Mixing with LIVE

muscleandhate · Post by **muscleandhate** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:41 am

The beatmatching never seems as 'tight' as a decent DJ on turntables/CDJs. Opinions?

Moreover, what happens in LIVE when tracks have 'natural' changes in BPM?

lerky · Post by **lerky** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:45 am

maybe your tracks aren't warped 'tight' enough
zoom right in...

lifeafter2am · Post by **lifeafter2am** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:50 am

My mixes are WAY tighter in Live. I cut each track up into little pieces and then mix them in piece by piece. Adding some loops here and there and some sound clips.

I have a few intelligent drum and bass tracks that have natural tempo changes in them, and Live handles them quite well. Its really about how well you can warp the tracks.

--lifeafter2am

BinaryB · Post by **BinaryB** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:25 am

so a bpm change is a bpm change ...

what makes it natural ?

as opposed to un.

cheers

BinaryB · Post by **BinaryB** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 6:56 am

please vote if you want to.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=48087

Ableton Approved Hardware Poll

mylkoa · Post by **mylkoa** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:07 am

Yeah, it would be nice to have a function to slightly tug at the speed of a track.

The "Nudge" function is sort of like that, but from what I can gather, it's tied to the Global quantization, which makes it awkwarde for me when I'm triggering at 1 bar or even 1/8.

Could be wrong though, haven't explored it enough to be certain.

HRFQ · Post by **HRFQ** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 11:03 am

I've only just started playing around with mixing using live but everything has proved to be even better than I expected. Beat matching is really good once you adjust the warp a tiny bit.

barry tone · Post by **barry tone** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:17 pm

i know what you mean HRFQ

i've DJ'd with vinyl, CDJs, Traktor and am now starting to experiment with live and for me the problem is this ....

you need to be able to nudge the tracks by TINY amounts.

for my first experiments with Live (for DJing) i've warped some tracks using the metronome as a reference, so now these tracks all 'sync' together fine (as you would expect).

howver, some of them do not 'sit' well with each other. they are 'synced' fine (ie they don't drift) but they need nudging to make the mix sound right.

i think this is because all tracks have a different relationship to the standard 4/4 ... ie their funk.

a classic example is mixing a 4/4 house beat into a breakbeat track. both are synced to the metronome, but put them together and it sounds terrible. with vinyl etc you can just drag one back off the beat a tiny amount till they click.

so, i could do this in Live by adjusting the warp markers or the start point but then for a different track this adjustment would not work.

i guess what i'm saying is that a mix of two tracks is unqiue and adjusting warpmarkers/start points on the fly is not realistic. a 'micronudge' DJ function would be great for me. is there one i've missed?

C.

http://www.myspace.com/chogburley

RePeter · Post by **RePeter** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:28 pm

I recently built a bidule patch which allowed you to nudge the tempo verey slightly, then have it return to normal.

it works perfectly for nudging ableton into time with vinyl, but you couldnt nudge a single track and leave the others.

You could set the quantize to "none" and play with the clip nudge, however i hate doing that, since it then messes up the next mix and you will need to re-align everything.

robin · Post by **robin** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:55 pm

barry tone wrote:i know what you mean HRFQ

i've DJ'd with vinyl, CDJs, Traktor and am now starting to experiment with live and for me the problem is this ....

you need to be able to nudge the tracks by TINY amounts.

for my first experiments with Live (for DJing) i've warped some tracks using the metronome as a reference, so now these tracks all 'sync' together fine (as you would expect).

You can select all the warp markers and zoom in and move tiny amounts with the curser keys. This only needs to be done once remember cos you can save it.

If you stick with it warping gets a lot easy. It must be done manually though the autowarp never works that well for me.

Of course the difference in the swing and stuff is something you'd have to have a good handle on for vinyl beatmatching. Some tracks don't go tht well together no matter how well synched they are.

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:01 pm

Proper warping and preparation

Technic's drift so you have to deal with that but if you're digital you don't have to worry about that as much

for warping set your drag the first marker to the one then go all the way to the end and set those so you don't have to use warp markers which makes the music sound aweful

I can't wait for torq though - for me djing is all about a pitch control <-- I need my pitch control, I love my pitch control, it's the reason why I bought this watch so people could stare at it while my hand is on the pitch control, oh pitch control I love you so much...

that's just me though

FYI I don't set warp markers, as in make those yellow things

phil909 · Post by **phil909** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:16 pm

"howver, some of them do not 'sit' well with each other. they are 'synced' fine (ie they don't drift) but they need nudging to make the mix sound right.

i think this is because all tracks have a different relationship to the standard 4/4 ... ie their funk.

a classic example is mixing a 4/4 house beat into a breakbeat track. both are synced to the metronome, but put them together and it sounds terrible. with vinyl etc you can just drag one back off the beat a tiny amount till they click."

hi chog - do you still play at pigeonhold @ the s&c in islington?

the above sounds like you haven't warped your tracks properly.
i used to get this all the time when i first started warping tracks....

4/4 based breakbeat should sit perfectly well with 4/4 based regular 'house' kick pattern. i highly recommend using a 4 beat, 1 bar kick drum pattern from a sample cd to aid your warping. this way you KNOW your kicks are all aligned up - you can hear the 'flamming' effect very easily if they aren't - much easier than the metronome. after discovering how to warp a track quickly and accurately i have never had the need for 'nudging' a track unless trying to sync to a cdj/vinyl....

robin · Post by **robin** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:17 pm

djadonis206 wrote:
FYI I don't set warp markers, as in make those yellow things

How do you mix then?

robin · Post by **robin** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:21 pm

phil909 wrote:i highly recommend using a 4 beat, 1 bar kick drum pattern from a sample cd to aid your warping. this way you KNOW your kicks are all aligned up - you can hear the 'flamming' effect very easily if they aren't - much easier than the metronome. after discovering how to warp a track quickly and accurately i have never had the need for 'nudging' a track unless trying to sync to a cdj/vinyl....

Good advice. I do that too after ditching the metronome (does your head in after a while, the metronome).

monica · Post by **monica** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:24 pm

i do really have a question.i am new in ableton and by trying to mix i encout a problem.i use a mac and live 5.2.i've created a set and all it's ok.but the decoding cache in music/ableton/live recordings/decoding cache is getting full with wav documents.i don't know what to do,as i've already tried to enlarge the size of the cache and nothing.if i empty the decoding cache i lose data and every time i open the set i have to load again the songs.when i get new songs in my set,at the end i click on everyone and after that save from the left side in the bottom.and than i close the set.what shall i do in order to not encounter anymore this problem?thanks a lot.