Traktor Pro not beat gridding properly?

[DiscoMagic]

Hello

Not sure if this is the right terminology, but my Traktor Pro is not matching songs up with the correct beat grid. The Result? Syncing is out.

For example, a nice simple track such as Stevie's Superstition which has a fairly distinctive beat to it, seem to put Traktor into disarray where by the beat grid simply doesn't recognise that downbeats or any other for that matter!

Has anyone else had any problems like this, or is there something simple like a setting that I have missed?????

Thanks to all

[DJ Jules]

I'm not an expert on Traktor, but in Virtual DJ (where you can see the beatgrid and the waveform while the track plays) I've noticed that a lot of older tracks where none of the instruments are electronically generated might seem to have a distinctive regular beat, but actually the tempo varies a fair bit throughout the track (speeding up and down). If Traktor Beatgrids in the same way as VDJ, then it'll identify what it thinks is the BPM at some point in the track and then try and establish a first beat of the bar somewhere in the track and then it'll grid the rest of the track based on what it thinks it knows from this.

This means that the grid is accurate at some point in the track, but if the beat is irregular then the grid will be off. Good examples of this I've found are Living on a Prayer (even the Mastermix DJ Beats version), almost anything by the Jacksons/Jackson 5 and your example - Stevie Wonder's Superstition.

Sometimes you just have to do it by ear, and keep adjusting as the beat varies The alternative is to pull the track into editing software and "adjust" it to make the tempo regular. Which has always sounded like more trouble than it's worth to be honest.

Julian