Warping with S4
Warping with S4 Posted on: 06.01.2011 by Charline Dye I have been working a little with older tracks with a live drummer using Eans method (from Blog article/video) by just picking a spot or 2 where the drummer is tight, setting another grid marker for a second spot, and using those points only. Now with the S4 you can warp a larger portion of the song by using the sample decks. Here's what I did....... Put the song in deck a and b At the first beat, place a grid marker, then select and activate a 32 bar loop from that marker. Go to the end of the loop and see if the loop out point is in the proper place. If not, adjust the grid untill the beat marker lines up with were the loop end point should be. Go back to grid marker and re-select/activate loop again so the loop out point moves to the beat marker. Check to see how well the beats and markers line up and the loop end point. If everything looks good then copy to the first sample slot. If it doesn't line up, then shorten the loop to 16 bars and use the same process. Or 8 bars if 16 doesn't work. Turn off snap. Place a new grid marker on the loop out point of the loop you just saved to the sample deck. You may have to use the jog wheel, or select vinyl for mouse control in preferences, so you can place grid markers that are not on a beat marker. Repeat the above process 3 more times filling the sample slots in order, then move over to deck b (the last grid marker will be there, but you will have to go to it and make a loop the same size as on deck A to get to your loop out point)and do the same thing till you are out of sample slots. Change hardware deck focus to C and D. Make sure neither is playing and all samples are at start and ready to play. Hit record and play the loops in order muting one as you start the next. I was able to warp 1min 40sec of a song and the grid was perfect. That being said the song I used (David Bowie's Rebel Rebel) didn't drift really bad within sections of 16 bars and sometimes 32 bars. A couple of other notes, I did use Traktors internal clock, but set it to the song's tempo. After getting my loops I recorded on the first take, and it was fine, but when I tried to make a second recording, all the loops didn't jive perfectly. I thought it was my timing, but I tried a few more times with no luck. I guess after the sample plays once, Traktor moves the start point slightly for syncing. Not sure as I need to try this a few more times with different songs. Not sure if it makes a difference, but I also made all the loops with out the track playing. I'm sure Ableton is much better at this, but for those of us who don't have it, I'm tickled to have found what seems like a useable option. I also want to try finishing the song by making more recordings,and sync the recordings to have the full song warped. | |
| Charline Dye 06.01.2011 | I have been working a little with older tracks with a live drummer using Eans method (from Blog article/video) by just picking a spot or 2 where the drummer is tight, setting another grid marker for a second spot, and using those points only. Now with the S4 you can warp a larger portion of the song by using the sample decks. Here's what I did....... Put the song in deck a and b At the first beat, place a grid marker, then select and activate a 32 bar loop from that marker. Go to the end of the loop and see if the loop out point is in the proper place. If not, adjust the grid untill the beat marker lines up with were the loop end point should be. Go back to grid marker and re-select/activate loop again so the loop out point moves to the beat marker. Check to see how well the beats and markers line up and the loop end point. If everything looks good then copy to the first sample slot. If it doesn't line up, then shorten the loop to 16 bars and use the same process. Or 8 bars if 16 doesn't work. Turn off snap. Place a new grid marker on the loop out point of the loop you just saved to the sample deck. You may have to use the jog wheel, or select vinyl for mouse control in preferences, so you can place grid markers that are not on a beat marker. Repeat the above process 3 more times filling the sample slots in order, then move over to deck b (the last grid marker will be there, but you will have to go to it and make a loop the same size as on deck A to get to your loop out point)and do the same thing till you are out of sample slots. Change hardware deck focus to C and D. Make sure neither is playing and all samples are at start and ready to play. Hit record and play the loops in order muting one as you start the next. I was able to warp 1min 40sec of a song and the grid was perfect. That being said the song I used (David Bowie's Rebel Rebel) didn't drift really bad within sections of 16 bars and sometimes 32 bars. A couple of other notes, I did use Traktors internal clock, but set it to the song's tempo. After getting my loops I recorded on the first take, and it was fine, but when I tried to make a second recording, all the loops didn't jive perfectly. I thought it was my timing, but I tried a few more times with no luck. I guess after the sample plays once, Traktor moves the start point slightly for syncing. Not sure as I need to try this a few more times with different songs. Not sure if it makes a difference, but I also made all the loops with out the track playing. I'm sure Ableton is much better at this, but for those of us who don't have it, I'm tickled to have found what seems like a useable option. I also want to try finishing the song by making more recordings,and sync the recordings to have the full song warped. |
| Charline Dye 06.01.2011 | Thread Hi-jack alert. lol. You might get more responses starting a different thread for this question. Search over at the Native Instruments community . seems like I remember someone posting another case that would work. |
| Erminia Kamikawa 05.01.2011 | Anyone have any good suggestion for alternative cases for the S4? Since I can't wait for the Flight Case to come back into production. Thank you, OT |
| Charline Dye 05.01.2011 | Yeah that's kinda what I'm doing lol. Hadn't thought about it like that. It started out just expanding on Ean's tip and I got carried away when I wanted to see if I could do the whole song. It's really not hard or too time consuming once you get the hang of it. On another note, the samples not playing perfectly in time after the first run, (as mentioned in post 1) was because I didn't have the loop out on the beat in one loop. Which also caused the next loop to be off. Can't say why it played right the first time. But I redid that section and could play it repeatedly no problem. |
| Nedra Fresneda 05.01.2011 | you remind me of tape cutting/taping edits. I simply lack the patience but admire your effort |
| Charline Dye 05.01.2011 | Ok, I got further along in the song, and just to do everything inside Traktor I used record to join the 2 recordings together. Joining the clips in Audacity would have been more accurate, but I got a pretty good 3 minutes of the song with a good grid. There were 2 spots where the BPM change without key lock were noticable, but I could fix these with a little time by inserting the same section from another part of the song where the timing isn't so off. Is it perfect? Heck no. There are a couple of spots where I could hear that the next sample was started, but almost all of it is extremely usable. When they get key lock on the sample decks it will work even better. |
| Charline Dye 05.01.2011 | If you are only changing less than 1+ BPM you really don't notice any key change, but you are correct that key lock would be best. I honestly didn't pay close attention to the BPM changes, but they were small enough you couldn't hear any pitch change. I believe it also helped that no notes carried over from one sample to the next. Yes I do know about the free trial, but would like something I can use all the time, and I like to believe of different ways to use my tools. I am not saying this is the perfect option, as it can take a little time and patience, and will not work with all songs. I am saying it worked for me on this song, it could work for other songs, and other users might be able to use this method to make some older songs or just parts of them useable in a controllerist's set. I'm going to work with this some more and update with my findings. Thanks for pointing out the Key Lock issue, I'm glad NI is going to include this in an update so that problem will be fixed. |
| Nedra Fresneda 05.01.2011 | but sample decks don't have keylock... maybe with a future update, but this is a big don't for me. you know ableton has 15-30 day no limitation trials right? no need to own it to warp a few tracks |
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