Dubstep tracks at 139.994?

Hey guys. I've always had a couple songs that are difficult to beatgrid, but I've been mixing a lot of oldschool dubstep lately and some of their BPMs have come out real strange.

Benga's song Wobblers, for example, is at 139.994, but when I change it to 140, the grid is clearly wrong.

Another example is Sukh Knight's "up in smoke". I got the beatgrid closest to perfect at 70.09. That just seems plain wrong. When I change it to 70 and set the grid marker correctly at the first point, it is correct for the first half of the song but then it starts to drift for the second half.

Can I get some pointers?

Thanks.

 

why not just leave it? .006 seconds off is really notihng to worry about.

 

why on EARTH are you changing the tempo to whole numbers?..

the tempo is what the tempo is.. period.

 

I'm not changing every single one to whole numbers... clearly that would be stupid and noticeably wrong by the beatgrid both visually and audibly. That's clearly not what I said either.

I'm just asking if a song is 139.993 and I can't get the beatgrid perfect at that tempo but I CAN get it perfect for the first half of the song at a BPM of 140, which is best to leave it at/what's the best way to go about beatgridding that track?

You make it sound ludacris that I would change those to whole numbers when I can't get the beatgrid perfect at traktor's detected tempo and they are already so close to the whole BPM when 70 and 140 are typical BPMs for dubstep.... doesn't seem crazy to me.

Besides, I don't really think the "tempo is what the tempo is" when it comes to software auto detecting the tempo... traktor is not very precise with beatgridding/analyzing BPM perfectly. When you zoom in on the waveform, you can tell it's usually off by a bit or a lot sometimes.


Oh and I would definitely change the tempo to make the beatgrid perfect when you can't hear much or any difference and it allows you to have a perfectly beatgridded track in order to mix in with another perfectly beatgridded track, creating a perfect mix.

DJs change the tempo all the time to match tempos to other songs for mixing, so that was a pretty unhelpful post.

 

Hi there Rumpus,

I think what you really want to consider is -- are you satisfied with the beatgrid or not?

Personally, I'd hate my self all night if someone came up to me and told me, "excuse me, but I think your beat grids are off".

Now... to answer your question, though it's next to impossible really without having the same audio file as yours:

Yes, in general, newly produced dance music bought at beatport etc... tend to have a tempo of a whole number (i.e. 140.000).

That is not the case with:
(1)Vinly rips. Almost never a whole number.

(2)Some tracks have multiple sequenced parts (that each most likely has a whole number BPM) merged together in DAW. So, BPM wise 140.000, for example, might be correct, but at some point in the track the beat grid suddenly becomes off. What do you do? You simply start a new beatgrid from there. Traktor can't have multiple BPMs but can have multiple sets of beatgrids.
Buy Kris Wadsworth / It's Time at beatport if you want to see an explicit example.

(3)Similar to (2), but sometimes, a loop featured in part of the track could be laid back, somewhat too much compared to the rest of the track, and Traktor might try to justify that by averaging out the peak point of the beats - sort of like when analyzing a vinyl rip, hence you'll get 139.998 or something, while 140.000 is correct, and you just want to avoid mixing too much in those laid back moments.

(4)Some tracks just have a BPM that is not a whole number. Don't ask me why. Ping-ponged to analogue tape for sound coloring, maybe...


Now if the file in question is a vinyl rip (I mean, even if you didn't rip it, unless you have reason to be sure it's not a vinyl rip), all you can do is "do your best". Start by feeling confident that you're going to decide what BPM it's going to be set to... then move the grid a little, change the BPM a bit, start a new beatgrid, the works.

If it's 100% digital source straight to digital file, it's one of (2)-(4) so what you should do depends on which it is.

(5)Oh and I guess there is the super-minute possibility of a complication of (2), where the producer decided, I'm going to make the first half at 140 and the second half at 141. In that case, I would probably email the producer and ask him why he did that.


By the way, you probably didn't get what Mystic38 meant by "the tempo is what the tempo is". The tempo is the tempo. Sort of like, George Bush is George Bush. He didn't say that "the tempo is the analyzed result".



