Djing with Live

For me, it was dissapointing that Bill never went into djing at all. it was bassically "Dj's should lean to produce", yeah i love production but sometimes i want to rock a party too.

Could anyone clear up a few things that have been buggin me...

Firstly, How to set up good templates for djing

Secondly, Warping more complex tracks. Of course 4/4 house is going to be easy to warp, but im finding thing with chaotic drums (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im2vh2aOjfQ) or very sparse drums (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QVadIgPglM) very tricky.

Also how to work stuff that wasn't synched with midi into a set of stuff that is

Any help would be really appreciated.

Peace

+1. I would also like to know how others go about setting up good DJ templates.

+2

"Live" performance is what makes Ableton different than any other DAW and the only reason it's notable IMO. If I want to write a song I go to logic.
If and when you do make a tut please don't go simple, I.e.
"load a track to this clip, load an eq, this is a crossfadurrrr....."

but actual LIVE knowledge. Id like to learn abletons serious live abilities, using scenes and clips to trigger automation and effects, different methods of performance (stems of tunes, loops or chopped up releases)

Have you guys watched many of my Live TNT series videos?

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/live8303

I cover a lot of live performance techniques. I do stay as genre-neutral as possible though, in order to speak to all users. In the next couple days I'll be posting some live looping tutorials that I did with Gavin Castleton (check this older video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCtGNX9JHOE).

Also @CircleofPsy - for one of the final TNT videos, next month, I will be warping a capellas, multi-tracks and other tricky stuff.

BUT - I am finishing up the year long TNT series next month. So maybe I can do a "Performing with Live" series as my next Ableton Tutorial. In that I could get more specific into Looping, DJing, Live Remixing, etc...

- Brian Cass (Overclock, Inc)

I certainly have and they're great. But they dont touch on what people are doing now on Live. I've downloaded a few .als templates and it's INSANE some of the things in there. I'll look back over that series but I watched it and I learned alot, just not anything like that.

Thanks!

It is a monthly series, so there are at least 4 new tutorials every month. Although, it is almost complete now (12 month series that started in October).

And again I did touch on some performance topics, but I think it would need to be a dedicated series in order to get into the deeper stuff and build on ideas from chapter to chapter. I'll share this thread with the powers-that-be and maybe we can get a new series together with a DJ/Performance focus.

Hi Will Love,

Where did you find the .als templates you speak about. Would love to check them out.

hey. One is from Tom Cosm, world known new zealander and ableton trainer. the link is only available for subscribers tho.
just search tom cosm.

the others I'll have to find.
all files I found were googled.
ill try and post back or upload the ones I have.

Speaking back on the TNT course mentioned you do touch on some of what I was talking about with the section Dummy Clips for use with an LFO. Funny you actually mention doing more videos on that subject.
Some of these set designs are ridiculous….

I’m talking well over 10-20 aux channels routed differently alone, not counting what they’re doing with clip separation, specific aux channel for live looping of playback material in diff time signatures, Session design, like editing the session view by using dummy clips in a way that allows smooth transition from song grouping to song grouping, with different parts mapped out...

Some sets are designed to take songs apart, others designed to play self made songs in a DJ fashion. they really are quite elaborate. ill see whats up for download now...

Yea, there are a ton out there. Some are controller specific, but still good to check out if you're looking for ideas. The peeps I know that have the best goodies would be Cosm, Moldover, Ean Golden, ill Gates.

yea see you�re already there :)

learning how to wrap your head making those kind of sets would be a great tutorial.

yea, i agree. the core live stuff gets even a beginner working, my TNT stuff is made to be moderately advanced, this tutorial would be truly advanced and probably for a smaller audience. but it seems like at least a few of you guys would be up for it, ha ha.

that type of article is EXACTLY why I joined these type of sites. I’m sure theres more of us out here, they just don’t use the forum or are shy.

there might even be a target audience youre missing bc they think it’s all too remedial.
I don’t think so, just thinking out loud.
Either way, the subscribers will get there eventually right?

I'm definitely up for an advanced Live tutorial like that. Best way for transitions between tracks with Dummy Clips and routing and controller tips would be great.

I have a Launchpad and would definitely be interested in seeing tutorials on the Launchpad or APC type controllers and the best use for them in a live context.

Yes yes!

