Please improve manual beatgrid edits

[anupjsebastian]

Djay’s Fluid beatgrid is fantastic 99% of the time, but for the 1% of the time it does not get it right, it is pretty frustrating to edit the beatgrid and get it corrected manually.

There is a real issue when it comes to editing beatgrids.

TLDR - Please try mapping Go Back by John Summit and Sub Focus, and you will understand my pain points.

There is a part in the middle of the song where the song jumps from House around 136 bpm to Drum and Bass at 174 bpm. The tempo shift is gradual but also very fast in the sense that it happens in just a few bars. Djay does not keep up with this all the way.

Now that would be normally not much of an issue as you could just go and edit it to get it right, but grid editing is not functional at all.

1. Firstly, the metronome is not accessible within the grid mapping menu. The sampler has to be open, and it turns off upon pausing the track, which you would want to do multiple times when you are tempo mapping. You have to turn it on each time you hit pause.

2. There is no easy way to tell djay what the tempo is after a certain point. There are anchors but they do not do anything other than get djay to adjust the AI.

I get that ideally the AI should handle all cases, but fundamentally it is pretty important to have a good grid editor as well, as there will always be some cases where the AI does not behave as expected.

[Slak_Jaw]

Hi @anupjsebastian, welcome to the Community! Thanks for bringing this specific track to our attention. For starters, please refer to the linked FAQ below for more information on how the Fluid Beatgrid system works in more detail:

https://help.algoriddim.com/hc/en-us/articles/11611322144284-How-do-I-use-Fluid-Beatgrid-in-djay-Pro-for-Mac

1. Good point regarding the Metronome - I will pass this feedback onto the dev team for consideration.
2. Also a good point regarding the tempo after a certain point. In most cases, setting an anchor point solves this. Can you please share an example, perhaps from another DJ software, on how you think this should be handled or improved?

• I’m not sure if I have the exact same track as you, but djay seems to do a good job of beat gridding it for me.
• Yes, there is about a 30 second section before the drop (between the red and orange hot cues) where the BPM is transitioning, but the automatic grid looks perfect before and after this section.
  
  
• If you need the grid to be perfect during this changing BPM section as well, adding multiple Anchor points should help. I was able to get this pretty close on the track I have, although it did require about 10 additional anchor points.
  
  

[anupjsebastian]

The track is correct. It goes out of time from bar 71 onwards for me, so please double check on your end.

The issue with the current implementation of anchor points is there is only a way to give it an anchor point and tell it to try again, but no way to direct djay to go in the right direction, as in tell it what the bpm should be until the next anchor point and so on.

I tried setting an anchor at bar 71, but how do I tell it what the bpm is supposed to be? The nudge buttons under the anchor also affect the grid before the anchor.

Another pain point is the bpm field is not a slider where I can hold my mouse and drag, and see the beatgrids change (like most other DJ software), but have to manually type it in each time.

Now Djay has one of the best auto beatgrids, so there are things that it does better than other software, but the manual process is superior in other software.

I tried this in Rekorbox with their dynamic analysis and it got the tempo change right. As of a good implementation of grid editing, Traktor and Rekordbox do a good job. But if you ask me, the best option would be no not necessarily look at other DJ software but look at DAWs instead, where you are able to add anchor points, but also edit anchor points that are before the last anchor point. Also being able to drag anchor points after you have placed them. So you can like add a point, zoom in, and adjust it precisely if necessary, without needing to delete first, etc.

Ableton’s Warp markers are a good reference, or the way you can map a track’s tempo in Cubase or Reaper.

Hope that was helpful. The only solution for this at the moment seems to be to add so many anchors, like you do in other software, which do not have Fluid beatgrids.

[anupjsebastian]

Another song that djay cannot map, even with the manual anchor points, is ten by Fred Again.

There is a mid song temporary tempo change from around 128 to 90, for a few bars and then it goes back.

The thing with this change is that it changes mid bar (from the 3rd beat onwards) and switches back mid bar as well.

Djay’s anchor points always have to be on the downbeat, so this is again an issue with the grid edit system. Other software can handle it (like Traktor, and Rekordbox) as there are options to not need to tie the anchor to the downbeat.

