Ableton Live: How to Find the Correct BPM for an A Cappella Track

Most remixes start with beat-matching a groove to an a cappella vocal track. There are two ways to do this using Live.
Here’s the first scenario. You can play the a cappella track from a CD DJ deck, bring a drum loop into Live and adjust the tempo until you’ve got the beat matching right. Then it’s a simple matter of recording the vocal into Live and adjusting the warp markers to perfection.

The second scenario assumes that the a cappella performance that you want to work with is already on your hard drive. In that case, do the following:

1. Drag the a cappella file from Live’s browser into a clip slot.

2. Double-click the clip slot to make that clip the current selection.

3. If your file is a short one, Live will automatically derive loop and warp settings that you will need to turn off. Turn off the Loop and Warp buttons in the Clip section in the bottom left of the screen.

4. Play the clip. If the vocal line doesn’t begin on the downbeat, move the region/loop start marker to the downbeat.

5. Load a drum loop in Live, and press Play. The two clips should start out in sync with the vocal, but might drift out of time after a while. Adjust Live’s master tempo control so the drum loop syncs up with the vocal.

6. While these two clips are looping, take note of how many bars constitute the vocal segment that you want.

7. Double-click the a cappella clip to select it again and turn on Loop and Warp in the Clip section. Put a warp marker where you want the a cappella performance to start, and on the measure you wish it to end on. Use Live’s zoom capabilities to aid fine tuning during this process if necessary.

This should bring you close to your desired result. You can then adjust the warp markers if the vocal is a bit too fast or slow. Sometimes you might have to place additional markers, but probably not many. This method is much quicker than trying to place a warp marker every four bars.

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