Here’s another technique I’ve used when not being sure where to place fixed Ableton Live warp markers. In this case it is Janet Jackson’s What Have You Done To Me Lately. First time I heard this track was at a huge club in London when I visited the place while taking company courses in Birmingham… That track over a huge and good PA system made a big impression, indeed.

Anyway, the actual warping of this track should be very straight-forward, as there’s a very definite beat and Jimmy Jam&Terry Lewis as producers definitely has the beat locked down.

There are, however sections, where’s this big reverse cymbal at the end of the fourth beat, and it will make the waveform look very muddy and unclear concerning where the border beat for the fixed warp marker should really reside.

What I’m doing in such cases is just to make sure that the previous line, here 118.4 in the image, is aligned to a visible transient. By the help of that the next section, 119, will naturally align at the right position.

Remember that the warp markers in Ableton Live are like rubber band knots, if you move something around, the rest between the fixed warp markers will stretch and re-align, so you could always see how it all fits together looking at all the transients. Some of them will make visible blocks of audio, and if those block fit well into  the lines, then the warping should be OK.