Here are some tips that came out of our Tutorial session -
1) You can delete warp markers by double-clicking them. This comes in handy if you insert a "1" somewhere in the middle of a song, and you want to warp what comes before it.
2) You can set your "1" at any 1 in the song. If you're having trouble finding a "1" near the beginning of a song, just lay it down where ever you feel comfortable. Sometimes it's easier to hear a "1" in a drum break or outro with no vocals. Another tip for finding a one, move your body /bob your head to the beat and count out loud.
3) For acoustic songs (no drum machine), find a one and use "Warp from here" instead of "Warp from here straight). this will cause Ableton to put yellow markers in areas that deviate a lot. Ableton is getting better at this and this method works often enough that you should try it before warping by hand.
4) For real stubborn songs, you don't have to warp the whole song. Use sections of 2 to 16 bars that you care about - like a drum loop, chorus, intro/outro - just warp those sections and loop it. That's more than good enough for DJing in many cases, and all you need for mashups.
5) You can use looping to help with warping. So if a song is particularly stubborn, you can try fixing the warp markers by hand for 8-16 bars. Then loop that section. When you've set your loop, click the loop bar so that it changes color. Then hold down shift + your up or down arrow. The loop bar now jumps forward or back in 8 or 16 bar chunks, depending how long your loop is. So when you jump ahead, all you have to do is check to see if the end of the loop is right and then adjust accordingly. And so on.
If you haven't watched the tutorial I posted on warping in the previous post, please do so. That's basically what you will do 90% of the time. It will only take you about 10-20 seconds per song once you have it down.
Now, for warping Acappellas, which we will do together in class, here is the methodology I use:
1) Warp the original song
2) Grab the BPM of that song after it's warped from the clip view (where it says "Seg. BPM")
3) Plug that BPM into the master tempo box in the top left
4) Take the acappella and listen for the chorus, which always starts on a "1". Be careful, sometimes the chorus comes in a half beat before a one. In that case, just not the syllable or word that does line up with the 1.
5) Plunk a warp marker in that spot on the chorus - right click the transient marker for that spot and select "Set 1.1.1 Here". If there isn't a transient marker in that spot, you can make one by double clicking in the wave on the spot you want.
6) Now, right click on that warp marker and select "Warp XX BPM from Here" - that XX BPM is the same number you plugged into the master tempo on the top left (that's why we did that).
I use this method and it works for me pretty well. I also find it the fastest. You should still listen to the acapella after step 6 and make sure it works. play a drum loop to see how it sounds with the acapella (you can use the metronome too). If the song starts to go out of synch, it's cuz your "1" marker was off. But that's ok, you know where the chorus' should be, so just zoom to the next chorus and make sure it's starting on a bar. And now you should be good to go.
And remember, you don't have to use an entire acappella. Sometimes we just want the chorus or particular verses. We'll practice this in class.