[Slak_Jaw]

@anupjsebastian

It goes out of time from bar 71 onwards for me, so please double check on your end.

Yes, it goes out of time on this same bar for me as well. My solution was to add an Anchor point on bar 71 and on another 9-10 more Anchors on the bars from there until the drop.

Thanks for the additional info as well - I’ve passed this onto our dev team.

@anupjsebastian

Djay’s anchor points always have to be on the downbeat, so this is again an issue with the grid edit system. Other software can handle it (like Traktor, and Rekordbox) as there are options to not need to tie the anchor to the downbeat.

You should be able to set the anchor anywhere on the waveform you want. It is not restricted to the downbeat. Are you sure that you’re trying to add an Anchor and not a Downbeat? Maybe try turning Quantize Off and trying again.

[Slak_Jaw]

Hi again @anupjsebastian, our engineering team reviewed the two songs you shared and recorded two short videos showing how they approached the manual beatgrid edits for both tracks. Hopefully you will find these helpful in understanding how to approach this. The idea is to place anchors in these segments at the correct downbeat position, and at some point it will line back up with the computed grid (blue vs. yellow markers).

Our team would like to understand more on how you’d like the anchors to behave or in what way it violates your expectations of how they should behave? If you could share more specifics or perhaps a short screen recording from from another software that would be very helpful. Thanks!

[anupjsebastian]

The beatgridding of song 1 - Go Back was actually pretty awesome from the idea above. I tried it on my end and it worked out well. That is a good way to do it.

However, the issue still remains for the second one. The beatgridding done here is kind of incorrect.

The limitation is that Djay does not allow you to set a tempo change between the bar.

The tempo for song 2 (ten) drops from 128 to around 90, on the 3rd beat of the bar. If I add an anchor on the 3rd beat, djay divides the previous 3 beats into 4 raising the tempo.

let me illustrate

the song goes | 128 | 128 | 128 | 90 |, the 4th beat alone is slower, but djay does not allow you to do this. Putting an anchor on the 3rd beat will treat that 3rd beat as a downbeat and subdivide the previous 3 beats into 4. I cannot tell djay to keep the tempo of the first 3 beats as 128 and then just the 4th beat as 90.

the same thing occurs on the switchback. I am able to beatgrid this song correctly in Traktor Pro 4.

But as I replied before in an earlier message, if you are looking for the best possible beatgrid editing method, it would be something like Ableton, where you have a robust transient detection algorithm (just like Djay does as well), however you can add and freely position warp markers anywhere. Now djay does not necessarily need to allow you to stretch audio as it is not a DAW, but free positioning a warp marker would be nice (independent of the down beat). Also another thing that no other software does as well is to allow you to edit an earlier warp marker once you have added a later one. This is possible in Ableton but not in any DJ Software.

[Slak_Jaw]

Thanks for the additional info and feedback @anupjsebastian. I’ve shared this with the team.

[Slak_Jaw]

Hi again @anupjsebastian, here’s the response from engineering.
That’s true, we don’t allow single beats within a bar to be stretched out.

Also another thing that no other software does as well is to allow you to edit an earlier warp marker once you have added a later one. This is possible in Ableton but not in any DJ Software.

You can do this in djay as well, just get close to the marker with the playhead and move it around using the fine-adjust (the closer the playhead is to the marker, the finer the steps).

[Fermioncool]

This looks really nice (learning a lot), but a question and perhaps it’s in the manual… didn’t read. Can you save such edits as a set per song? Build multiple sets and apply it as a set? (hope you don’t consider this as a thread hijack, i wouldn’t know how to as this otherwise).

[anupjsebastian]

Well, by edit if you mean setting beatgrids, they should be saved with the song (like in every DJ software). It doesn’t make sense to have multiple beatgrids for a song as there is technically just one correct beatgrid for a song.

But I’m guessing you mean something like Serato’s Flip feature where you can store cue point jumps in a certain order and create a multiple (sort of) edits of a song. As far as I am aware Djay doesn’t have this, but it would be cool to have.