Just for reference, I can say with genuine confidence, that for the file I own of "Up in Smoke", 70.009 is the closest you can get to a perfect BPM, and it doesn't seem to have either of the characteristics of (2) or (3), meaning,it's (4).

 

hey doraemon, thank you for that very detailed response.
Just to clairfy real quickly with the whole tempo deal; I understand the tempo of a song is the tempo of a song, but if changing the tempo allows for creating a perfect beatgrid, it's not crazy to change the tempo ever so slightly to perfect the beatgrid. Are we still on different pages with that? lol. I discuss this more below.

(1) Your explanation about vinyl rips makes perfect since and is something I meant to discuss in my initial post. I think a lot of these older dubstep tracks are ripped from vinyl because they're oldschool. Not ripped by me, but that's just a hunch I had due to the beatgrid issues I am having.

This is also why I was trying to change the tempo to a whole number; I figured something about the ripping from vinyl could have glitched the tempo out a little bit; this is why I changed a song from 139.994 to 140 to try and perfect the beatgrid.

Are you saying that because music creation was different back in the day and because ripping vinyls is different than a straight DAW, that it is not possible to get a perfectly accurate beatgrid (usually)? This makes sense and I just won't be as picky with my beatgrids for these older tracks.

(2) I have encountered beatgridding songs before where they double or half the BPM, but I imagine you're talking about songs that dramatically change the BPM. I did not know you can do multiple beatgrids in a song. How do you do this? I will look this up, but i've never heard about this before when researching beatgridding techniques. Thanks for that bit of info.


(3) I don't really ever rely on traktor to analyze/set beatgrids for my tracks properly, so I make sure to check closely that it's not traktors fault. I knew it wasn't with the 139.994 song since I changed it to 140 and couldn't get the beatgrid accurate, so I figured it was a different answer (vinyl rip in this case).


(4) I have come across this as well because sometimes it will be an uneven BPM but the beatgrid will be perfect. It's obvious in that case that the BPM is just uneven. This is another reason why I made this post; I had a few songs that were close to even BPMs that I couldn't beatgrid perfectly and couldn't get them perfect with their detected uneven number BPM either.

Moral of the story is that the vinyl rips is the explanation.

Thanks again for that post; very informing.

 

Ah.. I see. This is all because we are using the term tempo in slightly different intonations. You are talking about the number that is displayed on Traktor's window... I was talking about "the correct tempo of the song - of the file of the song to be precise".

By saying "changing the tempo", you mean "from the analyzed result, to the manually adjusted result" right?

The only way you can change"the tempo of the song" is to move the pitch slider, which neither of us are discussing right now.

That being said, yeah, I think we are more or less on the same page, and no, you are not at all crazy for making that adjustment.

You probably see now, but you were thinking in the totally opposite direction!

A BAD, really bad vinyl rip will have a modulating BPM. That is, the first 16 Bars might be close to 128, while the last 16 Bars are more like 130. These are a tough nut in Traktor, and basically I would just delete the file or categorize it in my "live music" folder if I loved the tune so much.

but here's the point I am trying to convey;

many vinyl rips have a pretty constant BPM. However, they almost never have a whole number BPM.

So, if you think that something is a vinyl rip, "never ever mind the fact that Traktor tells you it's a BPM with ridiculous values like 139.994" Just check if the beat-to-beatgrid relation drifts in either direction down the way. The chances that you'll get a perfect beatgrid by changing it to 140.000 is just as bad as changing it to 139.898.

Yes and no, or, more like no and yes. Music produced with sequencers has always had (or at least always intended to have) a constant BPM, which were quite often whole numbers. It's not about the production, it's about the ripping. Cheap turntables, performed at a pitch not 0%, etc..

So, don't give up hope, man. Be picky, find another mp3, toss the wobbly ones, and shift the f%&$ out of the grids to make it perfect-- just don't be picky about getting a neat number for the track BPM.

This stuff is really hard to explain in text..........

