How to change the BPM of an acapella?

  • Thread starter Thread starter C.G. Productionz
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C.G. Productionz

The Certified Genius
Does anyone know how? I have a beat thats 140 BPM and I want 50 Cent's In Da Club acapella on it which is 90 BPM. I heard Benny Benassi's In Da Club Remix which was great quality and sounded like it was really fast too. Are there any programs that will do this and still keep the quality? I know Pro Tools has Time Compression Expansion but I know I'll lose alot of quality to the acapella with that
 
warping, and chopping. Changing pitch or stretch algorithms.

A Lot of programs will do it, get a good DAW if you want to keep the quality, something like Ableton, FL Studio, or if you are on Mac then get Logic.
 
FL Studio does it? The DAWs I have are Reason 4, Pro Tools 8 LE, FL Studio 7 and Cool Edit Pro 2

If anyone can give some instructions thatd be great

Thanks!
 
C.G. Productionz said:
Does anyone know how? I have a beat thats 140 BPM and I want 50 Cent's In Da Club acapella on it which is 90 BPM. I heard Benny Benassi's In Da Club Remix which was great quality and sounded like it was really fast too. Are there any programs that will do this and still keep the quality? I know Pro Tools has Time Compression Expansion but I know I'll lose alot of quality to the acapella with that
Click to expand...

actually, I find with Time Compression expansion
if you cut up the chunk of audio so that each individual word is separated before you use time compression expansion
you'll end up with way better results.

I find when you try to do a whole chunk of audio at once,
the time is slightly off on certain notes/words and you get some volatility in the audio itself sometimes.

As long as you make sure that the beginnings and ends of the separated audio clips are brought back together with the TCE, you shouldn't lose too much audio quality.

It very much depends on how big of a difference in tempo we're talking about to.


You might have already tried all of this,
but it could be helpful info.
 
tempestmichael said:
actually, I find with Time Compression expansion
if you cut up the chunk of audio so that each individual word is separated before you use time compression expansion
you'll end up with way better results.

I find when you try to do a whole chunk of audio at once,
the time is slightly off on certain notes/words and you get some volatility in the audio itself sometimes.

As long as you make sure that the beginnings and ends of the separated audio clips are brought back together with the TCE, you shouldn't lose too much audio quality.

It very much depends on how big of a difference in tempo we're talking about to.


You might have already tried all of this,
but it could be helpful info.
Click to expand...
Each word?! damn... Thats like 5,000 chops lol
I had this same problem trying to match MOP's Acapella for "ante up" to this track-https://www.futureproducers.com/for...s/flip/flip-alan-goraguer-psychedelia-419722/

No way in hell Im gonna chop each word though. Just not worth my time or the outcome I'm sure...
For those with patience however, who knows.
 
JGrisly


It's not as much work as you think once you start getting into a flow with it.

I've done it like a thousand times now.

Yea, it's definitely a practice that requires a lot of patience,
but you can get it done in one night if you get in a groove.

The results are so much better that it's definitely worth it if all the other options don't cut it.
 
Most DJ's would not try to beatmatch something that is that far out, BPM-wise, so that's a clue that this might give you some trouble. What they would probably do is pitch-control it into place, but that doesn't necessarily give you the rhythm you want, and if you've already got a backing track in-mind, you've got to match keys of course. You should probably start by making the beat that you want to add to the acapella a lot closer to the original 90 BPM...

GJ
 
that's not always a viable option though rhythmgj
It depends on the song I guess

This thread has turned out really good though,
because now anybody who's reading has a whole toolbox of different approaches to the same problem.
 
tempestmichael said:
JGrisly


It's not as much work as you think once you start getting into a flow with it.

I've done it like a thousand times now.

Yea, it's definitely a practice that requires a lot of patience,
but you can get it done in one night if you get in a groove.

The results are so much better that it's definitely worth it if all the other options don't cut it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can dig it. And I believe the results may be better.
But- Zoom, chop, chop, chop, zoom, chop. Too close to "office" work for me. I'm Liable to flip doin somethin like that.
 
yea that's the nature of post production I guess
Not many people like that aspect of writing music.

Well, just save the technique for when you have no other choice I guess.
 
tempestmichael said:
yea that's the nature of post production I guess
Not many people like that aspect of writing music.

Well, just save the technique for when you have no other choice I guess.
Click to expand...


i agree with this.. just recently i did a dubstep remix of a track that had rap vocals in it (something totally new for me) and i had to do just this: chop, timestretch, place, repeat... i was able to get by with just chopping into individiual verse lines (e.g. 3-4 word phrases) but i can see where going down to individual words would have yielded even better results.. there were a few lines where the (because of the rappers galloping style) not every inflection fell exactly on the downbeat...

i heard a couple other remixes of the same song and sure enough the producers were lazy about it and the rapping was too fast, completely offbeat, or both, lol...

as tempestmichael said yea its work to do but the end result is superior.. and yes this is a great example of how producing is "work" just like any other work...
 
90 to 150 bpms is usually too big of a stretch so I suggest several things.

1. Think of your 150bpm track as being 75bpms (75 x 2 = 150). That brings you closer bpm-wise. You can also think of the vocals as being 180 bpms, which is also closer.
You match them by that ratio and the adjusting should be easier with fewer artifacts.

2. Cool Edit Pro is still one of the most advanced wave editors and does tasks like this quite easily. Ideally, you want to walk a fine balance between matching pitches and matching speeds/lengths. Even a masterful DJ is allowed for some pitch drifting as he blends records so no one should expect exact results either way- aside from being on beat at important junctures. So you don't need MORE SOFTWARE(s).

3. You should already have a BPM chart which translates BPMS into seconds and milliseconds....you can google one off the net. This is what you should be using in your studio as a guide for these kinds of tasks.

4. If you are only interested in this one task then....
a) Open a session at 150 bpms
b) Insert any wave form or the acapella (rename it and 'save it as' something like "acapella Edited")
c) Select 1 Bar [using Display Time Format (Beats and Bars)]
d) Switch to decimal view [using display time format Decimal mm.ss.ddd you will have 1.600 (that is the length in TIME of 1 BAR @ 150 bpms
e) Switch back to multitrack, change time display back to bars and beats and change session tempo (Window/Session Properties) to 90 bpms
f) Select 1 bar and view time as Decimal and you will find 2.666 (this is for 90, but you could do this for a 180 bpm session as I suggested)
g) Select that ONE BAR --> Effects, Time/Pitch --> Stretch
h) You want to take a bar that is 90 bpms (Slow and long) and speed it up to 150 bpms and shorten it's length. The top will be Ratio 100/ Length 1.6. You want to resample (trying this first) and stretch that 1 bar to 2.666
i) You don't have to actually do it. You want to save that preset something called '90 to 150 Resample' all you care about is the RATIO (166.627) because you can apply this ratio to the ENTIRE ACAPELLA. After you save it PRESETS [Add] you hit cancel and select the entire acapella and then apply this new preset you've created.

** You can use these same numbers and try Time Stretch (preserve pitch) too.
The idea is to create a template based of a small section and apply it to the entire song/wave...now you can select short pieces and long songs- even with silence at the start or end and not have to worry so much about the little parts. A general sliding back and forth of the vocals over the music should line them up.

*** You can also mix and match these two options so you speed the vocal up some (before chipmunk) and then apply the stretch that preserves pitch after.
In other words, go from 90 to 110 using one method and then go from 110 to 150 using the other.
It's all about the RATIOS.
 
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