgrids to avoid any surprises with tempo syncing. BTW the tracks also have all the cues and loops prepared. - I've set a main master tempo to 130BPM and activated Sync on both of my decks, again, to make things straightforward. - I've set my three prefered FX and activated key lock on both of my Decks - I made sure that my S4 has the standard native mapping and removed all my MIDI mods as well as disabled timecode control on my decks (I have Traktor Pro Scratch 2.0.3). No risk at all on this setup. Not willing to put any crazyness to the mix for this time so no use of the Sample Decks or the Sampler either. Here's the result : - During the mix, I suddently realize that one of my decks has gone Master and that the Master BPM on the top of the UI has been synced to it. - Getting back to Master Tempo and while I'm mixing, for some reason, without touching to the Sync buttons or moving the pitch slider, Master Tempo suddently goes 20BPM down while I was playing with the FX and literrally kills my mix. Can't even change the tempo value on the top... Looks like one of the Decks has again taken the lead and caused the trouble. - Tried to finnish my mix without Master Tempo by using the Auto mode, and still experienced surprises all related to getting control of the tempo of my mix. I just feel like I've lost the control of it. I don't know if my brain suddently burned or if it stopped being open to change. In fact I can't even determine what's wrong with Traktor 2 but with all this preparaton I was unable to have a stable tempo and I actually ended up getting back once again to the manual with doubts on how to use the software's beat/tempo matching features. I don't believe any of these issues are related to bugs, I probably did something wrong or I probably didn't understand the change in the philosophy of mixing with Traktor Pro 2. I'm pretty sure of it as so major bugs would probably have been reported and fixed for some while. But suddently my feeling is : WTH ? Shouldn't this be straightforward like on previous versions of Traktor or any other Djing software ? Put the Master tempo on, put Decks in slave mode, mix on a stable beat..., or just have the tracks syncing to each other by variating manually their tempo. Either I'm clearly missing something or this peace of software has become just useless because though it can do a whole lot of things, it just isn't capable at the most basic thing a DJ wants : Just mix some tracks with simplicity. If we make the analogy with Maslow's model, I would say that I suddently got down to the base of my pyramid in terms of DJing experience and confidence. It's something that happened to me on previous versions as Traktor has chosen the philosophy controlling tracks through a beatgrid which I got comfortable with quite quickly. I'd be glad if anybody could explain me with simple words the new philosophy of beat-matching with Traktor Pro 2 as I feel shame to not have even figured out what's the difference between this Beat Sync / Tempo Sync mode on the preferences, even after reading the manual. Notice, my problem isn't about having the tracks synced, they were very well in sync, my problem is to keep control of my tempo during my mix, I want to be the one who decides what is the speed of my mix and not having the software constantly stealing this power. Still I'd love to use Traktor's new functionnality and not just disable all this things and sync my tracks the old way. Just for the comparison, yesterday, I did the exact same mix (without recording it) on Alogriddim's djay on an iPad 2 and I was surprised of how straightforward it was. Of course I felt it was poor in terms of features but it delivered on the basics. To my humble opinion, DJ software and hardware's reason to exist is to make things simple, accessible for DJs to feel free of complexity and let them start actually being creative. The latest evolutions of Traktor provide so many great features for us to be creative. Too bad, it misses on the basics of remaining straightforward to use. Back on my Traktor 1.x + VCI 100 for my next gigs for now, unless someone can unlock my brain until then. | |
| Dj Tykarma 02.07.2011 | Note : To those who don't want to read the whole thing, just check-out the part in bold, it says it all... Hi everyone, As user of all the previous versions of Traktor since version 1.x, I'd like to share you my feelings after trying to get used to the Traktor Pro 2 + S4 combo. For now, the experience I have is overall pretty negative since I upgraded to the latest releases. Not because of bugs or performance issues but because of the experience of mixing in tempo. Now let me be factual. I just spent an hour and a half to try to record a simple beat-matched mix of dance tracks, just for fun and it ended being less funny than expected. Why ? Because I wanted to make things simple and just couldn't : - I created a list of pre-analyzed tracks with manally checked beatgrids to avoid any surprises with tempo syncing. BTW the tracks also have all the cues and loops prepared. - I've set a main master tempo to 130BPM and activated Sync on both of my decks, again, to make things straightforward. - I've