I am talking about the opposite.

The BPM of these kinds of tracks don't change at all. Suppose we are talking about a track that is 120BPM -- the interval between two beats are 0.5 seconds, right?

Here I was talking about tracks that has a perfect BPM of 120 throughout the song, except for one or two intervals (usually at the begging, middle or end of the breakdown) that are 0.55 seconds, etc..

So, you just set new beatgrids from this point on.


To be sure, you cannot change the BPM - that is, the distance between the beatgrids - but you can make the original beatgrids end there and start a new beatgrid.


pretend the under bars are intervals and the I are beat grids.


You can't do this:
I__I___I__I___I__I___I__I__I__I__I_I_I_I__I__I_I__I___I___I___I___I___I_


But you can do this:
I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I_I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I__I

How? Look in the Grid panel of the advanced panel and push that button that looks like a cell-phone antenna next to the trash can. New grids from there on.

Good luck!

 

Get the beatgrid right no matter what the final tempo is. I find a lot of my tracks with .001 or .999 have the perfect grid rather than the whole number. This can be due to the way the track was recoded to mp3 or whatever.

Good info djdoraemon. Thanks

 

@rumpus.

I re-read your original post and the inference was that you had manually beatgridded a track then changed the result to a whole number in a rounding process...

And yes, the tempo is what the tempo is.... the tempo belongs to the music and everything else is just a number

Doraemon has covered most of the topics to which i will add:

Anything that is not electronically derived..ie an actual drummer.. will have tempo variations through a track.. in such cases you have a few choices.
a) toss the mp3
b) use an audio utility to manually align the music to a tempo.
c) do a best fit across the length of the track inserting tempo changes if necessary
d) match up the start and end of the tracks close enough and live with it..

Option d works just fine, but only if you are going to play the song in a set.. if you are goin to loop, mash and muck about with it then obviously not.

 

Yea, we are on the same page for the tempo now. I was just confused because the beatgrid wasn't perfect at 139.994 so I changed it to 140 since that's a typical dubstep number and it wasn't perfect there either. I reread my initial post and I can definitely see why that's confusing, so my apologies there.

As for changing the tempo only with the pitch slider, that makes A LOT more sense. I guess i'm confused with tempo vs BPM because I thought the |||< and |||> buttons under the beatgrid section changed the tempo and BPM but I now see that they do not change the tempo but just the BPM. Guess I should read up on tempo vs BPM when it comes to music theory... this would definitely explain all the confusion revolving tempo in the initial posts.
Sorry for my ignorance, but i've been mixing in traktor for about 5 months and mixing in general for less than a year (started with virtual DJ but didn't use it much... didn't know traktor existed and was just using something to tide me over until purchasing the SL1. When I realized you could use your own sound card with traktor, it was an obvious winner. Double winner for me since i didn't realize it was on par with serato and even more advanced in some ways). The first 3 weeks of using traktor, I didn't even know about beatgridding. Ever since I started that, my mixing has gone from **** to awesome. I've gotten pretty damn good with traktor pretty fast, so I definitely want to stick with it. /end babble.

"many vinyl rips have a pretty constant BPM. However, they almost never have a whole number BPM." Gotcha; just got confused cause the beatgrid was not perfect at the 139.994 BPM so I tried 140 thinking that's what traktor should have analyzed it as.
Does this mean that traktor ALWAYS detects the correct BPM and you just have to perfect the beatgrid? That can't be possible though because of songs that are at 70.01.


So here's a question that's slightly off topic. If you have a track that's at 70.310 and you sync it with a track at 70, what happens to the beatgird, or does it affect the precision of the beatgrid?


As for the I_I_I_I, you actually did a great job explaining that... that simple visual depiction did the trick. I can't say I've come across too many songs that have given me that problem, so I'll save that for a rainy day and try it out to satisfy my curiosity.

Trust me, I am picky about my beatgrids, which is why i started this thread. I did not realize I was going to get dropped with so much knowledge though, haha.

I really really appreciate the information.

