In this tutorial about warping with ableton live, I’ll go though some simple techniques to teach new users how to use the warping features.
Let’s start with the warping that most people will be interested in, warping whole songs so they will play in sync with other tracks so you can create dj mixes for example.
Go to lives preferences and select the ‘defaults’ tab, make sure ‘Auto-warp long samples’ is turned OFF, it never gets it right and adds a ton of warp markers you will need to delete again.
I don’t use the metronome, I found it best just to have a good clean 4/4 kick drum pattern to check timing against, so find a good clean 4/4 kick and add it to an audio track, this will be the anchor we use to check for flanging ( 2 kicks slightly out of sync, creates a very noticeable double stroke that is the hallmark of a bad mix. )
Now import a track, for this tutorial select a track with a very steady beat, like your standard dance/trance track.
First thing we will need to do is select the downbeat, many tracks have an intro with no steady beat like a noise sweep or similar, we want to find the first kick downbeat what the main rhytm kicks in.
To do this the easy way, zoom in a bit in the waveform and play the track and use your eyes and ears, where you hear the first kick place the start marker (The black arrow) right there, now context click on the start marker and select ‘set 1.1.1 here.
Notice that you now get a colored warp marker there, zoom in a bit more and make sure it is dead on this firt kick downbeat, you can select the warp marker with the mouse and then use the arrow keys to fine tune the position.
Now make sure the Loop button is on, and set the loop start position to 1.1.1 and set loop length to 4.
Now play the loop and lets look at the damage 
Sometimes you get lucky and the loop is dead on, but most of the time we will need to adjust it a bit.
Go to where the loop ends where it says 5 and context click on the point, from the menu select ‘warp from here straight’
Now we have a 4 bar loop, start the loop playing and start your control kick pattern.
If the loop is not dead on you will now hear flanging kicks, to correct this select the warp marker at the 5 point and zoom in there, when zoomed in a bit start adjusting the loop end marker using the arrow keys ontil you hear the control kick pattern line up perfectly with the tracks kick.
Now we got 4 bars warped dead on so lets speed things up a bit.
select the loop brace with the mouse and hit the up arrow, this will flip the loop brace so it now starts at 5 and 4 bars onwards.
Now since we allready have 4 bars warped dead on, this means the 5 marker is set exactly where bar 5 starts, we could go on like this but it would take ages so go to the loop lenght box and set it to 8
Now the loop end is at 13 so we continue like we did before and context click on it and select from the menu ‘warp from here straight’ again.
If the loop goes out of sync with the control kick, simply select the end marker at 13 and then zoom in a bit there and use the arrow keys to adjust it so the track comes back into sync with no flanging.
Now repeat, select the loop brace again, hit up arrow to flip the range, this time set loop length to 16, this makes the end of the loop be on 29, we do the same here as the previous times, select 29 and context click, select warp from here straight, adjust the loop end marker if necessesary to bring the loop back into sync.
From here on we simply keep selecting the loop brace, hit up arrow to flip the range, select ‘warp from here straight’ at the loop end point, adjust, flip loop brace again etc.. until we reach the end of the track.
Now your track is warped dead on all the way though.
Now all there’s left is for you to add loop markers at points to map out changes in the track, like breakdowns and such, because having markers allows you to quickly set the loop brace between 2 markers if you want to have that part looping while you mess around with it, for example you could have the breakdown marked where there is no drums and drop in your own drumloops, or other elements such as your own basslines superimposed on top of the track to add your own touches.
This ends my little warping with ableton live tutorial, you have now learned how to warp a whole song, warping small loops should be a walk in the park when you can warp a track, most of the time ableton will warp short loops dead on so you should rarely have to do that manually.
Dj Rodrigo Miranda 