Ableton and Final Scratch2, a la richie hawtin?

[exvinyljunkie]

first of all, this forum is great

i've had records and tables for years, but am about to purchase Live, and possibly FS2 as well, so that I can still have vinyl control over my music.
I was wondering if anyone knew how Richie Hawtin's setup works logistically? I know he has FS2 on one laptop and Live on the other, but are the two communicating with each other somehow? I mean, can he control clips from Live with vinyl by running them through the FS2 traktor program, so that they're beatmatched and can take advantage of the warp markers? or is he just spinning and using live as a third (and fourth and fifth) table and for effects and loops? I'm just using what he does to inform my ideas for what I will do. Been researching both FS and Live for months, but I'm still not sure exactly how I want to do this. Would love to use FS2 if I could have everything marked so that I wouldn't need to spend time beatmatching with the vinyl. otherwise everything will be sync'd in Live but will still have to be beatmatched manually on the tables.

any help would be great. thanks!!

[drush]

I mean, can he control clips from Live with vinyl by running them through the FS2 traktor program, so that they're beatmatched and can take advantage of the warp markers?

no

or is he just spinning and using live as a third (and fourth and fifth) table and for effects and loops?

yes, exactly

Would love to use FS2 if I could have everything marked so that I wouldn't need to spend time beatmatching with the vinyl.

if you spend more time thinking about it, you'll realize that makes no sense. seeing as the tables manually start and stop via you and have that whole pitch control issue...

otherwise everything will be sync'd in Live but will still have to be beatmatched manually on the tables.

yup. at least everything coming from FS. things coming from the ableton computer are not involved with the tables. unless it's a matter of audio from FS/the mixer being effected via efx plug-ins that are in Live and therefore subject to Live's tempo world.

he keeps the two sources in sync via a midi-driven BPM slave. you can achieve this with some of the Red Sound devices, the fancier Electribe boxes, etc.. he also uses a separate controller for the Live clips (usually a Faderfox, but i'm sure he has 19 different controllers), and a hardware looping bpm-driven sampler. the Live computer is both an efx box for the ~vinyl and a separate source. quite often these days with his sets the tables aren't doing anything. and the further down this road you get, the more you will probably realize you don't want or need FS at all. or if you do it's just b/c you love that vinyl/manual beatmatching feel. but don't expect Live to help you DJ in the traditional sense via FS.

[exvinyljunkie]

thanks so much for your reply and your help. i kind of figured what you said was the case, but was still a bit confused. although i didn't know about this:

he keeps the two sources in sync via a midi-driven BPM slave. you can achieve this with some of the Red Sound devices, the fancier Electribe boxes, etc.

so...in fact he does use something to keep everything, FS + Live sync'd, just that it's only keeping the bpms sync'd, while he still has to drop the needle on the vinyl physically in order to get it going together with what's playing in live. but the bpms will be the same so they'll pretty much stay in sync without much work. (does that sound accurate?) those bpm slaves sound pretty interesting, i might look into one of those if they're not to expensive...

thanks again. (oh, and does anybody know what kind of sound card he uses for this kind of a setup? haven't found that out on the web, and i need to buy one anyway when i get my new live 5 in a couple of weeks! so i'm a bit curious)