live djing/remixing

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Guest

live djing/remixing

Post by Guest » Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:01 pm

I fiddled a bit with the demo. I'm mostly interested in live for djing purposes, and I think it could make a super program with some small adaptions. The way it is now it's not flexible enough.

My idea is to have a soundcard with multiple outputs and attach a mixer. Or control the ableton mixer from an external interface (I think tascam makes these kinda mixer interfaces that are in fact just midi controllers...)Anyway, you get the picture, I want to mix it off with real sliders and knobs, and use my laptop/ableton live as sound source. This is possible already, so that's cool.

If I load complete tracks I could dj by selecting my tracks from my hd and putting them in the slots of the tracks. But for that I may just as well use my records and 1200's.

It gets interesting when you cut up tracks to make rough re-arrangements on the spot to blend perfectly with the rough re-arrangements of the other track...

---intermezzo---
okey okey I know LIVE isn't really made for djing but I have this idea and live comes really really close :-)
------

So what would I need to dj...

- A way to save/open 'the multiple loops/ mixer-tracks/ scenes that form a track' on the fly. The only way to save the stuff that forms a track alltogether right now is to save it as a liveset, but when you load another liveset the music stops... It would be enough for me if I could append a couple of scenes to the liveset on the fly.

- A quick way to rearrange the key assignments of the slots. Like, by selecting a group of key assignments that I can drag and drop (all within the 'slots' section)

- Improved browsing. Not in a filesystem way. I want to tag my loops by giving them descriptions like 'minimal housey with plastikman sounds' or something and then do a search in a search engine fashion. When I'm djing I'm looking for a type of record most of the time rather than a title. This would be the ideal way to catalog my records/loops in the way I think about them, and it would be perfect to quickly find the appropriate next record/ set of loops. I even have some more ideas about the ideal music-file browser but I'll shut up here ;-)

So apart from the browsing thing I could do the trick with 2 laptops and a midi sync... But I'm a poor student and 1 laptop was expensive enough already ;-)

Anyway, the extra's I'd like aren't really purely for dj purposes. I think the people doing livesets of their own tracks would greatly appreciate this extra flexibility as well.

ryansupak

Post by ryansupak » Thu Jun 05, 2003 9:04 pm

hi, i use the software for similar purposes.

in my case, i fire everything off from the session view (not the arranger view). so, it is easy for me to have preset groups of shots/start positions within a song that i can grab and mix in very quickly.

the way i do it is this: i only use 6 tracks and four session spaces deep per track that are actually being actively played with at any given time. (6 tracks X 4 spaces = 24 trigger possibilities at any given time, and i have 24 keys on my midi controller so it works out neatly).

aside from this 6X4 "active grid", i have an almost endless amount of unused grid spaces. i can arrange groups of shots that represent "tracks" in vertical lines, and easily copy and paste them into the "active grid" when i'm ready to play them. it's as easy as digging in a crate, maybe easier. :)

also, you can set aliases and color codes for different shots in the session view. therefore, you could have your hard techno songs aliased as "hard techno" as shades of red, and your ambient techno songs as shades of blue, or whatever makes sense to you.

once you have the whole "crate" arranged like you want it, just save it as a Live document. in this way you could have different entire "crates" saved as different documents.

i hope this helps,
rs

bob

Post by bob » Thu Jun 05, 2003 11:39 pm

Thanks for the reply! The way I fiddled was in the session view anyway.

Also I found out that you can select a group of files in the filebrowser and drag em onto the tracks. So if you make a folder for each track you could have your tracks in blocks and select the from your harddrive.

I'll try to demonstrate what I was talking about...

Suppose you have a track with some slots filled... Like, suppose you cut the ever famous knights of the jaguar in pieces:

TRACK 1 * TRACK 2
============= *
| [intro jaguar ] | *
| [+kick ] | *
| [+ride ] | *
| [+hihat ] | *
| [restofbuildup ] | *
| [stringspeak ] | *
| [breakdown ] | *
| [melody solo ] | *
============= *

I'll call the box (the | and = ) around this block of [loops] the midi/keymap window.

Now, I want to enque another block of [loops] that form a track under the jaguar block. When I'm done playing with the jaguar I would like to like scroll down in the track and the midi/keymap window should shift along.

Now, if I could browse these blocks of [loops] in a decent fashion, then you basically have what it takes to beat the crap out of finalscratch :P

Scrolling the slots within tracks would violate the scene idea...

too bad ;-)

[wishful thinking mode OFF]

ryansupak

Post by ryansupak » Fri Jun 06, 2003 3:47 pm

when i first started messing with the session view for djing, i had the same wish as you: that the "trigger window" would scroll along with me.

however, now that i've used it more, i'm glad it doesn't. here's why:

if i progressed along in my set by scrolling downward, i'd be much more scripted in the order that i played things. i find that by

"moving groups of clips to the trigger window"
instead of
"moving the trigger window to the clips",

i have much more flexibility not only in terms of what order i play things in, but in terms of what track a given groups of clips will be assigned to. (sometimes different effects and eq settings are being used on different tracks.)

your mileage may vary,
rs

Guest

Post by Guest » Tue Jun 24, 2003 12:08 pm

I would like to have the option like NI Traktor to be able to loop on the fly when playing a 5 minute file ( whole track). So to be able to click on a button which would loop at the next bar for 2, 4, 8 beats etc and then click to carry on the track.

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