Traktor Beatgrid drifting in and out

[tomflynn]

Hi,

The majority of my tracks in traktor pro they are fine, i play house and most are about 126bpm, however some tracks drift off the beatgrid which then makes them impossible to mix.

I have entered the correct bpm for the track in the 'bpm' column in the browser area but some tracks just seem to drift off the beat grid, then back intime with it, then off it again etc.

I have tried 'Tap' in the grid section to tap the tempo of it, it finds the tempo no problem, but the track still drifts on and off the grid.

Does anyone know if i am doing something wrong or have any advice or tips on how to solve this problem?

Thanks for any help, :)

Tom

[Kristoph]

the "correct" way of doing beatgrids according to manuals and guides i've seen is using the grid tools which pop out at the bottom of the deck, next to where you set cuepoints and beatjump etc...

I sometimes find that rather than drifting they're just not aligned with the transients properly. Apparently the "correct" way of sorting this out is by enabling click, and cueing in headphones until the beats align with the click... The main thing that's missing from traktor to me is an ableton style "massive zoom in" option so you can get the beatgrids to be bang on the transients... it's a massive ommision in my eyes!

If it's a digital track ie not a vinyl rip, and there's no changes of speed then 1 beatgrid marker at the start should be fine, and if it's not right then there's the tools in the grid page to either shift the whole grid left or right, or make the speed of the grid faster or slower...

[tomflynn]

Totally man, i've been doing some serious playing with it and investigating. Couldn't agree more that you need a big zoom in.

I will keep plugging away!

[kreativitit]

I have entered the correct bpm for the track in the 'bpm' column in the browser area but some tracks just seem to drift off the beat grid, then back intime with it, then off it again etc.


If the grid is fine let's say 16 bars after the "Grid" cue point but then starts drifting you are probably working with a vinyl rip which has some minor speed fluctuations. Traktor's beat-grid is stiff as it just takes a starting point and a bpm to set itself up, regardless of actual speed fluctuations in the track.

What you could do is use several Grid cue points to try to compensate for the bpm changes a little. You cannot use several bpm values in one track, though.

By the way, you can still use Traktor's Sync function even if a song is not beatgridded. Just make sure you have a decent bpm value set in the track options and Traktor will pitch your track's tempo to the master tempo and also jump to the next logical beat marker it can find. Traktor has got its own beat markers if no grid is set.

[tomflynn]

ya, in the end i put the track into ableton and warped certain points in the track, mainly the intro and outro, then bounced it and i was good to go.

[Seegeemusic]

The main thing that's missing from traktor to me is an ableton style "massive zoom in" option so you can get the beatgrids to be bang on the transients... it's a massive ommision in my eyes!

Couldnt agree more. Hopefully NI will maybe work this into the next versions of Traktor. They need to take a page out of Abletons book. :cool:

[Kristoph]

ya, in the end i put the track into ableton and warped certain points in the track, mainly the intro and outro, then bounced it and i was good to go.
yeah - it's a pain in the arse though... I would hazard a fairly hefty guess that "adaptive beatgrids / warp markers" are ranking fairly highly on the R&D todo list - but we'll probably not see that until Traktor Scratch Pro 2.0 or something... ah well, big zoom would do for now!

[jamesb]

I am an ableton man myself, but maybe this is technology telling us to get back to basics and whip out some vinyl or 1000s?!

I do enjoy carrying a bag full of plastic around :)