The beat grid problems & examples thread

Well… the beatgrid problem is really difficult

  1. example one
    4/4 signature, 64 beats - bpm 120 , then break 16 beats with bpm 110 - then verse 16 beats bpm 120

  2. example two
    4/4 signature, 64 beats bpm 120, then 2-4second vocal/synth break and no beat - then verse 32 beats 120 bpm

  3. example three
    4/4 signature, 64 beats - bpm 120, then break with signature change like 2/4, 3/4 or 5/4, then verse 32 beats 120 bpm

What I feel that at the moment there are a lot of songs like example 2, where there is a break which seems to be possible to draw a beatgrid but it’s either slower/faster or shorter/longer than it could actually fit for the rest of the song beatgrid.

So the analysis software needs to detect possible BPM changes, then possible signature changes and then actually draw the grid.

Now how would the sync work if
song 1 is : 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4… and
song 2 is : 1-2-3-4-1-2-1-2-3-4-1-2-1-2-3-4

or
song 1: 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4
song 2: 1-2-3-4-___2second break -1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4
Should the 2second break to be shorter ie. faster so that beat 1 matches or longer i.e slower that beat 1 matches? Ie. to which song 1 beats should it be synced? first bolded or 2nd bolded?

Totally agree with you there. That’s why a manual grid option probably is the best solution.

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‘The Boys Of Summer’ - Don Henley @ 2:21 the break starts and Djay breaks down.

https://tidal.com/browse/track/2937526

I have been thinking about this : how would this work.

I.e dj pro has internal metronome which is used up to

  • sync 2 songs

  • “fix” live drummer mistakes i.e when “sync” is pressed beatgrid will follow up the internal metronome

So only way this could work is that there should be possibility to say that

  • on beamarker X: turn the mertronome off and just “play the song”

  • on next beatmarker Y: turn the metonome on with the same bmp NNN.NN or with some other bpm?

But if this happens when sync is turned on master deck 1 and what should the app do the trakcs which are following the master sync like deck 2. Should the deck 2 to be silenced or what should happen?

So track 1 is the master and stops the metronome … NN second break, can’t count how many beats is involved in the break, what should happen on the track 2 which is following the master track & metronome? Should the deck 2 be stopped, silenced or what?

Or we could allow to edit that there is signature change and bmp change… those should be possible to “program” to the grid, but again what will happen on the synced deck 2?

On vinyl era we just waited the beat come back and do the mixing when there was proper beat to attach to …

I don’t think you can stop the clock. :wink: It would also mess up Ableton link.

Manual markers and multiple tempos are the only way to do this right IMO.

That said, the detection could be further improved too of course. The break in ‘The Boys Of Summer’ for example is a steady hihat. Djay probably gets lost because of the guitar later on.

In a lot of cases there wouldn’t be a problem if Djay assumed the tempo wouldn’t change. It would also solve this breakdown for example.

Last night, I wanted to loop a short acapella part of a song for a transition. But because acapellas are also the part where djay gets confused about the beat grid and because djay doesn’t allow loops that are not grid-aligned, it’s impossible to pull this off. The song with the short acapella part was Missy Elliott‘s „Lose Control“. It has lots of little beat breaks and djay basically throws its arms up helplessly with the beat grid, misaligning it at every opportunity.

Really hope this will be the next big feature, it sucks more and more to not have it.

So sad that Spotify isn’t there anymore.

We could have had all needed information from through their programming interface like

So… one way to do this, is to get same data from 3rd party source so that we don’t even need to adjust this by our self… djpro only needs to figure out how to map that data to the actual waveform …

2 Likes

I don’t get it. What do you want to grab from their API? I’ve messed around with it in the past, not sure what you want to accomplish…

It sure has lots of interesting features though!

It does better job to find out these strange places that we want to manually edit for each track i.e the data is there and we want to edit it manually …

Well… this api can describe for each detected “section”

  • exact time when the section starts
  • exact time when section ends from the begin of the track
  • section duration
  • bpm
  • time signature
  • key of the section

Same for each bars:

  • exact time when bar start
  • duration of the bar

Like in the web example it describes
“bars”: [
{
“start”: 0.49567,
“duration”: 2.18749,
“confidence”: 0.925
}

This means that the

  • first bar of the track stats in 0.49567s
  • each bar duration is 2.18749s long with 92.5% confidence

By looking this data
‘Oops!..I did it again’ by Britney Spears, there is single bar with -1 BMP compared to rest of the track, just before the break, so it breaks djpro…

You can see it also here bar 52 bpm is 94 but rest of the song bpm is 95
https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/britney-spears-oops-i-did-it-again-tab-s416092

Ah! I never used that part of the API. Maybe it wasn’t available when I looked at it. Cool stuff though!

This is a problematic track…
start with slow bpm, speed up, then slow bpm break… nasty

1 Like

Dang! That’s a very nice track. I like the speed up and breakdown

Late to the party guys… :wink:

It would be nice if we could set custom downbeat colors for every 16/32/64/128 bars (Ex. Yellow, Red, Blue, Green, Cyan, Pink, Purple, Orange). This would help us identify where in the track there’s a break or a new verse.

Denon DJ have just implemented this in their Prime software

Hey @Mister_Tuur @maurizio_T @Slak_Jaw @dj_romy_fi @djjoejoe @DJ_Norm

Just wanted to wholeheartedly thank you all for the genuinely insightful and informative input you have provided on this topic. It’s a pleasure to see how this discussion has kept going since starting in August '22 and the amount of useful information featured in it :rocket:

The Devs have already been looking into implementing multiple/custom beat-grids (originally brought up here in the Community), and I will make sure to pass the information from this thread on to them, as I am confident they will find it useful.

It’ll be our pleasure to keep you posted with any updates. Cheers :slight_smile:

Another one for the record - Lone, Aquamarine.

Your getting somewhere still. Good luck on your project.

The Predator (L Double Remix)
seems to be another one for the beat grid problems thread . . .

My copy is a 12" rip, so that might muddy the results even more
Cant seem to make it fit with Dynamic or Straight.

best i can do is Straight with 165 bpm . . .
how to go from there when its not spot on?

Anyone have it from a digital source with more luck ?
(beatport reports 129 bpm and is obviously off their rocker hihihi)

weird one . . .

After replacing the BPM file with a backup, “Straight 165 bpm” fits as good as it can it seems
Both visually and audibly different from the “Straight 165 bpm” on my last attempt, where it was enough off to sound and look trainwreck level nasty.

Could it be some stuck input data, after to many tries?
I’v noticed that sometimes i need to reload a file to a deck before deleting a saved loop or cue point has any effect . . .