Yea most people seem to have an APC20-40 or Launchpad. I personally have an apc40. That's what Dubspot and other "Music Schools" teach with.
All the teachings would cross over though, as youd be teaching out of a screen. I don't see much use having a tutorial about those kind of controllers though, as they self assign(auto map) and are made for live use. If you're in volume mode it controlls volume/ if it's a row of 8 level faders same. Nothing to teach.
In implementation sure.
Designing a Live arrangement would require knowledge of what and how you'd control it.
This particular rabbit hole is especially deep. With Ableton you can set up unlimited to system number of tracks of anything routed to anything you want with dozens of effects and instruments/audio in-between.
It'd be great to get a "when where how and why" for all this.
All of this also branches into the "performer" category, with a lot of the sets I'm thinking of broken down like "kick loop channel, snare loop channel, synth loop channel, etc" so you can perform your own tracks as well as stem out ones you buy. Beatport and other places even sell songs in mastered stem format for this type of djing/ performing. This will be big and IMHO is where the scene is headed. That and modding out and making your own instruments like with MAX.

I know exactly what you mean, I deal with that constantly. I play instruments, loop stuff, trigger stems, follow actions, dummy clips, tempo automation, etc...

Most of the time I'm trying to improvise as much as possible, but certain cases both hands could be busy playing notes and I have to plan ahead for that. This video is from a few years ago but you can see what I mean -

http://vimeo.com/3380929

Sweet. I'll check that out ASAP.
Improvisation would be key. Haha, I opened up for a well known Dnb/dubstep group whom shall remain nameless. My set prior was done on cdjs. He was "playing live" which to most people it seems based on what i see at a club means line full songs up in arrangement view, make sure everything's on the grid/quantized and press play, occasionally quarter bar looping or turning effects on and off. Someone called for a rewind.... Haha he couldn't do it, it wasn't even in it's own clip so he couldn't restart it. Lol.
That was the set. He wasn't once I don't think in session view.
Djing turntables/cdjs is so much more "LIVE" than that. Someone djing traditionally has a chance to mess up, has to have ears to not wreck, etc. Not just press PLAY. Not even putting the songs in phase, already done.
I see the work, as it's not easy to craft a good set like that, which it was, but in that case burn it to cd or upload it and distribute. The newbies see crap like this, and not knowing any better they go out, buy a laptop, a midi controller and call themselves djs = low quality and market flooding.
I'm sure everyone knows but Panasonic shut Technics down. No more 1200s. And if you ask me I think the cdj2000 might very well be the last "deck" we see. Check out a pssl catalogue or musicians friend. It's all controllers. Barely any mixers or decks.
Largely in part bc no one has set a standard in Ableton use.
Everyone knows what to look for with a traditional dj. "spinning" has been perfected over and over since the early 70s.
It's time to set a standard, clear some no talents from the roster and show anyone on a laptop that "THIS IS LIVE", it's a synth and I just looped it, triggered my own clips, knocked my own drums, some cuts of chart toppers combined with twisted effects, finger banging basslines right in front of them.
Or so I dream.

When we started the Warper party several years ago, one of the main concerns was making sure that the crowd could see what and how you were working. So for a while we would have projection from the performers laptop, so you could see the workflow. That eventually got replaced by VJs because frankly it makes for a better party.

I still go out of my way though, to make sure that I'm visibly working hard the whole time. And hopefully peeps can see how much is being done in realtime.

At bigger events, I love to see a camera on the hands and controls of the performer. Similar to when you see some arena rock and they have large screens with close-ups of the guitar solos :)

Absolutely. It has that potential and people like Plastikman / Ritchie Hawtin, Deadmau5, Dubfire, Pretty lights really put on a show. Not my genres but amazing none the less. It's deffinetly getting more visual. The only cost effective way for me personally to branch out like that at least for live performance is a video plug in for serato..... Does that do audio with the video or is it one or the other?
Obviously the fun in that is digging your own video, but I'm sure there's canned video packs out there. Something I want to branch out to, right now though I'm trying to get my 'Live' on, with the bridge or traktor into ableton with some clever internal midi routing.
Having a screen to show the punters is obviously a great idea. I can't see warping a track in a live senario unless I'm to teach but I'm sure people do it.

As an experienced vinyl mixer and turntableist (about 12 years now) I found it hard to make the switch over to a more digital workflow, however it has opened up a whole new universe of options/ideas/workflow scenarios. I as well am using Live and also Maschine for production and DJ'ing and would love to see some advanced TNT on the subject. I have learned a lot through the various tutorials on how to apply methods I have learned over the years, in fact I am now working on designing sounds to throw into Traktor, scratch with timecode and reloop into Live as kind of a pre performance "live feel", although ideally it would be great to be able to do this in real time.
But back to the subject, Yes I would really appreciate some heavy duty tutorials on setting up and creating some of the methods stated previously in this thread.

Thats great.

Have you checked out the Maschine tutorials as well?

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/nativeinstruments207-maschine-quick-start

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/nativeinstruments208-maschines-sampler-explored

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/nativeinstruments209-maschine-masterclass