Automating an audio file's bpm

W

wolfen22

New member
Hey guys,

I've searched for topics that cover my problem, but the solutions I find isn't applicable on my problem or I'm simply doing something wrong or don't undestand what I'm supposed to do.

My problem:

I'm trying to make an edit of a track, and I want it to gradually slow down towards the end of the track (from 125 bpm to 110), over say 10 seconds. You're supposed to hear that the song is slowing down more and more. So I have the audio file thrown in to Ableton, but I can't figure out how to automate the bpm of the audio so that it slows down. I've tried with the master tempo automation, but the changes I do in there only seems to change the projects tempo, the metronome is changing but I hear no difference in the audio. What am I missing/doing wrong?

Reason behind this is that I'm doing a pre-recorded mix of 2 songs:
Song 1 is originally 125 bpm, and I want it to gradually slow down to 110 bpm (which is Song 2's bpm)
Song 2 is originally 110 bpm, I want it to start at 125 bpm and gradually slow down to it's original tempo.

Thanks in advance!
 
Nice. I've never done exactly that, but slowing down project tempo should time stretch your audio. It does in Reason. In Reason, though, you'd have to record the two separate with markers at beginning and end and then overlay them with the markers matching to get the bpm to line up.
I actually have a song where then end of the song goes down to 2bpm to drag an echo effect out to crazy dimensions...
Sorry I can't help with Ableton.
 
To change the tempo of a recorded audio file is much more complicated than changing the tempo of a sequence playing MIDI. I'm a Cubase user and you always need to remember that changing the tempo will shift your audio tracks, and not change their tempo. Cubase and most of the others can stretch or shrink time pretty well by re-sampling - so essentially taking X number of samples and then reducing or increasing them. Cubase has a pretty decent tempo mapping feature and can do the same thing to audio files, altering the resampling gradually to do a all, or whatever. This is pretty clever processing though - and Cubase hasn't done it very well until the last few upgrades sorted it.
 
Thanks guys. Sadly, I'm on Ableton and Logic. Anyone know a solution for my problem for those DAW's? I'm actually thinking about throwing the two tracks into my CDJ and record when I change the bpm from there.
 
Wolfen,
Maybe you have already figured this out I just saw your post regarding Tempo automation. Are you working in Session or Arrangement with you clips?
From what I understand the Global Tempo automation will only work in arrangement view. You might try dropping your clips in the arrangement view and make sure the clips have warp enabled, so they will respond to tempo changes.
I picked up a great book " Power Tools for Ableton Live 9" well worth the $ 25.00 TONS of very useful info.

Good Luck
 
In session view, you can name the scene, BPM ### hit the scene button and it changes the tempo for the scene. This is really good for mixing various songs together and changing temp on the fly.
 
DM60 said:
In session view, you can name the scene, BPM ### hit the scene button and it changes the tempo for the scene. This is really good for mixing various songs together and changing temp on the fly.
Click to expand...

Good Point and this does work great when launching scenes from session view.
From the O.P it sounded like he was trying to slowly change the tempo over time via automation, where changing tempo via assigning tempo changes in session view is immediate. From what was asked I assumed he wanted to gradually change the tempo of 2 separate tracks. I am fairly new to DAW but it seems this may be easier to do in Arrangement view where tempo automation will work.

Thanks,
 
Yes, but in case he was unaware of the feature. Usually when mixing multiple songs in Ableton, it is usually for DJ'ing of some sort. For DJ'ing or live EDM performance, Arrangement View is not the best. If he was unaware that it could be done in Session View, he may decide a different approach.

Based on the question, he is not that knowledgeable in Ableton, as this tempo manipulation is pretty basic knowledge. Therefore, wanted to provide more information in case he wanted to re-think the problem and its solution. Hence giving more information than what was asked.
 
wolfen22 said:
Hey guys,

I've searched for topics that cover my problem, but the solutions I find isn't applicable on my problem or I'm simply doing something wrong or don't undestand what I'm supposed to do.

My problem:

I'm trying to make an edit of a track, and I want it to gradually slow down towards the end of the track (from 125 bpm to 110), over say 10 seconds. You're supposed to hear that the song is slowing down more and more. So I have the audio file thrown in to Ableton, but I can't figure out how to automate the bpm of the audio so that it slows down. I've tried with the master tempo automation, but the changes I do in there only seems to change the projects tempo, the metronome is changing but I hear no difference in the audio. What am I missing/doing wrong?

Reason behind this is that I'm doing a pre-recorded mix of 2 songs:
Song 1 is originally 125 bpm, and I want it to gradually slow down to 110 bpm (which is Song 2's bpm)
Song 2 is originally 110 bpm, I want it to start at 125 bpm and gradually slow down to it's original tempo.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Check out this Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbjVZ20U6Os
 
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