Warping In Ableton (Skills For DJ’s)

What’s Warping Used For In Ableton?

It’s an essential step when creating dj sets or mixtapes in Ableton

It’s not too complicated, but it’s essential, it makes your tracks aligned.

Here’s a short walkthrough:

Enabling Warp In Ableton

Load an audio track in Ableton.

Click on the track name.

Then Press Shift + Tab.

The warping section show up below the track.

This is what it looks like:

Changing The Warp Type

Make sure the Warp button is enabled.

From the list below it, select Complex Pro.

Adjusting the BPM

Make sure you know the real BPM of the song before.

You can find this out with any DJ Software.

Serato, Virtual DJ, Traktor, DJuced, rekordbox, they all analyze the song BPM for you.

Or any music analysing software, like Mixed In Key and Mashup 2.

If Ableton did not detect the correct BPM of the song, you need to update it.

This ensures that the track “obeys” the master tempo of the project.

Setting Warp Points

If Ableton did not place the starting warp point correctly, you must make adjustments.

Here is how:

Deleting Unwanted Warp Points

For mixtapes, you need only one warp point per song – the starting one.

It’s where your beatgrid starts.

If Ableton added more than one warping point for you, delete all of them and leave only the first.

Adjust The Warp Point

The warp point might be slightly off to the side.

Use your ear to decide where the down beat should start.

When you hold Shift, then click on the warp point and move left and right, the track adjusts.

You can see in the picture below, the track must be adjusted to the right.

This way, we get the first beat in position, exactly under the warping point.

Set 1. 1. 1

Set Warp From Here

Conclusion

If you’ve done everything correctly, your track is now aligned to the beatgrid.

It is ready to be mixed in with other songs.

Provided the other tracks are aligned to the beat grid as well.

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