Mixing in Differen BPM's

Hi all,

My first post to the forum and I’m in need of help please!

I’m a big fan of Audacity, I’ve been using it for a while now for my mixing. You can view all my mixes done with Audacity at http://www.mixcloud.com/darren-holmes

I’m currently in the middle of making a new dance mix. At the moment my tracks are all at 128BPM but I want to increase that to 130BPM on the next track and then further down the mix I’ll increase to 134BPM, 138BPM.

How do I do this? Currently I’d import the audio track and then I’d change the BPM of the new track by going to Effect → Change Tempo and change it to 128BPM, but I don’t want to do that as it loses the integrity of the track.

I’d really appreciate any help.

Thanks! :smiley:

Effect > Change Speed has the same effect as goosing the large speed slider on a 1200SL turntable. Tempo has to rip the music apart and put it back together again with a different beat pattern. Change Speed is much more graceful about it (but the pitch is going to change).

You can also try Effect > Sliding Time Scale… The effect causes less damage, but it takes longer.

Koz

Attached (frowny face).

Koz
Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 11.30.07.png

The Change Temp effect is quite handy for working out how much “percent change” is required. For example you can see that 128 bpm to 134 bpm is 4.688 percent.
Select and copy that value (Ctrl+C) and then cancel the effect.

“Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift” generally produces better sound quality, but doesn’t have the handy conversion facility - no problem. you’ve copied the percent change, so open “Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift” and paste the percentage into the tempo boxes. Of course, as the name says, you can also use this effect to gradually speed up or slow down the music. http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sliding_time_scale_pitch_shift.html

As koz wrote, if you were using turntables, then both the pitch and tempo would change - that’s the same as the “Change Speed” effect (which has the best sound quality of all of this group of effects).