The acapella prep tool · free for macOS

Beatgrid acapellas without fighting Rekordbox or Serato.

Acapellas have no kick drum, so Rekordbox and Serato guess the BPM and the downbeat, and miss. CrateCut is the prep tool built for vocals: tap the beat, web search the real BPM, land the one, then push a clean grid to your DJ software.

See how it works

macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon· Rekordbox & Serato

The problem

Your DJ software can't find the one in a naked vocal.

Serato and Rekordbox grid full tracks fine. The drums tell them where the beat is. Take the drums away and they're guessing: the first syllable isn't the one, the BPM lands wrong, and a vocal that felt fine for four bars slides off.

The BPM comes out wrong: a 128 track read as 168.

The first word gets mistaken for the downbeat.

The vocal comes in just before or after the one.

Endless nudging inside Grid Edit mode.

Fake kick intros, click tracks, or a trip through Ableton.

Loading the original track on a second deck just to line it up.

How it works

A prep workflow made for vocals.

Do the timing work once, in a tool built for it, then mix without fighting Grid Edit mode.

01

Drop in the acapella

Pull straight from a Rekordbox or Serato playlist, or bring in a fresh vocal or stem.

02

Find the beat and lock it

Tap out the beat, web search the real BPM, jump to the one, and fine-tune to the millisecond.

03

Push to DJ software

Send a clean grid to Rekordbox or Serato, backed up first and fully reversible.

Try it live

Everything to land the grid, in one screen.

This is the real review screen, running on a real acapella right here in your browser. Press play, tap the beat, jump to the one, fine-tune to the millisecond, then confirm.

Festival Set: Acapellas

Waterfalls - Acapella - 138bpm

James Hype

BPM138
Detail8 bars

0 taps

Play, then tap along with the beat

Tap with wired or built-in audio. Bluetooth headphones delay what you hear and will shift your grid late.

Find the 1

1 Beat

Fine

Confirm the grid to continue
“Waterfalls” by James Hype/real Rekordbox waveform/turn your sound on
The toolkit

Built to find the hidden beat.

The vocal already has timing. It just doesn't have a kick drum. These are the tools that pull the grid out of it, fast.

Find the beat by ear

Tap along with the track and CrateCut drops the grid right where the beat falls. No kick drum required, no flat waveform to squint at.

Fix the wrong BPM

Web search the real tempo right from the app and lock it in. The cure for the 168-when-it's-128 guess.

Land the one

Jump the grid a full beat at a time until the downbeat sits on the bar, not on the first syllable.

Tighten it to the millisecond

Fine-tune until it's locked all the way through, not just “fine for four bars.”

Works with your stems

Pull from a Rekordbox or Serato playlist or drop in fresh vocals and stems, then push back, backed up and reversible.

Before / after

Drop the two-deck detective work.

The usual way to grid an acapella is a stack of workarounds. CrateCut replaces the whole thing.

The usual workaround

  • Load the original track on deck 1
  • Load the acapella on deck 2
  • Copy the BPM across by hand
  • Nudge the grid bar by bar until it lines up
  • Add fake kicks or bounce it through Ableton

With CrateCut

  • Drop in the acapella on its own
  • Tap out the beat
  • Web search the real BPM and lock it
  • Jump to the one, fine-tune to the millisecond
  • Push a clean grid to Rekordbox or Serato

No fake kicks. No click tracks. No Ableton detour. No two-deck guesswork.

The community database

Every grid you fix trains the next one.

Each grid you confirm is fingerprinted and added to a shared database. Across thousands of DJs, those grids combine into one community-vetted source of truth for each track.

Your audio never leaves your Mac. Only an anonymous, non-reversible fingerprint and the grid numbers are shared: no account, no email, no file names.

Read the privacy policy
Coming soon

Auto-grid. Apply the community's consensus grid instantly. You always confirm, it's never silent.

Get CrateCut. It's free.

Beat-grid your acapellas in a fraction of the time, then load them straight into your next set.

macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · Auto-updates built in

FAQ

Questions, answered.