Pre warped tunes in Ableton

Sometimes, when i buy a new tune and want to fuck around with it in Ableton, i load it in there and its already warped. But warped in a fucked up way that makes no sense, not even remotely in time

Can anyone tell me why?

*cue a series of tired codecs jokes*

In my opinion: user error :>

Your computer wants to fight you, I'd watch yourself.

Hey snowman, I'd suggest firstly reading the manual, and then probably worth watching their tutorial video on warping.

They explain this all pretty thoroughly, and it's better to get a proper understanding on warping to get the most out of the program.

Any advice here would just be a small part of the picture.

Good luck

A small part of the answer is probably that Ableton is not a dj nor does it have dj ears. It is automatically warping to transient markers that it inserts but won't necessarily get it right every time.

There's alsorts of things in tunes that can throw it out as well, like intro leadins and breaks from normal 8/16 bar structure.

Personally I rewarp anything that goes in there manually it's pretty painless when you learn the right way to go about it. I could explain it on here but depends on if you're using 7 or 8 and like Matt said it's probably easier if you look up a warping guide.

Where can i find this? I had a look, couldnt see it....



So, this a picture of a tune that i just bought on beatport and dropped into Ableton. This is the warping pattern that came up. I havent touched anything there.



And if i zoom a little closer, you can see that its not even close to being on the money.



Just seems wierd, unless there some warping shit that im just totally missing?

If you don't have the manual, do you own a real copy?

I was talking about the tutorial video.....

Yup, i get that. But why do some tunes show up pre-warped, like in the picture above, while others dont?

Dunno what the answer is, but what is the "Start from here" marker doin? Is it at the first beat or the first sound?
I get this when the tune starts with a non percussive intro.

This is the very beginning of the tune. I havent touched the warp markers.

Well, if Im understanding this right, then you need to move the "Start from here" marker to the beginning.
That should sort it.

Well, yeah, i figured that out. Im just wondering why this tune, and a few others seem to be 'pre-warped', and 'pre-warped' in a wierd way......

I would have thought that they should just not be warped at all, like most tracks arent, or if they are warped, theyd be warped well.

You dig?

Oh, sorry I understand now.
Who knows? Maybe mp3's come with ablton data now.

Snowman - you should be able to turn the automatically warp function off. Mine doesn't warp things unless I right-click and 'warp from here'.

Anyway - as Matt said above... it's not quite as automatic as you might think... I actually wish it had a sensitivity editor actually (maybe it does now) much like some CDJ-type units have for their auto-cue.

just delete the markers and start again from the start or turn the auto warping off. It's been happening for a number of versions now and you kinda just get used to clicking the last warp marker and deleting the lot when this does occur.

Well there you go... go into preferences and the launching options and change the auto-warp long files option or whatever is the appropriate one.

Read the manual

heh

Automatic transient detection is a minefield for programmers, often this can be worse than a bpm-based calculation, so in reality, warping manually is better than either if you want to make sure things are correct.

Only those wanting to save time, or who don't actually care if their tracks are tight as want automatic warping, performance DJs etc would die if they didn't warp properly.

Some of the best webstores offer .ASD files - which are properly warped, and they offer this free of charge, so if you're into some of the more forward thinking dance music, you're in good hands. The rest of the musical universe, well, you're going to have to sit there and warp properly for a while.


I'll say one more thing, there are several time stretching algorhythms, each has it's own quirks. Do some research on what you need, there are ones that are better than others for full tracks (Complex etc) and in Live 8 there are even more options, and you'll need to know a bit about quality levels vs. your processor load before making these kinds of decisions (and if you want to perform live at some point, how many of these you can run before your processor gets hit too much and you get dropouts).

If you're info hungry enough to read our pathetic attempts at explaining Ableton, seriously, go to the pros, they know what they are doing.

Tom Cosom's site is really good, he even gives away his templates.