Here is my method to easily beat grid your tracks by setting up a set of simple hot-keys. The best way to figure out the precise BPM of a song and ensure that any loop you drop is perfectly in time is by using beat-grids. When Traktor first analyzes a new song in your collection it determines the peaks of the wave form. 9 times out of ten these peaks are also the down beats, which means the BPM accuracy and auto loop features should work fairly well most of the time. When you get to a breakdown or start dealing with rhythmically complex material though, only beat grids will insure consistently accurate mixes. Setting beat grids and cue points can be a cumbersome process though so I will show you how I blow through 10 tracks in less time than it takes to brew a cup of coffee.
First, you will need to set up a series of hot-keys. You download my set here (Hot Key TKS) or just add the following to your personal set-up
1= Set Cue
2= Set BEat Grid
3= Lock Cue (set to toggle)
9= Track BPM increment
10= Track BPM decrement
SHIFT +9 = Track BPM increment Fine
SHIFT + 10= Track BPM decrement
+ = Cue Pause
DELETE= Instant cue play
Helpful but not required
V- Pitch bend focused deck Down
N- Pitch Bend focused deck Up
These are laid out in such a way that you can not only quickly perfect the beat grid of a track but prepare it for your set with cue points and everything. Take a look at the following video as I demonstrate my personal process for preparing songs.
If you would like, you can directly download the song from the video with the cue points
Great video!!!!! You have no idea how much you are helping people online, finally a video about beatgrids. Thank you for your help and this one is going into my iphone for careful analysis. Once again thank you.
Hey, Ian, I see you’ve got your Key (11B) there on the info panel - which ID3 field do you write the tag in?
Never mind, I watched the video through the end. As far as I know, Traktor will not write a tag to a song that’s loaded into a deck. Thus, you will have to either unload the song or load something else into the deck and then write the tags.
Also, it does not make sense to me that you’re moving the grid. You say “we need to adjust the tempo” and “use the ‘move grid right’ key” BUT that is supposed to change where your beat marker is, not the tempo! That MAY align the grid later in the song, but it would move the initial beat marker away from the snare. You change your BPM from 103 to 102.7 and then to 102.8 and you say you’re using the ‘move grid right’ key - it seems to me that you are actually using the ‘track BPM decrement fine” key, no?
nice subliminal blip at the start!
uh oh, now everyone with a pirated version of traktor will know how to beatgrid! ;)
anyways, great video!
Great video! Thanks!!
I don’t get why you prefer putting the beatmarker on a snare. Is it OK if I put it on the second beat? What’s the difference? Could it change Traktor’s behavior when using synced FX or simply the Sync button?
BTW, thx for the video.
Nice to see another Video from you Ean, nice work as usual.
I aggre with Neo, your videos are really helpfull, and really clear explanations… Thank you Ean for this another great tutorial !
Great video Ean, and thanks for the time on cue placement.
I’m confused though.
Doesn’t a measure usualy begin on the downbeat (what would have been the first beat in the waveform of your video), not the snare? I realize you can lay your beatgrid cue anywhere you want, but doesn’t that also tell Traktor that is the first beat of the first measure?
I’m still trying to grasp music theory, please correct me if I’m all screwd up.
Thanks! Nice tuto…
(It helps that my name showed twice while showing the forum. ;) )
I think Ean chose the snare because it’s sharper and more defined than a downbeat, hence it would be more accurate in the end.
Regardless, you can always increase/decrease the BPM as shown, so I don’t think it would matter much. Probably just personal preference I’m guessing.
Thanks for for positive feedback guys, now that the VCI-100SE is done I can focus on making more videos.
There is actually a really good reason to put the beat marker on the snare if you want Trakotr to sync 2 songs up to each others grids. It has to do with the music production itself. If you sync 2 songs up by their snares then chances are that they will be in sync 99 percent of the time because snares always fall in a consistent rhythmic pattern that has very little swing.
However if you use the first beat in the song (a kick) these vary greatly between songs. Some producers push their kicks forward some let them fall back. Some kicks have a small pre-kick that precedes the actual one.
This principle also applies to beat griding in ableton.
I’ve read the same argument for learning beatmatching - instead, you snare-match, especially genres like DNB and breaks.
