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.
I dropped this one at Electro Bootie last weekend and it went over huge. I thought it deserved a proper release and so did the kind folks at Audioporn Central. In fact, it’s featured today on the APC as an Illegal Sunday World Premiere!
FM (“Girls on the Dance Floor”) vs. Tone Loc + Peaches (“Wild Thing”) vs. Prince (“Erotic City”) vs. Yazoo (“Goodbye 70′s”) Wild Thing on the Dance Floor (DJ Matt Hite Mashup)
D# Minor, 120 bpm
Bootie is one of my all-time favorite places to play and I’m always excited when I get invited back. I’ll be hitting the decks in the Electro-Bootie room this month, spinning an eclectic mix of electro boots and remixes. Won’t you join me?
It’s an honor to be included in DJ Bynar’s “Top 20 Mashups of 2008” list. He’s really picked a great top 20, and I’m not just saying that because I’m included in it.
Also, every Tuesday, Bynar hosts a radio show on www.waveradio.gr featuring indie rock, mashups, covers and remixes. Check it out!
Guilty Pleasures Volume 3 is out and this time it’s a 22 minute monster mashup/remix of Tying Tiffany’s “I Wanna Be Your MP3.” My little mashup of the track is featured in the mix so give it a listen and let me know what you think! Hopefully I’ll get clearance from the artist to release the track proper and post it on Beatmixed.com for download.
I’ve avoided purchasing the Jesus Phone (a.k.a. the iPhone) thus far but this little application is just too cool. RJDJ is a clever iPhone application that collects real-time “sensory” data — accelerometer and digital audio samples to be specific — from the phone’s environment and generates music. Surprisingly, the resulting music isn’t half bad.
I received an email from YouTube a few days ago informing me that they have flagged one of my videos as containing copyrighted material. Here’s the start of it:
Your video “Shakedown My Heart” has been identified by YouTube’s Content Identification program as containing copyrighted content which Sony/BMG claims is theirs.
Your video “Shakedown My Heart” is still available because Sony/BMG does not object to this content appearing on YouTube at this time. As long as Sony/BMG has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s page.
Interestingly enough, it is the visual content that they are laying claim to. I’m actually really surprised they are able to detect something like this automatically — especially since this is a highly edited mashup video! Maybe they do character recognition to discover song titles, artists, etc. that might appear in introductory credits of music videos.