Would you guys recommend/have you read the traktor bible? If it goes into depth about this sort of thing, sounds like something pretty useful.

what about beatgridding hip hop tracks? I don't mix too much hip hop other than acapellas, but ones i've tried to beatgrid have been difficult. Dre's Xxplosive for example.

That brings me to another question... do you guys beatgrid your acapellas? I throw them in mixes a fair amount and when synced, they don't sound out of sync or off at all, but just curious.

Also, when beatgridding tracks, because songs at 70 and 140 BPM can easily be changed with the x2 or /2 grid button, how do you know which (70 or 140) is the real BPM of the song? I guess it's obvious with the visual and audio guidance, but figured I'd ask incase there's someting I'd oversee/not come across before. And if a song has a real BPM of 184, what's the harm of keeping it at 92 so long as you don't change the tempo if the other songs in your playlist are closer to the 90 range?


Again, thanks for all the info. Incredibly useful. This program is becoming more and more advanced that I realized, and with such a simple layout. Awesome software. Just wish I could midi map a sort by BPM button, lol.

 

70/140.. play the song and see what your foot does.... there are songs at 184 that feel like 92..if so great leave it if you wish..

hiphop frequently is analysed at 1/2 beat out on the beatgrid..not suprising since though 4/4 its not 1, 2, 3, 4 or 1, 2, 3, 4. again, play the song and see what your feet does to find the 1 beat... drop the grid marker there.

also traktor can get confused when the song starts pre 1.. so again check the song and make sure grid marker is on a 1 beat.. if the intro is important..say a vocal, i will put a 2nd cue at the beginning of the song ..i always leave cue 1 as the grid mark for the 1 beat.

 

You just blew my mind - I had no idea. Thank you sir- props

 

This is what I do....
Open Logic Express 9, (or similar programs) import said file and use Flex Time (Stretching/contracting sections of audio)
youtube a demonstration.
---
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSALHq4eIPE"]Logic 9 Tutorial - Editing audio with Flex Time - YouTube[/ame]

Yes, it's a long process, but nothing compared to a ruined gig from that one rubbish mix......

 

Hi there. First, my apologies for using the terms BPM and tempo in a fuzzy way in my last post. They can mean the same thing many-a-times so I would refrain from understanding this as how you put it down (i.e.. "...they do not change the tempo but just the BPM)

In the last post, I was using the term BPM to indicate the BPM detected and stored by Traktor, and using the term TEMPO loosely to mean a few things. I'm going to try to go over it once again just using BPM.

Let's ignore the "live" stuff like Rock and Jazz for now.

Let's also ignore the tracks that have unsteady BPM do to "the musicians intention" or "by technical mistakes he made".

Let's think in terms of internal mode. Using control vinyl introduces another problem.


When we discuss about the BPM of a Techno track made on a Groovebox and played on our Traktor, we can be talking about 5 different things. Man...

(1) The BPM intended by the producer.
(2) The true BPM of the WAV/MP3 file played without speed change.
(3) The BPM detected/modified/stored in our Traktor database.
(4) The BPM indicated in Traktor's GUI as a result of Tempo shifting.
(5) The BPM detected by God of the audio played back from the speakers.

Moving through each these five levels, there is always a possibility that the BPM (the number) might change.

From (1) to (2) [Recording, mastering or ripping error]
For various reasons. One example would be due to recording to and from an analogue source. Recorded to at playback speed X, recorded back from at playback speed X + 1%. In the digital realm, it could occur by someone handling the file at the wrong sampling rate (44.1 KHz. vs. 48 KHz.).

From (2) to (3) [DJ's screw up]
Bad auto detection and/or bad re-gridding by the DJ.

From (3) to (4) [DJ's intentional changing]
As said, "as a result of Tempo shifting", that is, moving the tempo slider. (Sync button is the same, it moves the tempo slider for you)

From (4) to (5) [God's realization of DJ's screw up]
This only occurs if something went wrong from (2) to (3).

So, if there were no recording errors, no DJ screw-ups, and no tempo shifting (+/- 0%), then, the five BPMs will all be the same.

