Without a drum track to drop markers on, warping an acapella can be especially challenging. This quick little tip makes it easy.
For this method to work, you’ll need not only an isolated acapella track but also an accompanying drum or full length track of exactly the same length. If you’ve extracted all the tracks from a DTS recording or happen to have a set of stems from a multitrack session, you’re good to go.
Follow these 3 simple steps to quickly warp an acapella:
- Drop the song’s drum track into a clip. Place warp markers or auto-warp the clip to your satisfaction.
- Copy that same beatmapped clip into another session track. Highlight that copied clip so you can view the waveform at the bottom of the screen.
- Drag the acapella audio file on to the waveform of the copied clip. Notice that the drum track waveform is replaced with the acapella but the original warp markers stay in place. This is what we want.
Here’s a movie walkthrough of the aforementioned process using the stems for “The Bomb” by New Young Pony Club.
So what happened? Using this technique, I was able to quickly place warp markers on a drum track and then apply those same markers to my acapella track. In comparison, if I were to warp the acapella without a guide track, my attempt would be prone to timing errors due to the guesswork and estimation involved.
For more information on this technique, check out this article on the Sound on Sound web site.
7 Comments
I gave this a try & it’s topnotch.Thanks for the tute.
does not work for me, do the audio clips have to be in .wav in order for this to work? (i was trying it with mp3s…)
does the drum track and the acapella have to be of the same length?
after the procedure, in my case, the old markers of the acapella stay in place, and the tempo in the warp section does not change to the tempo i want (the tempo of the guide drum track)
help!?
Hi, Gonza –
The audio files do not need to be in a particular audio codec/format. MP3 is fine.
The key is that the tracks must be exactly the same length. This means they would likely be derived from the same recording. In the case of the video demonstration in the blog post, the tracks are from a multi-track recording.
Hope this helps and clarifies,
-M
yeah i was smelling something fishy and it was on the lines of what you just said. thanx a lot!
GONZA
hi pal! find this tip very useful.so damn difficult to warp acaps esp. those from bands!
unnecessary.
Here’s an easier way:
1. warp the original song
2. Note the BPM.
3. Take your acapella and bring it into ableton.
4. set the master tempo of Live to the natural bpm of the original song
5. Drop the one-marker on the acapella where you think there’s a one, like the beginning of a chorus
6. right click on that one-marker you just dropped and choose “warp xxxbpm from here” which is the master tempo setting.
7. You should be done. you can set the one anywhere now. And if you’re off, you should be able to correct it in a second or two
Here’s another clarification: you need to drag a FILE from the file browser onto the warped clip. You CAN NOT just drag another clip from your session view.
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