Sampling tempo

L

lewisclaresbeats

New member
yo whats up, i've been sampling for about a month now (been producing for 2 months all together), the problem i always seem to get when i sample is getting the sample tempo to match the drums, i always have to pitch the sample up or down just to make it fit in, i usually chop my samples up in 1/4 or 1/8 and lay the sample down with the metronome tempo, but yet the tempo still doesn't match the drums, like i said, i always seem to have to pitch the sample up if i cut it up in 1/8 then when i chop it up in 1/4 i always have to pitch it down, so then sometimes i try upping the tempo and when it fits, the tempo is to fast its at like 110 bpm (which is the normal tempo of the sample), if you check out my latest beat on sound cloud its called "lewisclaresbeats - Past Memories - 2pac Style Beat" (it won't let me post the link)
i'm pretty new to sampling so don't judge me, Thanks!
 
Every measure within a certain BPM will have a set length, for example a 1 bar sample at 110 BPM will be exactly 2.181 seconds long and if you attempt to shoehorn that sample into a length determined by a different tempo like say 2.222 seconds at 108 BPM it will fit, however the divisions within that 110 BPM bar will not line up with the divisions of the bar at 108 BPM and towards the end of the sample there will be a slight skewing and the last 1/4 will be off by something like 0.041 as opposed to the first 1/4 that should only be out by 0.010 or some shit, in other words the problem compounds towards the end of the sample.

Chopping samples shorter will make accuracy in relation to tempos and lengths less important but as the difference between one tempo and another widens so too does the effect of skewing, it's not all bad though because sometimes a slight skewing can actually sound good, but because most people like to skip learning how to make proper loops they tend to rely on flukes rather than knowing how to make shit work in relation to tempo and length.
 
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yeah mann, i get what you mean, but how do you pick the right tempo for your sample? lets say if i wanted to sample a song and it was 145bpm and i wanted my beat to be 87bpm how could i make that fit together and match the tempo of my drums?
 
lewisclaresbeats said:
yeah mann, i get what you mean, but how do you pick the right tempo for your sample? lets say if i wanted to sample a song and it was 145bpm and i wanted my beat to be 87bpm how could i make that fit together and match the tempo of my drums?
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Just like making a proper loop you would select a starting point and then position the end point at the correct length in relation to the sample's tempo and the amount of bars, so if you are using 1 bar and the tempo is 145 BPM you would place your end marker 1.655 seconds away from your starting point, then time stretch from 145 BPM to 87 BPM, after stretching you can do what ever you want, chop it in half, play it backwards, roll it up and smoke it.

The critical thing to understand is the relationship between lengths and tempos, because the software you use has no idea if you cut the sample to the correct length or if you entered the correct tempo, it will just stretch your shit based on one or the other, stretching any error you might have made along with it.
 
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hollandturbine said:
Every measure within a certain BPM will have a set length, for example a 1 bar sample at 110 BPM will be exactly 2.181 seconds long and if you attempt to shoehorn that sample into a length determined by a different tempo like say 2.222 seconds at 108 BPM it will fit, however the divisions within that 110 BPM bar will not line up with the divisions of the bar at 108 BPM and towards the end of the sample there will be a slight skewing and the last 1/4 will be off by something like 0.041 as opposed to the first 1/4 that should only be out by 0.010 or some shit, in other words the problem compounds towards the end of the sample.

Chopping samples shorter will make accuracy in relation to tempos and lengths less important but as the difference between one tempo and another widens so too does the effect of skewing, it's not all bad though because sometimes a slight skewing can actually sound good, but because most people like to skip learning how to make proper loops they tend to rely on flukes rather than knowing how to make shit work in relation to tempo and length.
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I don't get this...can you explain?
In 1 bar there are 4 beats no?
so if the tempo is 110 beats per minute wouldn't 4 beats or 1 bar be equal to 3.6 seonds?
 
^Huuuhh??? How is that equal to 3.6 seconds bro. 4x27.5=110 beats so every bar is slightly above 2 seconds.
 
I may just have been calculating it wrong...
but I don't get the calculation??? I understand that ur splitting 110BPM by 4 which is 27.5
so what that tells me is that there are 27.5 beats for every 15 seconds.
15/27.5 * 4 = 2.18
my bad bro u where right thanks for that though.
 
What do you for when the sample changes tempo?
This group I'm sampling right now tends to change up tempo in their song, I'll have a nice loop but when I go and grab other loops in the same song for an intro or maybe course for example, I notice the tempo changes?
I understand timestretching however I don't quite understand the process of matching everything up? Do I simply just use time stretch to match the tempos of all my samples?

I know that the pitch and scale can factor in wether or not the samples will gel, but I figure if it's from the same original song I shouldn't have any problem.

Any ideas?
 
with Ableton you can match tempos. make sure you main sample in tempo with the metronome. if your sample is too fast use the /2 fuction which will slow it by half, or the *2 which will double it in tempo. All other minor changes have to made manually within the sample itself.
 
TDOT said:
What do you for when the sample changes tempo?
This group I'm sampling right now tends to change up tempo in their song, I'll have a nice loop but when I go and grab other loops in the same song for an intro or maybe course for example, I notice the tempo changes?
I understand timestretching however I don't quite understand the process of matching everything up? Do I simply just use time stretch to match the tempos of all my samples?

I know that the pitch and scale can factor in wether or not the samples will gel, but I figure if it's from the same original song I shouldn't have any problem.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

What I do is work out the correct length/tempo of the individual sections and then apply time stretching.

Where people get into trouble is when they ignore the relationship between length and tempo, if you set the wrong length or tempo you will end up magnifying any errors when you stretch and that could result in shifted note positions at the new tempo, usually going out more dramatically at the back end, so if your beats lined up with other beats on the grid at one tempo but don't line up after being stretched and placed against the new tempo then that's whats up......this is not to be confused with swing in the source material, that's something entirely different.
 
very simple solution to this problem. there is a time stretching feature that comes with some daw programs. its changes the the tempo without affecting the pitch. so if you had a four bar drum sample at 90 bpm and wanted to change it to 98 bpm, the time stretching feature would change the tempo. when you pitch the sample up or down your just messing with the tuning and that can make the sample sound like a chipmunk. dont want that. try timestretching. goodluck
 
trial and error my man..u have to figure this sorta stuff out for yourself otherwise it wont make sense to you. Usually the way I gauge it is you need a 2 bar loop to be between 4.8 - 6 seconds. Pitch your sample up or down to this speed and you should be able to get your drums to fit around it easy enough
 
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