post of mine on Traktor forum

ryansupak · Post by **ryansupak** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:48 pm

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

(It was written to attempt to connect with people who DJ Top 40 at clubs 5 nights a week, which is why it has a heavily "pragmatic" slant.)

rs

**********

Re: ABLETON 5 ANNOUNCED--and look out, NI
hi,

first (and probably near the last) post on this forum.

i've been involved with Ableton since v1 -- I actually wrote the first DJ tutorial for Ableton back in 2002. I'm beta testing v5 now.

just wanted to share some thoughts from the other side of the fence -- some of it reiterating what's already been said here.

1) I don't think audiences at large are ready for hybrid DJ/Live Improv/Remix sets, though I think that this is the inevitable progression of things. In 10 years I think this notion will be mainstream.

2) Spontaneous remixing - in a fashion that is engaging to a party crowd - is hard,hard,hard.

It is mind-bogglingly hard -- because it requires a comprensive mastery of the knowledge of audio effects, it helps to know a lot about the guts of your MIDI configuration, your audio has to be prepared in advance -- and this is before you even get to touch on the musical aspects of the matter (which is what really counts, of course.)

Live 5 has introduced some great helpers, most notably the ability to control transposition, looping, nudging, and sample transport via MIDI.

But the dexterity, the hours of physical practice, the ability to cultivate the complex MIDI parsers using PD or MAX -- none of these things are yet up to snuff yet among Ableton users to really improvise like the best DJs can do.

The potential is there, but again, it's still too early.

3) Beforehand preparation - v5 has inproved exponentially in this regard. It's possible to drag in an MP3 and be playing with it in a couple of minutes.

Before, it took about an hour per song, to get all the housekeeping done.

4) Ableton - The Company: Ableton is a young, hungry, small, dynamic company. They are friendly and active on the forums (one of the Ableton heads, Robert Henke, actually signs his posts "Bobby Boy".)

Their software footprint is tiny as well: I think the size of the current binary is 13MB, and it's the most stable soft I've ever used, bar none. I don't know if I've ever seen it crash to the point where the audio stream was interrupted.

just some thoughts...
rs
Edit/Delete Message

jahnlay · Post by **jahnlay** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:57 pm

Ow, throwing down the gauntlet!

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:58 pm

Sounds good except for the hour per song per ver5. I've never spent that long prepping a track, 10-15 minutes tops. Otherwise sounds fine.

ryansupak · Post by **ryansupak** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 7:03 pm

the "One Hour" figure was for a scratchy 45 with skips in the record, and for the process of determining which portions of the song needed to be their own clips, and for being sure the song was in tune with the other songs in the set.

thx

rs

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 7:09 pm

LOL, at first I thought the topic said you posted this in the "Traktion" forum! I was like, why the hell would they care? Ooops.

ryansupak · Post by **ryansupak** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 7:11 pm

http://www.native-instruments.de/site/f ... ge=1&pp=15

here's the thread BTW
rs