Mixing with Launchpad questions

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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devour
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Mixing with Launchpad questions

Post by devour » Thu Aug 30, 2012 12:29 pm

Hello.
I'm sorry if there is a topic about it already I didn't really have time to read all of the topics. My questions are very simple: If I want to DJ with Launchpad live, which Launch mode should I use and should I use beats or re-pitch? (I'm not using headphones.) I just want to know what's your thoughts about it guys.
peace

yur2die4
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Re: Mixing with Launchpad questions

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Aug 30, 2012 5:35 pm

That has to do with how you prefer to handle mixing in various keys. And whether or not you are using extreme tempo deviations from the original material.

Beats can give you little warbles at the increments of whatever setting you choose. Repitch is smooth as long as you have as few warp markers as possible.

Warrior Bob
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Re: Mixing with Launchpad questions

Post by Warrior Bob » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:17 pm

devour wrote:I'm sorry if there is a topic about it already I didn't really have time to read all of the topics.
There is a search function in the upper-right, for future reference. No biggie.

There are actually two questions here:
devour wrote:If I want to DJ with Launchpad live, which Launch mode should I use
Traditionally DJing with Live is done with Session View clips, which are controlled through the Launchpad's Session mode. This is nice because you can use warping to sync tempos to the project, and you get all the nice LED feedback on the Launchpad to see what's going on.

You can occasionally pop over to Mixer mode if you want to do things like stop all clips or disable tracks or mess with send levels. I personally think this is too cumbersome so I just use a different MIDI controller for that.

And of course, User 1 is great for triggering effects, but again, you have to switch modes so I usually use another controller.
devour wrote:and should I use beats or re-pitch? (I'm not using headphones.)
peace
Headphones or not shouldn't make much difference.

The different warp modes all work differently and you should probably read about them in the manual to get the best explanation. The best strategy is to pick the one you think best suits what you're doing.

Re-pitch is the only mode that allows the pitch of your tracks to change based on the speed of playback, like a vinyl record. If you're okay with this, then it's actually the "highest-fidelity" of the warp modes because it doesn't do any granular tricks to preserve pitch.

Beats mode splits the recording up into little time-based slices, which is great for preserving transients (works well for drums) but is pretty obvious on more tonal material.

For DJing I generally prefer the Complex Pro algorithm because of how well it handles general-case tempo shifting, although on some recordings there's a bit of a "washy" sound in the high mids and sub bass that isn't desirable, and for those I'll usually try to use Beats and just make sure not to play them that far from the original tempo. This is more noticeable on larger speaker systems but you can hear it in headphones or on small systems if you pay close attention.

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