This article will cover the most efficient way to alter the BPM of a track, then render it with the intention of playing it in a DJ format.

To begin, import your track into the arrangement view in Live. In this example I will be using the first track off The Designer EP entitled ‘Rolled Oats’.

Make sure the track is un-warped! This is extremely important at this stage.

Now, slice your track on the very first beats transient. You may have to zoom in fairly fair to do this. After making this slice get rid of the start of the track for the moment and just concentrate on getting the rest of the track in time.

Move the track on to a bar with a whole number. So bar 9, or bar 10, or bar 56, doesn’t matter. Just NOT something like 10.1.2 or 9.1.4, that will make things very difficult. I have moved it onto bar 11.

Now turn the click on and listen to the track, is it in time? If you are a DJ, it should not be hard for you to hear if it is in time or not, treat the click track as if it is another track playing against the one you’re trying to get in time. If it is in time, and you’re working with a mastered track that is turned up to the same level as the click, the click will almost disappear when you get it in time (especially on 4/4 kick tracks).

The next step is to move the click around until you get your track in time. In this example, my track is 103 bpm, and when I set my click at that rate all the transients line up to the grid.

Once you get your track in time, hit the warp button, and turn the mode to either re-pitch or complex pro. In this example I’m using re-pitch. (Note: If you do use re-pitch, changing the bpm WILL change the pitch of your track).

Now change the bpm of your track, in this example I’m going to change my bpm to 120.

You are now ready to render your track – before rendering your track, use the shortcut Command + Shift + A to select all the content within it, then:

It’s up to you what bit-depth and sample rate settings you use. I am not 100% what bit-depth CD-J’s can handle, however I know that most standard home CD players can only read 16bit wav files. So to be safe maybe it’s a good idea to change your bit-depth to 16bit before rendering your track and burning it to a disc. A sample rate of 44100 is fine.

Cheers,
Bill.