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Well, I'd hit a problem because I didn't know what the BPM of the DMX acapella was, so it was just a case of trial and error repeatedly stretching the track by different ratios trying to get one that fitted. It's worth noting as well that if you're gonna do something like this then keep undoing any stretch that you apply before you stretch the track again - it keeps the sound quality higher. I found that stretching (technically I was compressing it, but CEP2 calls it a stretch so I'll stick with their terminology) to about 137%. That's a hell of a stretch, and I'm not happy about it, so here's what I did.....
I don't like having to speed up a track that much - it makes it more difficult to line up an acapella with an instrumental. As I said on the last page, I could always speed up the final mixdown if I want it to run faster. So, back to the drawing board. I wanna keep the quality high, so I re-opened Long Hard Road... and re-saved it. My calculator says that if I've gotta speed up a track by 37% (as I've done with the acapella) to get it to 130 BPM (as my instrumental was before I reopened it) then it must be around 95 BPM. Guess I was a little way off on that estimate of 110 BPM, huh? I could have always made it easier for myself by listening to the full DMX track (i.e. with the original instrumental) and just clocked it then instead, but I can't be bothered downloading an extra track.
Now, our two source BPMs are 124 and 95 (roughly) so I'm just gonna pick a target speed between the two. 110 BPM sounds about right, so I'll need to slow down the instrumental to about 88.7% and speed up the acapella to about 115.8%. Flipping back to Multitrack View and lining the two tracks up, things still weren't quite there, so I re-tweaked the speed of the DMX acapella again to 117%. This worked great when I lined up the chorus, so I'm gonna stick with it.
Now I've got the two tracks running at the same speed the hard work is done. All that remains is to get them working together well. The first problem is with the chorus - the instrumental chorus loops 4 times, but the DMX chorus only loops twice. Simple solution is to make the DMX chorus loop 4 times instead. I flipped back to Edit View, zoomed into the waveform (the magnifying glass buttons, remember) and selected just the chorus. I then copied it (ctrl-c) and went Edit | Paste to New (ctrl-shift-n). That gave me the chorus by itself as a new waveform. I saved it, then flipped back to Multitrack View and inserted this new waveform.
I also needed to remove the original chorus. First I selected the approximate place where the chorus starts in the acapella, then right-clicked and selected Split from the menu. This split the waveform into two parts in the mix (like having the same file open twice).
I then zoomed in and with my left mouse button I dragged the ends of the waveform (shown in blue in my pictures) so they didn't cover the chorus (shown in yellow).
Lastly, I moved the next verse out of the way, and duplicated the chorus. Right-click on a waveform and select Loop Duplicate..., then type in how many duplicates you want (in this case I just wanted 1). Bing, hey, go! I now have a chorus that loops 4 times instead of twice. N.B. you can also make a sample loop automatically, but it puts a real strain on the processor (I'm using a 500 MHz AMD K6-2 with 192 Mb memory) and as a result can mess up timing - it's easier to do it this way.
Playing it through I also found that I needed the second chorus loop to slightly overlap the first otherwise the timing wasn't quite right. No problem - I just moved the second one onto a new line, zoomed in, and made them overlap a bit. Played it through a couple of times to get the timing right, and that was it - my chorus is now in time and sorted.
Once my chorus was in place I set about lining up the verses to the music as well. Same process really, and I'll not repeat myself and bore you with details I explained above. I wound up with the arrangement below. Again, blue bits are verses and yellow bits are choruses. Had to chop some of them up a bit and move them around to fit the tune, but you'll be able to tell what's gone where by listening to the end result.
What we're left with is a fairly servicable bootleg mix. However, some stuff is still too loud for other bits and it still needs some polish. This is the final step of the process, but it's important. See how I finished this boot.....
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