set my three prefered FX and activated key lock on both of my Decks - I made sure that my S4 has the standard native mapping and removed all my MIDI mods as well as disabled timecode control on my decks (I have Traktor Pro Scratch 2.0.3). No risk at all on this setup. Not willing to put any crazyness to the mix for this time so no use of the Sample Decks or the Sampler either. Here's the result : - During the mix, I suddently realize that one of my decks has gone Master and that the Master BPM on the top of the UI has been synced to it. - Getting back to Master Tempo and while I'm mixing, for some reason, without touching to the Sync buttons or moving the pitch slider, Master Tempo suddently goes 20BPM down while I was playing with the FX and literrally kills my mix. Can't even change the tempo value on the top... Looks like one of the Decks has again taken the lead and caused the trouble. - Tried to finnish my mix without Master Tempo by using the Auto mode, and still experienced surprises all related to getting control of the tempo of my mix. I just feel like I've lost the control of it. I don't know if my brain suddently burned or if it stopped being open to change. In fact I can't even determine what's wrong with Traktor 2 but with all this preparaton I was unable to have a stable tempo and I actually ended up getting back once again to the manual with doubts on how to use the software's beat/tempo matching features. I don't believe any of these issues are related to bugs, I probably did something wrong or I probably didn't understand the change in the philosophy of mixing with Traktor Pro 2. I'm pretty sure of it as so major bugs would probably have been reported and fixed for some while. But suddently my feeling is : WTH ? Shouldn't this be straightforward like on previous versions of Traktor or any other Djing software ? Put the Master tempo on, put Decks in slave mode, mix on a stable beat..., or just have the tracks syncing to each other by variating manually their tempo. Either I'm clearly missing something or this peace of software has become just useless because though it can do a whole lot of things, it just isn't capable at the most basic thing a DJ wants : Just mix some tracks with simplicity. If we make the analogy with Maslow's model, I would say that I suddently got down to the base of my pyramid in terms of DJing experience and confidence. It's something that happened to me on previous versions as Traktor has chosen the philosophy controlling tracks through a beatgrid which I got comfortable with quite quickly. I'd be glad if anybody could explain me with simple words the new philosophy of beat-matching with Traktor Pro 2 as I feel shame to not have even figured out what's the difference between this Beat Sync / Tempo Sync mode on the preferences, even after reading the manual. Notice, my problem isn't about having the tracks synced, they were very well in sync, my problem is to keep control of my tempo during my mix, I want to be the one who decides what is the speed of my mix and not having the software constantly stealing this power. Still I'd love to use Traktor's new functionnality and not just disable all this things and sync my tracks the old way. Just for the comparison, yesterday, I did the exact same mix (without recording it) on Alogriddim's djay on an iPad 2 and I was surprised of how straightforward it was. Of course I felt it was poor in terms of features but it delivered on the basics. To my humble opinion, DJ software and hardware's reason to exist is to make things simple, accessible for DJs to feel free of complexity and let them start actually being creative. The latest evolutions of Traktor provide so many great features for us to be creative. Too bad, it misses on the basics of remaining straightforward to use. Back on my Traktor 1.x + VCI 100 for my next gigs for now, unless someone can unlock my brain until then. |
| Alexandra Nerby 10.11.2011 | I didn't read all of this, but before I give my opinion, I was just curious why you are talking about creating a manual beat matched mix and then go on to talk about syncing and using the clock.... If you are beatmatching, you don't even need to set beat grids, mess with sync, or the clock. |
| Bula Osetek 10.11.2011 | I believe i'm having the same problem that dros seems to be encountering, I want to be able to set a deck as master even if the track is not playing. It seems impossible to do so in traktor pro 2- If the deck is not playing it defaults back to the master clocks tempo. Is there not a way that i can turn off this function so that i have complete control over which deck is the master even if its not playing. On the older version i could have both tracks paused and switch master from one to the other if so desired. Cheers |
| Rey Holubar 05.07.2011 | Ok, now I checked this on my S4 and not just the theory from my head. And I am probably going to confuse you some more. I apologize in advance, if I do. First I have to correct myself. This statement isn't true:
Also make sure you don't accidently press the "Master" button in between "Quant" and "Snap". This will also turn off the clock as master.
