APC40 Mix Two Scenes

[Syncretia]

There is probably some documentation on this so please point me to it if you understand what I am talking about.

This is the scenario. I have two songs. I have broken the songs up in to 8 tracks each. I have divided the songs in to 4 scenes each. So, I have 8 scenes in total. I want to play the scenes in sequence. I can do this with follow. However, at the end of the 4th scene (end of the first song), I want to mix in to the 5th scene (start of the second song).

How would this be done with the APC40? How can I use the cross fader to do this?

[S4racen]

You need to have 16 tracks, set the first 8 to be the left of the crossfader, with the second 8 to the right....

Cheers
D

[Syncretia]

Hmm....

OK. But, that seems problematic because the APC40 only has 8 track level faders. Can you give me a bit more detail about how you personally would do this?

Thanks

[S4racen]

Thats the only way if you want to merge between two songs, use value scaling mode for you midi preferences....

Alternatively get a second APC40 if you don't want to move the clip launch grid around....

That is if you want things simplistic, otherwise you need to be creative with where your clips are placed...

Cheers
D

[Syncretia]

Thanks. But, my question was more like

How the hell do I use the crossfader?

Let's say I have 4 tracks from song 1 and 4 tracks from song 2 lined up in the same scene. How would I crossfade between the two sets of tracks? The manual says jack about how to actually use the crossfader.

[S4racen]

Ahh sorry... on the right hand bottom of the screen you'll see a little x button, click this and it brings up the crossfader settings for each track you can set each track to left right or not effected... then the crossfader works as described!!

Cheers
D

[Syncretia]

Yes. You're right. It's finally clicked for me. Brilliant. Thanks. I actually found that in the documentation last night. I was looking under the APC40 doco, but it was actually in a differenct section. Incase anyone stumbles upon this thread, here are some steps that I've written up. It will work with songs written in Ableton or any other DAW.

1) Download and install the trial version of Ableton Live from the website if you don't already have it.
2) Pick two songs that fit well together. They don't have to be complete. They just need to have a couple of sections that have drums, bass and melodies.
3) Pick a BPM and Mix down the important tracks to WAV file on your hard drive. You can have as many or as few tracks in Ableton as you like, but I recommend breaking up your tracks in to Bass, Kick, Snare, Percussion and Melody. Just make sure that you name the wav file after the track name and song name. You should end up with 10 wavs in total if you use the tracks I mentioned.
4) Open up Ableton and add a track for each of the wav files. Make sure the names are easy to read.
5) Switch to arrangement view
6) Drag the wav files from the hard drive on to the timeline for each track.
7) Select a whole section of music from your first song by highlighting the bars vertically across all tracks for the song.
Press control-e to slice the section
9) Copy the sliced up parts
10) Switch to session view and paste the sliced up parts horizontally across the tracks for the first song.
11) Repeat steps 7-10 for a section in the second song.
12) Open up the crossfading UI by clicking the little "X" in the bottom right and corner of the Ableton screen.
13) Assign all the first song's tracks to "A", and all the second song's tracks to "B"
14) Hit play on the scene's play button
15) You will notice that both songs are played at the same time. You can adjust the individual tracks volumes now, and you can crossfade between the two songs.
16) For further experimentation, slice out more sections of your songs and place them along the vertical timeline of scenes in Ableton session view.