Ultimate DJ Template

[hambone1]

Great set bro!! Do you use MP3s or AIFF/WAV ?? I have found its a pain in the butt for Live to always have to reload/decode the MP3 files every time. Any suggestions?

Easy one... don't use MP3s!

Hard drives are fast and dirt-cheap nowadays. At 10MB/min, you can fit 150+ track-hours of 16-bit, 44.1KHz uncompressed stereo audio on a 100GB drive. That's 2500 4-minute tracks.

Also, even high bit-rate MP3s are still lossy, and will never sound as good as the original AIFF/WAV.

[The Phat Conductor]

i'm not going to upload my template, becasue it is a full-on live set with hundreds of wavs, mp3s, aifs, etc. it would be many many gigabytes, and it is full of unreleased tunes and exlusives i can't give out. there is also a lot of secret stuff in there i don't want to give away.

if you do a search for the features i mentioned, the supatrigga crossfade, the iac routing, dummy clips, etc. can all be found on this very board.

if you want to break up a song into individual clips, then just copy the clip with the song in it, and make some new cue points/automation settings. i also loop a lot fo the sections so if, for example an intro is too short, you can just loop it up and then it will be as long as you want. likewise, you may want to repeat a chorus or something if it is really going over well with the crowd. i only really program in the automation if it's something tricky, like setting the eqs right on an older or badly produced track so that the new beats underneath sound proper.

glad you guys appreciate the set and the tips.

peace!

d

[John Sweet]

So the IAC routing could be used to toggle crossfader assignments on multiple channels along with Supatrigga & Filter Delay settings in the sends to in effect toggle the entire Supatrigga/Crossfade setup on and off, or to walk through slightly different variations of it?
I guess you could collapse a MIDI track with the right CC clips & map them to buttons on a controller like mode switches, then. Is this really how it works?

[The Phat Conductor]

you just midi learn with only the clip with the automation data playing. you can hit space and start the clip while everything is all blue/midi learn mode. then once you have routed everything the way you like it, make new clips that do whatever automation you like. i frequently use it to automate little beat juggle fill things or make stock 4 bar filter rises, etc. to free up hands for other things. it's also nice to use to automate the master, because you have to be so careful with that kind of thing.

iac rocks.

[The Phat Conductor]

oh, and btw: to set up the supatrigga crossfade you assign all the indic=vidual tracks to side a, and then a bus with a supatrigga to side b. then you send the bus with the supatrigga on it to a delay bus about 25% or so.

this makes it so that when you crossfade, it does live edits on EVERY track, but the fade and delays smooth the transition so it doesn't sound all drastic and 'clicky'.

[Patch]

The Phat Conductor - I've just downloaded your mix and can't wait to listen to it. Nice tracklist! I'm very interesting in what you are doing by way of "hip-hop style beat juggling". I've been experimenting with triggering clips of the same track with a slight offset and using a crossfader to juggle - but this can only be done for a short while before it starts to sound boring. Could you give more details of your method? Do you automate clip start points to simulate dragging the record back and changing the downbeat to the opposite track?

(As long as it's not one of your Top Secret methods... )

[The Phat Conductor]

normally i use the beat repeaters and volume faders on two tracks to do it. i find the crossfader in ableton is pretty much useless as a traditional dj style crossfader. so i'll make a patterns that could go:

beat 1 = doubled up kicks on both channels 1 and 2
beat 2 = snares doubled up on 1/8 notes on both channels 1 and 2
beat 3 = triplet roll on channel two only, fading out...
beat 4 = snare stutter on channel one with a filter rise into the return to normality

i wasn't as heavy into the iac bus automation back in august when that set was recorded, but i do a bit of it. an example is the mix into the simple things vs parliament remix. automating the supatrigga crossfader to get you some little backwards beats is handy too.

once you have a bunch of these juggle clips programmed, it's just a matter of picking the mst appropriate one for any given moment. eg. if the juggle requires snares on the 2 and 4, make sure that there are some snares there. i make a lot of them that are just repeating the first sound in a bar, switching up the beat repeater grid, and then doing a filter sweep down and back. those ones you can get away with on pretty much anything.

[Patch]

Thanks - that is very cool. Can you drop some more gems like that! It's great to see and hear somebody that is not just doing end to end mixes with live, and that is happy to share techniques. Keep up the good work!

[John Sweet]

Yeah, I haven't seen DJ tips this deep in a while, but I guess if we all hit up AJ's list we'd have it, too. In the interest of keeping this going, I'm thinking of throwng my template & controller rig up.

[The Phat Conductor]

yea, no problem.

i've been getting a lot of questions in my email and inbox here since i posted here and i don't have time to answer all of them, but i think you folks shoudl know that i offer private music instruction, which can be done over the phone or voip as well.

you can email me from my website, or pm here if this interests you. i only charge $20 US an hour for phone stuff, and i am happy to share samples and templates i made if you need em. i also do all of my music production with ableton, so i can answer more than just dj questions.

peace!

d

[John Sweet]

Live lessons… Crazy idea, but not really when you think of Live as an instrument.
I always avoided automation because it seemed too much like arrangement & premeditation, just sitting back watching things happen. But when you think about it, a tool is a tool, and this helps me remember to find ways to use EVERYTHING to suit what I want to do.