Hence, it's even possible that all five are 120.090.

(1) The producer wanted it to be 120.090, rather than 120.000.
(2) The mastering/digitizing process was perfect resulting in a 120.090 file.
(3) The auto beat-grid was right on the money, or the DJ did a good fix.
(4) The DJ played it back at +/-0%.
(5) God always being right, hears a BPM of 120.090


OR, as well as many other possibilities, it's possible that all five are different.
(I'm intentionally going to exaggerate the differences)

(1) The producer wanted it to be 120.000 BPM
(2) Faulty mastering process produced a 110.000 BPM file
(3) The auto beat grid returned 105.000 BPM, the DJ further screwed it up and stored Track BPM at 100.000 BPM.
(4) The DJ Played it back at pitch slider +20 % - i.e., 120.000BPM on Traktor's screen.
(5) God always being right, hears a BPM of ___________.

*Fill in the blank! You'll get a better grasp of what's going on.

Not always. In the genre that I play, Traktor does pretty well detecting the BPM, often returning a BPM that I use as-given, but almost never sets the beat grid exactly where I want it.

On this note, it's really quite valid to discuss "perfect BPM detection" but a lot less so to discuss "perfect auto-beat-grid". This is because electronic dance music is most likely intended to have a constant BPM, while it's a bit more relaxed when it comes to how the beats are lined up in relation to each other. For instance, the producer might want the interval from Kick to Hat just a tiny bit shorter than the interval from Hat to Kick. Making it sound like the Hi-Hats are just a tad bit FASTER than the rest of the track. Like the drummer is impatient. To put it another way, suppose all the instruments are on separate vinyls and the producer was a DJ, he may intentionally mix in some of the parts slightly nudged forward or backwards compared to the other instruments - maybe to create a funky-ness to it. I'm sure you have heard a bunch of people playing percussion together. They're not in perfect sync, but they can still sound really cool right? Kind of like that.

That's why I hardly ever get an auto-grid exactly where I want it, but I don't blame Traktor as being incompetent. It may be that where I find it best-fit to set the grids is not so for other DJs. (In the same ballpark, however)

So, no you cannot really get a perfect beat grid, but not because the Track BPM is 70.01 - there really is no such thing. What there is, instead, is a beat grid that makes mixes sound very tightly in sync regardless of the combination of tracks. I call that a "really good beat grid". And insofar as the mp3 file has a true BPM (that I discussed above) of 70.01, you can get a "really good beat grid" just as well at 70.01BPM.

Nothing what so ever happens to the beat grid.

Instead, the 70.310 will be played back at a speed approximately 0.44% slower than the other.

I have never read so I can't comment. I'm making a video tutorial on BPM and beat matching though... A few more days till completion.

You should try to get the BPM right and then fine tune the grid (only moving the whole grid to the left or right). You can tell that the BPM is perfect (or as close as it can get to perfect) by scanning through the track and checking if similarities in the waveform drift to left or right. If they drift in two directions, btw, the track does not have a steady BPM (live, intentional, or faulty mastering/rip).

Once you have the right BPM (of a BPM steady track), it's all about nailing 1 downbeat. All the remaining grids are logically confined to being correct.

I beat grid everything. I even beat grid ambient noise like a subway coming into the station. If it has a constant BPM, I grid it to be a "really good beat grid" at the correct BPM. If it does not have a constant BPM, I still grid it to get a loop that I want (because the in point and out point of a loop depend on the beat gird).

There's the intended BPM of the producer - you got to ask him, I guess.

There's the commonsensical BPM of certain genres- if it's House, it's probably 126, not 63. In some genres this is not established.

Dubstep is tricky, I think, because even if you try to apply the assumption based on the somewhat accepted notion that dance music is made in 4/4 beats, 1 Bar in Dubstep can sound different depending on whether you are listening to the Kick / Snares or the other elements like the fast modulating baseline and hi-hats.

I would set the BPM depending on whether I'd like to mix dub step with drum&bass and techno, or with reggae and hip-hop.