Syntrillium Backup Forums :: View topic - Beat and tempo-matching, the eternal question

Spinmaster · Posted - Wed May 30, 2001 4:34 am

Hi everybody at Syntrillium
I have vers. 1.2a of your product and have trouble working it out. I have read all topics on the matter of beatmatching but I am still confused. Please take the necessary time to explain it to me how it is done following this scenario:

I have to trance tunes (for example) and wish to match them. One of them has a higher bpm value then the next one.

1) how do get CE to auto-calculate the bpm of a song?

2) if I slow the first one down to a matching bpm this would result in getting the drum patterns to fit one another, right? so that the beat will go down at the same time regardless of pitch value, right?

2) if I am right so far how do I do this (e.i. changing bpm value of the first one)? If I am wrong what should I be doing? Please explain me this in a step be step mode - and don't refer to previous topics on the matter (I already read those but got no wiser!).

3)now to the tricky part: all I am interested in is getting the tempo syncronized. But is bpm and pitch the same? I think not. Therefore how do I make sure that after matching bpm I won't get a distorted pitch that doesn't fit the rest (or will that not happen)? Using turntables and pitching up or down bpm and pitch follow along - can that be done in CE?

Please help the novice Dj
Brian

RobertM · Posted - Wed May 30, 2001 6:56 am

Welcome Brian.

Now..., I'm not trying to be funny or difficult here, but have you looked at this thread? It should contain all of the info that you need.

'matching beats per minute on two tracks'

It includes links to some FAQs which give a step-by-step description of how to do what you are asking.

My comments on your questions:
1. This is covered in detail in one of the FAQs.
2. You can adjust the speed of a wav file without changing the pitch, or you might want to allow the pitch to change with the speed. There are several options under the 'stretch' transform. It all depends on what you want it to sound like.
2b. Again, step-by-step instructions are included in the FAQ
3. The procedure which Synt recommends will affect only the first and last few beats of a song; you decide how many. The result will be a gradual fade from the first track BPM to the next track BPM. The pitch of each track will be maintained.

Now, if you have looked at those FAQs already, and are having trouble with those instructions, then perhaps you could indicate which steps are giving you difficulty so that our assistance could be most meaningful to you.

Syntrillium M.D. · Location: USA

Hi Spin. Yeah, I'd agree with Robert here. It's all a matter of knowing 'which' area is giving you trouble. The process of determining and matching BPM can be sticky at first (with all of those instructions) but can be rather routine once you get the hang of it.

Let us know where you're having trouble and we can provide you with some direction...

---Syntrillium Support

Spinmaster · Posted - Thu May 31, 2001 4:30 pm

Okay guys,
thanks for helping but as you might have guessed I already read this part you indicated - and i'll post the part of the help stuff that I don't get. Can bring the following stuff down to a more step-by-step comprehensive style? Thanks for your patience:

"Highlight the lead-out portion of the first song (switch to Edit View) and go to the Stretch transform. Choose Glide Stretch, High Precision, Time Stretch, and 'choose defaults'. Initial%=100, Calculate Final% by 100*lead-out/lead-in (eg 73.06%).
Next go to the second-song (eg F12 to multitrack and double-click on the second song), and highlight the lead-in section (hit F12 to go back to edit view) and go to do another Glide Stretch (shortcut=F2 for this). Calculate Initial% by 100*lead-in/lead-out (eg 136.87%). Final=100% (other settings identical)."

RobertM · Posted - Fri Jun 01, 2001 10:03 am

Spin,

I've never tried to do this, and my following advice to you is based only on what I have read in the forum and on what makes sense to me. But...here goes!

Lets say your two songs: song1=30bpm, song2=20bpm, and you want to beat-match them.

Song1 is faster than song2. Its rate is 150% (30/20) of song2.
Song2 is slower than song1. Its rate is 66% (20/30) of song1.

You are going take a portion of the end of song1 (say 8 beats, which equals 16 seconds) and GRADUALLY slow it down from full speed (100% of song1 = 30bpm) to a slower speed (66% of song1 = 20bpm). Also you take the SAME number of beats from the beginning of song2 (8 beats = 24 seconds) and gradually slow it down from a faster speed (150% of song2 = 30bpm) to full speed (100% of song2=20bpm). Can you see how both of these two sections -- the end of song1 and the beginning of song2 -- will now start out at 30bpm and end at 20bpm. They will also be exactly the same length (length of time, that is).

Step-by-step:
1. Hilight last 16 seconds that you want of song1 -- STARTING AND ENDING right on a beat.
2. Go to the Stretch transform. Choose Glide Stretch, High Precision, Time Stretch, and 'choose defaults'.
3. Set initial%=100%, Final%=66%.
4. Click OK (or apply, or whatever you do to get the transform to happen -- remember, I haven't done this, so I don't know what the name is)
5. Hilight first 24 seconds that you want of song2 -- STARTING AND ENDING right on a beat.
6. Go to the Stretch transform again.
7. Set initial%=150%, Final%=100%.
8. Click OK again.

Now the ending of song1 and the beginning of song2 match each other precisely.

All you have to do to seamlessly blend from one song to another is to overlap them by the right amount and mix them together (multitrack). I don't have mutlitrack (I have CE2K without studio plug-in), so what I'd do is to cut (Ctrl-X) the first section from song2 and mix-paste it onto the end of song1, then splice the two songs together. I'd also make sure that the amplitude of the blend is OK; some fading in or out before the mix-paste may be necessary to balance the overall sound level during the blend.

Does this help any? You'll probably have to fiddle a little to get it just right, but I hope the concept is clearer for you now.