[blakejarrell]

my latest setup:

4 Audio Channels 1 Midi Channel 1 Send

AUDIO1 - Utility (set to -6db so I can slam the volume fader all the way up) -> EQ4 set up to be a transparent HPF and LPF -> LoFiPlus (knobs used to tweak lofi, bit, and waveshape) -> deciblue glitch (buttons set to control on/off and randomize)

AUDIO2 - Utility (set to -6db so I can slam the volume fader all the way up) -> EQ4 set up to be a transparent HPF and LPF -> LoFiPlus (knobs used to tweak lofi, bit, and waveshape) -> deciblue glitch (buttons set to control on/off and randomize)

AUDIO3 - Utility (set to -6db so I can slam the volume fader all the way up) -> EQ4 set up to be a transparent HPF and LPF -> LoFiPlus (knobs used to tweak lofi, bit, and waveshape) -> deciblue glitch (buttons set to control on/off and randomize). this channel is mainly used to trigger short samples etc.

IMPULSE - Utility (set to -6db so I can slam the volume fader all the way up) -> EQ4 set up to be a transparent HPF and LPF -> LoFiPlus (knobs used to tweak lofi, bit, and waveshape) -> deciblue glitch (buttons set to control on/off and randomize).

XXXXXX - Muted audio track set up to leave clips im thinking about playing etc

EFX RACK - ping pong delay on default setting with dry/wet all the way up and feedback at about 80% (buttons to send each channel to efx rack, knobs to control feedback and dry wet).

MASTER - voxegno recorder (to record my set) -> vstnotes (to take notes during my set)

bcr2000 - has knobs to control volume, hpf, lpf, lofi, bit, waveshape and buttons for play, mute, glitch, and delay for each of the 4 channel (audio1,2,3 and impulse) the 4 right hand buttons trigger the first four cells of impulse in which i have glitchy sound or samples from the songs im playing (most tracks have their own preset kit that ive made for them). knobs at the top control master volume, bpm, scene select(push for scene trigger), delay feedback, delay dry/wet, crossfader , and pushes for randomize on deciblue glitch.


folder set up...every track has its own folder in which ive sectioned each track into 4-6 sections depending on the track. also inside are parts of the track and parts from other remixes of that track, so for example:

LOSTEP_BURMA_ORIGINAL
-1 SECTION INTRO
-2 SECTION BASSDROP
-3 SECTION BREAKDOWN
-4 SECTION POST BREAKDOWN
-5 SECTION OUTRO
- BREAKBEAT LOOP
- CRASH
LOSTEP_BURMA_SASHA RMX
- BASSLINE LOOP
- CHOIR LOOP
LOSTEP_BURMA_AMBIENT RMX
- LOSTEP BURMA AMBIENT RMX

so in theory i could play the ambient mix in channel 1 with the breakbeat loop in channel two and the sasha bassline in channel 3 with the choir sample cut up and put into impulse (saved as a preset) and make a live remix. not all tracks are as easy to cut up, but burma is a good example of what i do with this setup.

[ben_blue]

i dont know why i always feel so inclined to share how i do things here, but i am. this is a general tip for DJing in Live 5. the power of this depends i guess on where you're coming from and how you see yourself using Live.
From the angle of simply mixing tracks, ala "normal Djing," there is a lot you can do, just by splitting the songs up into pieces, somewhat systematically.
this may be old news to plenty, but may help some n00bs.

take a track, duplicate it 4 or 5 times.
set the IN for clip 1 to 1.1.1.
set the IN for clip 2 to, say, when the bass comes in, maybe 33.1.1.
set the IN for clip 3 to somewhere later, maybe, the break at 97.1.1.
set the IN for clip 4 to the point where the bassline exits, maybe 217.1.1.

from there, two main routes to choose or blend:
1. loop the last 8 or 16 bars (or whatever) of each clip relative to the next clip's IN.
- example -
clip 1 - IN 1.1.1, loops 25-33.
clip 2 - IN 33.1.1 loops 81-97.
clip 3 - IN 97.1.1 loops 201-217.
etc.

the beauty of all of this is being able to compress or expand a track on the fly. prolong the bass drop, or bring it sooner by jumping to the CLIP 2. if you did want to prolong it, you might just retrigger that first clip - but usually, you would lose momentum since the track has progressed in some way from bars 1 to 33. so u loop 25-33 until you are ready to fire clip 2!

OH JOY!!!


2. the second route is to not use looping in each clip (becuase myself i am not comfortable yet with turning loop on off in clips remotely, until all the midi remote selecting weirdness is fixed.).

so then u can easily jump ahead to any clip, but each clip has the same out points - the end of the track. this way u can play clip 1, and if u never feel like jumping to another clip, u can let the song play out as normal, and same applies for all the clips.

whereas method 1, (if all clips have loop turned on) you will be required to trigger the next clip at some point.


hope that inspires someone a bit.
b

[Tyrant]

I don't understand why some people won't share their template setups ie "The Phat Conductor" If it wasn't for other people sharing their knowledge nobody would be in the position that they are now. I'm sure that if everyone had the same views as The Phat Conductor this board wouldn't be as popular as it is. (just a rant). If the reason for not sharing ideas is the amount of audio files in a set, they can easily be removed for posting the template.

[The Phat Conductor]

Well, i shared a lot of my tricks using words, not using an ableton file. this is a good thing because it means people will have to actually learn how to use ableton to use them. it's like if i just gave you all the secrets to a video game, it wouldn't be nearly as engaging to play.

i also didn't post my template because it would only make sense with the clips in it, there are hundreds, arranged into lots of scenes and automation clips. also: i only play original material, or unreleased tunes from my mates. i simply cannot give these out.

if you sit and read what i posted, it is actually quite clear how to set it up, and it is a million years beyond the previously posted templates.

they are my secrets, and i figured them out myself so i can do what i like with them. you should be happy that i have shared as much as i have. if you want the rest of the story you'll just have to come see me live, or ask me to tutor you.

besides, it would be totally lame if everyone was biting my ableton routing and spoiling all my tricks by doing them badly.

if you're really stuck, send me an email.

<3