Ableton DJ'ing : My Method

[experimedia]

Maybe something like this has been mentioned here before in the past, I am sure many others use this method, but I havent really seen it mentiond here recently so I thought I would take the opportunity to share.

My outlook on it is if your going to dj digitally why not do something an average vinyl dj couldn't do.

Rather than importing and warping an entire track I prefer to cut the tracks into phrases before bringing them into Ableton.

To do this I use Sound Forge myself which I use to explain this example....of course any solid wave editor will work.


1. I usually start by finding the first downbeat...bypassing all the intro crap for now. I drop a marker on the first beat. Then I drop another marker so that my region covers usually 4 measures which is often times the length of a phrase. Now sometimes its hard to tell if you selected the perfect timing down to the millisecond and chances are you wont get it right on.

2. What I do to make sure I am at least close before I start cutting is I use the move selection equal distance keyboard shortcut (on PC : 'Shift+>' to go forward : 'Shift+<' to go back).

3. I do this command and drop a marker at the end of every selection aka every 4 measures. When I am most of the way through the track dropping markers every 4 I find a region that seems pretty basic and play it to make sure the timing is perfect (ie: starts at the right position in the beat and ends in the right position on the beat). If its not I just undo (ctrl+z) until I am back to the first region on the first beat zoom in (scroll up) to the end of the region (end of 4 measures) until it is zoomed close enough to see each point and guesstimate slight adjustments.

4. Then I repeat step 2 and 3 again and make sure the timeing stays as precise as possible even towards the end of the track. This sounds like it may be tedious and sometimes it can be with a difficult track but shortly after starting to use this method I was usually able to have my timing perfect on the 1st or second attempt.

5. I then go back to the beginning of the track if there is any intro stuff/build up etc. And go backwards from the initial region dropping markers. If I want I can cut off parts of the intro or outro, or all of them together...or add silence so that everything comes out even.

6. Last I save several versions of the track to experiment with. First I will save a full version. Then one with any intro and outro cut off. Then I will start cutting it down into measures. I will copy and paste to new ('Ctrl+E') different segments...say 16 regions (16 selections of 4 measures). Then down to 8 regions. Sometimes down to 4 selections, or 2, or 1.

7. I will usually always save a couple files consisting of only 4 measures...at least one from towards the beginning and one from towards then end. Right there that pretty much gives me my bpm when loaded into Ableton...and when I load the longer peices (4 measures x 16) I will know the exact bpm to set it on and be confident that the timing will be perfect.

8. Then if I want I can cut them down into even smaller pieces in Ableton easily...however it may suite me.

9. To me the advantage of this is actually being able to cut up the tracks on the fly while you are playing them. So its like doing remix/edits live on the fly while also mixing/battling multiple tracks. Sometimes I will even have parts of the same song on two separate tracks. Like a sample loop from the track or effect that I can throw in whenever I like. Using this method is a great way to work if you like the change tracks constantly. I like to use 30 or more tracks in a 70 minute set. Of course it depends what kind of tunes you are working with and personal preference. I myself have been doing eclectic mixes of dark Electro, IDM, and Techno using this method.

10. Then of course you would take it further by adding fx/eq/filters to your channels, or sends...whichever you prefer.


This way if a vinyl snob (guilty of that myself in the past..but ableton changed that) tries to say...why don't you just use records...tell them...try to do this with records (which actually I am sure an exceptional vinyl dj could do with the right equipment....ie: high end mixer, 3-4 turntables, multiple copies of the same record, fx and repeaters.


I dunno I hope this gives some people some ideas...and most of all I hope I explained it in a clear enough manner. This method works wonders for me and I just thought I would share. After a long time of djing I got really bored with just mixing two or three records in and out of each other. I enjoy the ability to be able to disassemble the tracks phrases and rearrangeing, chopping, cutting, and mixing them all together with other tracks as well as throwing in my own loops. Ableton together with a midi controller (novation x-station for me) for me gives me unlimited possibilities when it comes to djing and beyond.

[supster]

Thats awesome, you should see the post in here about warping tracks the EZ way though:

http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=forum

Gonna save you some time ..

[experimedia]

I assume you are talking about this....
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11736

The link you sent just took me to the forum index. I read that too. But that way you are just warping an entire track. The way I prefer to do it is cut the tracks into smaller parts so I can easily cut up and rearrange the individual tracks while mixing them with peices from other tracks. I have used that warping tip in some instances though. I just thought I would share another method. For what I do with my mixsets this is the easy way.

[Zayne]

There's one problem I have with the way you cut these files up - it's destructive editing. Why cut up the file in a wave editor, when you can warp the entire track in Live , then copy the clip into another slot and change the part of the file that gets played? That way you can easily select a section of the song bar by bar or even beat by beat without having to keep checking things aurally. Once it's properly warped and saved as the default for that clip, you never have to worry about getting the start of the phrases correctly lined up.

Just my thoughts. Hope it helps.

Cheers

Zayne[/list][/list]

[Zayne]

There's one problem I have with the way you cut these files up - it's destructive editing. Why cut up the file in a wave editor, when you can warp the entire track in Live , then copy the clip into another slot and change the part of the file that gets played? That way you can easily select a section of the song bar by bar or even beat by beat without having to keep checking things aurally. Once it's properly warped and saved as the default for that clip, you never have to worry about getting the start of the phrases correctly lined up.

Just my thoughts. Hope it helps.

Cheers

Zayne

[mforness]

Zayne makes a good point, but (and this has probably been covered before I'm sure) correct me if I'm wrong, let's say you have a song in a clip slot and you only want to play the first verse so you set the loop markers around the first verse and save the clip so that that the next time you pull in this clip it will retain the loop settings. But let's say you want to later play the chorus, so you copy the clip to another clip slot and set the loop markers around the chorus. And you save again. When you pull up this track later in a new liveset, are the loop markers set around the verse or the chorus? 1st save or 2nd save? Does it only depend on whichever is the last one that you saved in it's clip/track view/settings? I hope I explained this well. Just wondering how to save two different loop settings with one track. Probably not possible I guess. Do you have to create a 2nd copy of the whole song/wav file? If so that's gonna take up a lot of disk space. Perhaps that's why the destructive editing in the wave editor was suggested. I dunno...can someone set me straight? thx

[Zayne]

Aha! Interesting question. Didn't think of that. I'm giong to try see if you could get around this by simply renaming the clip. I'll post what I've discovered.

[toneroll]

You open sound forge (or your choice)
open the file, do the normalising compressing on it all (if needed ), select a region, the begining 1/4 or however small the segments then click copy not cut.

open new---paste-----save as (different name) close.
go back to file hiold the cursor over the the beginin of the selected bit then drag to the right for the desirerd lengnth (making it exactly start where the other stopped) copy -new paste .... blah blah..

then you just close all you windows and you have the original intact and loads of precise cuts in another file like *cuts --- plus you can do it all within LIVE by clickin edit in the sample window.... incedently doing this and putting all 3/4 or five of them in a row then follow actions enabled would be a well easy way to warp them , loop bits in them etc but still act like a full song ... and then chuck all your own loops etc in between.

think LOOPS not SONGS....

[experimedia]

Yeah breaking down to loops before hand is what I was getting at. I always keep a copy of the full track but then have a folder with it broken down into phrase loops so I can remix it up a bit. I even sometimes go further by making copies of some of the loops with different effects...or reversed what have you.

So not only are you able to mix different tracks in and out of each other...you can mix parts of the same track together with different fx, reverse, transpose, etc...in other words as well as doing a standard dj mix set you take it one step further by completley remixing/editing each individual track.