I think the way I sample isn't working, help please?

Joey 2x4

New member
Ok so, I find a song I want to sample, I download it but there is always this little bit of dead air (I'm not sure the correct term) before the song actually starts. So I'm trying to find the exact bpm and I'm using tap tempo but that dead air is always throwing it off...I think. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, it will line up in let's say the first bar or so and then get off time. I'm not sure what to do at this point.
 
Ok, I guess I should rephrase this, so when I find a song to sample I'll use tap tempo to find the bpm and I believe I'm getting this correct. If you want to check I believe this song to be 116bpm > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaYdzP5Lr3A

But when I go to sample it and I try to line up the start of the song and try to match the bpm it will be on time for about 2 bars and then slowly become off as the the song progresses and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm sure it's not the songs I'm trying to sample because it's happened on multiple songs.
 
A common thing most of these fellas don't realize is that most of the stuff they sample is never going to be on perfect beat unless:
It is electronically produced, no off beat stuff happening and is sequenced unnaturally.

So you would have to manually do that by time stretching or duping transients.
 
you need to find the bars of the song you want to sample.......loop them tightly and find out what BPM they are playing at......you might even find each bar comes in at a different BPM once they are looped

that's when the art comes into it......clever chopping, stretching, pitching, sequencing etc......
 
If you are using MP3s they always a silence at the start of them. Don't include that in your sample that you are cutting.
 
you need to find the bars of the song you want to sample.......loop them tightly and find out what BPM they are playing at......you might even find each bar comes in at a different BPM once they are looped

that's when the art comes into it......clever chopping, stretching, pitching, sequencing etc......

Ideally you should ascertain the length/tempo by referencing the source material rather than by referencing any loop points which you are shifting around....in other words messing around with your own point of reference is a bad idea......ideally you should know the length and thus the BPM before you even start rolling a loop.

The best way to ascertain the length/tempo is to time the source material with a stopwatch, the principle is the same with tap tempo but tap tempo doesn't give you the loop length like a stopwatch does and because tap tempo is set up to be fool proof it actually tends to be less accurate than a stopwatch used to time a bar with two presses where any error gets divided down in the BPM calculation.

Now while it is far more natural to count along and time the source material with a stopwatch it's a bit difficult to time the beginning of a track but one way to overcome that problem is to simply flip the track backwards so that you have a beat to count along with before you hit the part you want to time.....and yeah you can't assume the entire track has rock solid timing.
 
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