HI Ean,
Great Video..
Almost the way I do it.
But I have a problem.
I Started ripping my vinyl and some tracks did very well with beatgridding,
but some did not.Mostly the first 3 minutes of a song are good to handle,
but after that a very slow bpm change takes place (My Turntable is correct, because some some songs with a length of 8 minutes where perfect),
so it is impossible to beatgrid the whole song.
I know there is warping in Ableton Live,But do you know An alternative and more simple Solution?
Cheers,
Anthony
Drop more breat grids. find where the beat goes off and drop another one. This will not do any good if the tempo is slowly going off or changing constantly but i the problem is a sudden shift or jump in the grid then a 2nd beat marker will fix that.
I Tried up to 8 gridmarkers, but it didnt work.
I found out that I have 3 behaviours of vinyl recordings.
-Songs that are OK
-songs that are beatgridded in the beginning,the middle of the song then goes out of sync,at the end(4/5minutes)They come back in sync.
-songs that are beatgridded for about 3 minutes and then go out of sync.
So the tempo is slowly going off on behaviour 2&3,
Do You have any Sugestions how to solve this in an easy way?
+/-5000 records are waiting to be recorded:)
Try several turntables to confirm that its indeed the records and not your belt drive.
Thank for the great video and explanation Ean, i feel like its christmas time!! now i get to go through my whole collection and do some beatgrids!!! hehe gonna take a while@
ahh, kinda like beat-warping in ableton. How necessary is this? I can ride the pitch on any odd tracks.. i guess, if u are really getting creative u need that insurance. I really liked the basics walk through on cue points tho. It gives me some organization to something that i have been doing kind of haphazardly thus far.
wondering if it would be possible to convert ableton asd files to traktor beatgrids.. perhaps an interesting concept since the ableton approach to warp makers is much easier for a simple man like me to grasp :)
I have almost 5000 tracks which now need to be beat gridder correctly.. I am looking forward to it kind of.. :)
perhaps I will wait until I can take a holiday off work and dedicate some proper time to it..
Thx Ean for clarifying that kick/snare thing.
I would love it if you had tome to make a similar tutorial for Ableton Beat grids and wrapping. Because I have bought Ableton too and I always struggle on this part of my work, maybe some hints would be helpful.
Ean Golden
Apr 10th, 2008 at 9:11 pm Quote
Try several turntables to confirm that its indeed the records and not your belt drive.
I Did some tests,and its indeed my belt drive turntable that has no constant speed.
(the belt was recently renewed and other things to optimize its performance,but unfortunately it was not enough)…
Thanks for help.
Cheers Anthony
Ean,
Can you share the title/remix of that Beatles track you used on this demo? Nice job with the video!
Cheers.
That track is a remix I did about 4 years ago, you can download it in the post. :-) I already included a link.
very nice!
Dope Remix Ean! Thanks!
Please, repost the video! :)
It’s still there - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBzejpuGk5Y :)
Thanks, anonymous… I tried to watch here on this page, it didnt work, but youre right, its still there.
Hey Ean,
tyour provided hotkey dont work for some reason!? in the hotkeys setting tzraktor only gives me at each key three question marks and everything turns red? you know what the reason could be?
thnaks for the tutorial, been looking for one like this forever…
Which Traktor version are you using? I am having that problem with the 3.4 beta version.
The Windows hotkeys aren’t working for me either. I guess I will set it up manually.
We have learned the problem is a new Traktor 3.4 update that I was beta testing. Any TKS files created with the new version are incompatible with older versions of Traktor.
the tks file don’t work for me.. I loading the file but when i press the buttons it doesnt do anything.. ???
the tks is still helpful, becuz it loads the right directives into your hotkeys and then u just need to assign them.
question(if anyone still reads this thread): when u write file tags does it right it to the track or somewhere in traktor? wondering if the cue points/grids will stay with me when i upgrade. …guess, it would be logical that it is written to the track…
_ if you right click and choose write to tags then yes, its written to your mp3. that TKs is broken- the assigments are all there but the values will not work in anything before 3.4 because of incompatibility. Just use the guidelines in the article and re-assign them.
How do I beat grid old songs that drift? I know how to do it in Ableton by dropping multiple markers… can that be done in Traktor?