When working with electronic music tracks for DJ style mixing, I’ve come across a problem where tracks don’t start on a beat, AND start with leading silence of indeterminate length. Probably a mastering/recording/encoding issue, but it makes it really hard to start from the beginning of the track, line up the first real beat with a measure and then get the rest of the beats to line up properly.
So I go to the first determinate beat, set a warp marker, go back to the beginning and delete the starting warp marker. The warp marker on the beat I chose controls the tempo for that track (or clip to use Ableton’s terminology) from the beginning to end even tho it’s not at the 1.1.1 position. I then go and line up the rest of the track. And, like magic, it works just fine. I leave the warp marker on the chosen beat.
Below is a screenshot showing exactly what I mean in case my explanation was less than concise.
click to view full size
Tags: ableton live, making music