Ableton suitable for megamixing?

Havoc · Post by **Havoc** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 5:59 pm

Roger that. ^^

Is it possible that you send me the file you megamixed with Ableton?

Just want to hear your style if it is ok.

anonymouse · Post by **anonymouse** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 6:20 pm

Live can do some of what you need, but if you want to do a professional job you'd be better off with Cubase SX3. One thing that springs to mind in Cubase is that you can take your tempo track wherever you like. But primarily, I recommend Cubase because it is a dedicated linear sequencing tool. Live's arrangement view is good, but it is not up to the task of a 70 minute epic megamix/cut-up/mash-up where you want to blend chalk and cheese tracks together and finely manipulate their structures so as they flow together smoothly for several bars at a time, and then change into something totally different time-signature and BPM-wise. In Cubase you can start your project by filling he media pool with all of the loops, samples, beats and noises that you want to comprise your collage and then start building your tracks. So before you get to that stage you'll have to put in some hard work in Sound Forge or something like it.

In my small understanding of 'megamixing' (now that I understand the term means cut-up/mash-up) it is not about building up loops; instead it is about having a catalogue of cuts from commercial recordings that you want to spilce together that for several bars at a time you want to make a fresh tight perspective with by for example, dropping bottom EQ from one stereo pair and using that of another, or finely matching beats visually across multiple tracks. .

You'll find a lot of enthusiasm for Live on this forum. And Live is a looper's dream. But megamixing seems not to be about looping but rather it is about merging multiple disparate channels in tricky ways along a linear sequence of cuts and grooves. Otherwise it would not be so interesting.

This is of course a Live users forum, so do expect a heavy bias towards Live being capable of absolutlely everything. But I'd strongly recommend you consider Cubase SX3 number one, and Acid Pro number 2, and Live number 3 for this project.

Havoc · Post by **Havoc** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 6:32 pm

Thanks mate, you have helped me a lot!

What about Adobe Audition, is it suitable as well?

anonymouse · Post by **anonymouse** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 6:42 pm

i've not used Audition much, but just before you posted your reply above, i was about to mention that I did like what I saw with Audition insofar as visual timestretching is concerned. You can use neighbouring tracks on your screen as a very useful guide for where you want your waveform peaks to match, and then just drag your target sample around to fit the requirement. It is really intuitive and visual.

- you can do things similar to this in Live, but Audition is first and foremost a detailed sample editor, so it wins hands down if you want to keep everything in the one app.

I'm a Sound forge 8 user, but I know for sure that Audition, given its long history as a shareware product, is extremely well featured.

SX3 offers nice mouse clink-n-drag timestretching also but if you are already an Audition user, and used to the way it works, I think it is a better choice than Acid.

Live will not be good for a mash-up - in the Strictly Kev/2manyDJs model. But it would be the best app if you wanted to build a loop-structured remix.

Maybe someone who knows for sure can confirm, but I think once you have loaded a loop into Acid, you can't re-timetretch it with the same freedom as you can in Audition or SX3. So maybe Acid is a bad choice if you expect you want to timestretch loaded samples many times within your workspace, after you have already loaded them into the project.

dj metronome · Post by **dj metronome** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 8:40 pm

why bother with all the audio editing apps, when al you need to do is warp, select and consolidate?

The only thing is-you need perfect cuts, and if your warping anything other than strait 8's, 16's whatever, you can loose the feel.

SimonPHC · Post by **SimonPHC** » Sun Apr 24, 2005 3:29 am

dj metronome wrote:The only thing is-you need perfect cuts, and if your warping anything other than strait 8's, 16's whatever, you can loose the feel.

aha, but here the art of knowing 'what' to 'warp' 'when' comes in handy.
My grandfather always used to say: "Don't overwarp, son"

(he didn't say any of that, btw)

guess · Post by **guess** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 4:33 am

if you mean megamix in the style of steinski, latin rascals or solid steel, then ableton can do everything you need and more.

check this mix called 'ilovedisko' aka 'disco sucks'

http://www.musicfromspeakers.com/music.html and click ilovedisko

over 100 tracks in under an hour, made entirely using Live.

anonymouse · Post by **anonymouse** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:27 am

i've never pushed Live to take as much as 100 clips of 30+ seconds each for a single mix. Pretty impressive. Must have taken a lot of work to even get the wavs together let alone mix it.

I'm not sure if this is a megamix though? It is more like 100 tracks in rapid back-to-back - I *think* a megamix is layering of 2 or more diverse tracks to get like, Kylie acapella Can't Get U Outta My Head over New Order's Blue Monday etc

Havoc · Post by **Havoc** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:41 pm

I don't like those songs created with Ableton. But it depends on my taste.

When megamixing, you overblend the jump of the bassline of two tracks crossing each other. Well, what you've said, is right as well.

Thanx for all these answers! Didn't expect so much. And annonymouse, thanx as well, m8. Your comments helped me a lot and they were very explicit. I love you for that.

(in a platonic way) ^^

AndrewDuke · Post by **AndrewDuke** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:17 am

Havoc wrote:Thanks mate, you have helped me a lot!

What about Adobe Audition, is it suitable as well?

i was happy with adobe audition 1, but was totally unimpressed with the "vst support" i paid for for audition 1.5; told tech support and the company itself about this and neither gave a damn, so definitely try the audition demo out before you think about buying it. andrew

guess · Post by **guess** » Tue May 10, 2005 3:50 pm

anonymouse,
this mix has many instances of two (and more) tracks at the same time. listen again.

what you are talking about (acapella + beat from different track) is more commonly known as a bootleg or mashup. we do those too...