That said.... If you have "Auto" on, then basically Traktor takes the running deck and automatically makes it master. So if you start the next deck with the "Sync" button on and your beatgrids are good, then that track will beat match correctly to the track already playing. Simple enough. With other words with "Auto" on and "Sync" on on both decks, you don't have to mess with anything. However, this is the trick. If you want the sample decks to work "in sync", then you need the master clock on. Ok, so what to do, if you want to control tempo yourself, which I hope is the goal. In a two or four deck scenario, leave "Auto" on. You can still change the tempo with the sliders. Beatmatching is done automatically with good grids as a prerequisite. In a two deck with sample deck scenario. Leave "Auto" off and turn "Master" on, so the clock is master. If you want to take over the tempo control with any deck, simply press "Shift+Sync" and that deck is now the master. You can also press "Master" at this point and the clock is master again. The tempo of the deck stays at the set speed of the clock, so that would answer your question on how to switch the deck as master away from the clock. An interesting side effect is, if you change the tempo with the slider of the deck that is now master, the clock BPM changes congruently. So at any time you can change back to the clock as master and have the same tempo and no bloopers. That's it. Hope you aren't too or more confused now. scamo |
| Dj Tykarma 05.07.2011 | Yeah bloopers, that's exactly what constantly happens since I started mixing the S4 with TP 2. That's why I never brought it to the gigs yet. I need to fix that first So if I summarize for the clock master mode : - You activate it by pressing the master button on the top of the S4 while no track designed as master is playing. - You never push this button while master clock is on and a track is playing, as it will bring the playing tracks back to their normal speed. So can we switch from master clock to master decks smoothly ? To do the opposite, I guess the best way is to set the master tempo to the same value as the currently playing deck, but what if I want the deck to take over again ? |
| Rey Holubar 05.07.2011 | You'd have to stop the deck that is the master (has the "master" light lit). Obviously pressing the master button could be detrimental while mixing. Say you have a track running at 128 BMP and the clock is set at 80 BMP and you didn't realize it and pressed the master button inadvertantly or not. That would be a nice DJ blooper. Oops! scamo |
| Dj Tykarma 04.07.2011 | Thank you scamo for the advices. I also encountered something else, once I noticed my clock wasn't the master, I tried to push the master button betwee snap and quant but I couldn't activate it. Is there any condition in order to activate clock as the master ? |
| Rey Holubar 04.07.2011 | Make sure you don't press "Shift+Sync" as this will active the deck as the master and deactivate the clock as master. Also make sure you don't accidently press the "Master" button in between "Quant" and "Snap". This will also turn off the clock as master. If the "Master" button is always lit, then the clock is the master and should function as you had wished it to function. There shouldn't be any issues. scamo |
| Dj Tykarma 03.07.2011 | Well it's exactly what I did. What I don't like is that though I'm following the instructions, I still have surprises during my mix. Most times I get surprises it's unexpected tempo speed variations. Is there a way to make sure it locks in master tempo mode ? On Traktor 3 and previous versions I used to have it either in master tempo with the decks in slave mode or having one of the decks as master and i was changing the BPM on it when needed. Maybe it's a bug after all... |
| Rosina Steinkuehler 03.07.2011 | Click on the Master icon in the Metronome area. Dial your BPM in this area and it should always stay the same unless you change it. Does this help? |
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