How to prepare music for use in Traktor

Even on those drifting-BPM tracks, you can usually at least find a loopable section at the beginning and end that lets you mix in and out without having to ride the tempo like a madman. It's one of my fave cheats, anyhow. The other is to just slide the beatgrid (either nudge or actually adjusting bpm) later on in the track when I'm ready to mix in. That way it's correct at thebeginning when I'm mixing in, and then correct at the end when I'm mixing out. A bit hinky, but it works.

 

Sometimes to do the same on a track that doesn't really have two loopable sections of the same bpm (lot of live tracks can speed up as they go on), I'll get the incoming track in the ballpark by adjusting pitch, and then just set a cue marker on the fly for the outgoing track, and retrigger a section to loop manually.

Peece,
T. Tauri

 

Re: preparing tracks & 3.2

Should I re-analyse my track collection to take advantage of 3.2's increased BPM detection?

 

only the ones you didnt beatgrid so far.

 

Hi, all. First post here in the forums, after a lot of reading. Beginning to work with Traktor.
I started playing with beatgrids for a sole reason - I think that I´m the only guy here that don´t play electronic music; the club that I play sometimes is a rock/indie rock club. Then, you can imagine that the Traktor´s auto BPM detection have a hard working time. Almost all tracks that I have needs a manual beatgrid.

I´ve been doing a very similar approach of the Pixeltrance´s, from the start of the thread (but using Traktor 3.1.1). It tooks about 30 seconds per track.

-Load the track;
-Set a Load cue in the start of the track (the track is loaded in this cue point);
-Set more cue point in differents parts of the intro, if needed (some vocal intro or something - good to have cue as reminders);
-Give names to each of these cue points - useful to a fast jump using the Cue List;
-Put a Grid cue point in the first or second beat;
-Play the track with the wave window of the deck in the MAXIMUM zoom, and with "Tick" activated - at least for me, worked best to "see" the beats and how the beatgrid is drifting in a visual mode;
- When the grid drifts, use the "Increase BPM" and "Reduce BPM" buttons, in the BPM and Grid Editor window, with the track playing, in a intuitive way: the left button (Increase BPM) move the beats "to the left" and the right button (Decrease BPM) move the beats "to the right". In fact, the grid is not moving, only the space between the line beats.
- Click in the Stripe Display of the deck to a point more forward inside the track, and ajust the BPM´s again if needed; repeat this in various points of the track.
- You will notice that in the end of the track, the BPM adjust is more sensible - a logical thing, since your Grid cue is in the start of the track.
- Another tip when using the Increase and Decrease BPM buttons: using the left button of the mouse increase/decreases the BPM value in 0.001 BPM, and the right button increase/decreases the BPM value in 0.01. Roughling speaking, use right button for a fast adjust, and after the grid is near aligned, the left button for a finer one.

Doing this (place grid marker, adjust BPM, move to the middle of the track, ajust again, near the end of the track, finer adjust, check the grid in the start, middle and end of the track again, with the track always playing), after you get the grips, is very fast to do - and remember that I work with grid-unfriendly tracks.

I have some tracks with this problem - now I could know which drummer was using a headphone with a ticker when recording! But it occurs with some electronic tracks too - I have a Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" here that suffers with this problem.
Looking this track in the wave display of the deck, I can see that my beatgrid drifts right after a break - probably is a problem of encoding, since the BPM is slower after this break. A VERY small variation of BPM, but enough to screw the grid.

As someone said, the solution is to put another Grid cue in the first beat after the drift - if the BPM stays the same after this drift, it will be ok; but be careful making syncs with other tracks in this point. If not, well, time to remember how to beatmatch by ear.
Or using the wave display window no nudge the track when playing - with time, you can make almost "visual" beatmatching.

I´ll try to make a little video when I have time - "seeing" the whole process, It will become much more easier for the people that are not understanding the method.

Can I make two suggestions for future Traktor versions, regarding beatgrids and beatmatching?

- The possibility to have two or more beatgrids inside one track, with each beatgrid having a different BPM value. It will help a lot, with these tracks recorded from unstable turntables, and (in my case) for track that have a change of tempo in the middle (I can mention Franz Ferdinand´s "Take Me Out" as an example).
- A new optional window, or a settable preference in Decks, to have the waveforms from the both decks in the same wave window, Torq/Virtual DJ style. Once you learn to "see" the beats, is much more easier to sync the tracks when a tempo drift occurs for some reason.

Sorry for explaining all the method again (since in the essence it´s just the Pixeltrance´s method - kudos for him), but the thread is somewhat long and I think that a recap would be good. Second, sorry for my english, I´m Brazilian.

Regards for all.

 

And just an information: which files/folder inside the Traktor3 folder stores the beatgrids in WinXP? I would like to make a backup - I´ve already lost all my beatgrids for some unknown reason.

 

Acho que está no C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\TRAKTOR DJ Studio 3, mas também é bom de 'Write file tags' para evitar disástro!

And, IMO, don't worry about reposting too much, this thread has become much too long.

 

I recently bought a collection of tracks from Beatport.com and DJ Download. Once I set the first beat grid marker, the rest fell into place perfectly.
Most of them seem to have a BPM rounded to the nearest beat.

I'd recommend either of the two shops.

 

How do you change the kbps that you import CDs as in traktor..I don't see an option to import them with itunes lame or to change the kbps..it imports at 128 kbps!! o no!! What about the apple lossless encoder?

 

AAC iTune Files vs. mp3 Files

Excuse my ignorance, but I am new to this digital music file age. I have been using vinyl, and I recently bought TS to migrate to digital music while maintaining vinyl control.

I manage my TS library using iTunes (AAC files). My question is whether AAC files also use id3 tags? I have ticked the box on the Preferences section of TS to write id3 tags, but I am not sure if AAC files support this.

Whenever I open my itunes libabry in TS, the files are not analyzed and there are no BPMs. However, in the TS collection, the BPM information is avaibale--which leads me to believe that TS is managing the information not as id3 tags but as a seperate file (i.e. TS Collection).

I understood that TS could write ID3 tags to the music files which includes information like wavefile (analysis) etc.

Can someone please clarify my understanding?

 

Vickie, you could try this.......... http://www.platinumnotes.com/ I use it and it makes a big difference to the quality of your tracks.

 

In iToonz? Edit - Preferences - Advanced - Importing.

 

Is there any way to tell Traktor to round ALL my damn tracks, I'm not gonna load 3000+ individual tracks and select round from a pulldown just to write to tags!

 

Is there any way to tell Traktor to round ALL my damn tracks, I'm not gonna load 3000+ individual tracks and select round from a pulldown just to write to tags!

 

i'm sorry, but that's not possible...

 

Oh...my...god LOL So one by one I have to do this for thousands of tracks, kill me now! I was wondering why so much of my music wasn't writing to the tags. The rounding should be a global analyzation setting in prefs =(

 

How about non-beatgriddable tracks, like disco and stuff with real drummers? Is it worth re-analysing them with Traktor 3 if their stripes were all done with Traktor 2?

 

not really.

and if you already tapped a tempo for a rough tempo estimation (which is all you can do on a disco track with a real drummer), you can keep it as it is.

 

thanks

 

Is it possible to somehow get traktor to read Acidized Data on mp3s?

-Also, does the new Traktor Update support BPM changes?