Need some help with beat mapping.

Ok, so ive just tried out Traktor Scratch Pro, ive got the jist of so far, I know how to set the beat grid and what not i just have a few questions...

1) Ive beat mapped a specific track, and the beat grid will line up for about a quarter of the way through the song, but then it gets off, so i make the nessecary adjustments to re-align the grid, but when i do so, the beginning of the track is off now. :angry:

2) After doing that ill stretch out the grid to have it match, and then i use the pitch control to try to get it to match up with the master BPM, but i cant seem to get it right on.

I may be doing this completely wrong, but if you guys have some points or tips, that would be great.

BTW: I am no stranger to all of this stuff, i use Ableton all the time, and a bit of reasin here and there. I am just new to DJing.

Thanks in advance!
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One thing i forgot, this is especially frustrating when mixing, both tracks will say they are matched to the master tempo, but when i go to mix them, one is always off beat... its very frustrating....

 

ableton live has a flexible beatgrid, so you can adjust the grid to fit the track, to "straighten" the track.
traktor handles the matter different.
the grid is always straight, you can`t bend it !

if the track`s tempo isn`t stable, you won`t be able to apply the grid -
unless you follow the "sticky-thread" (that helps someway, have a look)

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=114480


so if you have unsteady bmp on certain tracks, and you want to "straighten" it,
do it in ableton live, and render it to a new file with straight bmp,
and then come back to traktor and apply the grid.

 

You're probably just shuffling the grid across rather than lengthening or shortening the grid (adjusting the bpm). Check out some youtube videos on gridding, or there are a couple on djtechtools.com

 

ive been warping my tracks now in ableton to try that so i will let you know if it works out better, and yeah but ive tried both, and it seems like after i adjust the bpm with the grid, and use the pitch control to get it back to 175bpm, i can never get it right on, i cant only move the pitch control in increments os .5% so i always end up with 175.02-175.04, or 174.96.

 

I think there is a misunderstanding here about how the grids work.

There is no reason to touch the pitch fader when beatgridding tracks. The pitch fader is used to match the BPMs of tracks which you are about to blend. Moving the pitch fader does not affect the beatgrids in any way. So if your grids are off, they will still be just as off after you move the pitch fader. The pitch fader really should stay at 0% while you are beatgridding.

This is completely different from Ableton where the tracks are 'pinned' to the grid. In Traktor your tracks are not locked to the beatgrid, the beatgrid is just used as a reference point to tell Traktor the BPM of the tracks. It is more similar to traditional DJing...

 

i cant post?
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what the hell. ok so i only use the pitch control after i have already gridded and locked the track at its original tempo. so i will have the master tempo set at 175bpm, for DnB. and ill have a track i gridded at 174bpm. ill use the pitch control to bring the locked track back up to 175bpm, but when i do i never can get it exactly at 175, its usually at 175.02bpm, or 174.96bpm.

so yeah, im new to this whole thing so i may be going about it all wrong. ive tried watching literally every video on youtube about it bust i always get the same result, if some one could break the whole process down from start to finish in detail that would be great.

thanks!

 

if your track is at a certain bpm, it will always be !
and therefore, traktor will always tell you that it is.
apart from that, if you locked the grid and set it properly,
you can adjust the tracks tempo using the pitch-control to the desired bpm,
(and have traktor showing the playback tempo in the deck)
but that only means that your track is playing back faster then it`s actual tempo.
the tempo itself and with it the shown tempo in the column bpm will stay whatever it was/is.

 

i understand all that... what i mean is that after doing all the i cant get the pitch control to go to exactly 175bpm half the time so my tracks are out or sync with eachother when mixing.

 

A DJ will make tiny adjustments to the pitch fader to keep the tracks in time. That's why DJs are spotted so often with one hand on the pitch fader. If you can't beatmatch using the pitch fader, you could keep practicing, or you could press the sync button and have Traktor match the tracks for you.

 

If you are using a MIDI controller you probably can't match the tempo exactly with the fader, because midi only has 128 steps in value from the bottom of the fader to the top (-8% to +8% say). Therefore you can only increase or decrease the tempo with the fader by set amounts. You can map buttons to nudge the tempo up or down by a smaller amount for better accuracy.

You should never really need to warp d&b except perhaps old vinyl rips where the tempo actually drifts.

 

alright that makes sense. thanks for clearing that up and ill take all of the advice into practice when i open up traktor later.

Ill fidgit around some more until i get it down then i will post a link to show what ive done, lol.