Ableton Forum

I know I might get a little heat for this post, but picture this:

your doing a marathon set. It's hour 5. You've burned through 200+ tracks/clips. You are 4 beers deep, about to drop a new track and then you can't remember if you played it or not.

I would love to hear your approach to this problem in Live when doing long DJ sets. In Traktor you get a nifty little icon that comes up and tells you which tracks have been played, but Live does not.

The obvious answer is folders, but my music collection is already named by key, bpm, and track, and organized by genre / intensity. I just want to play using the folders I have now and I definitely prefer to not pre-oganize the whole set. I have a griffin powermate mapped to open/close Lives browser and scroll; and I like not knowing exactly what track I'm gong to play until I select it, digging in your crate style.

Best solution I can come up with is using the clip colors to designate a track that has already been played, but this method requires you to save the clip state after you play each track. Not to mention you would need to 'reset' all your clips everytime you do a new performance which is a huge PIA!

Any other ideas?

I have a blank audio track in my set that I use to put songs I alreayd played in. Lets me make a tracklist later too if need be. If it's a really long set, I'll use more than one track if I need to.

i have all of my tracks in individual folders inside their artist folders. This is because i have multiple clips cut for every song. so the way i keep track is easy, when i start my set, all folders are closed. when i play a song, i leave the folder open. maybe not the cleanest way of working, but it does the job for me.



.lm.

delete it ... then don't save your set at the end of the session ... easy peasy ...

I have the set containing the possible songs I'm gonna play. After playing a song...I just erase it to not play it again. In case I'll need the same set another day...I don't save the changes when closing the program, this way the next time the set will open fresh with all the songs in it.

i delete it...

i used to have a blank channel where i used to put "used" stuff but the cleanest way i've found is just the simplest (for me)

simply delete the clip

I have the set containing the possible songs I'm gonna play. After playing a song...I just erase it to not play it again. In case I'll need the same set another day...I don't save the changes when closing the program, this way the next time the set will open fresh with all the songs in it.

+1, and if you are on a mac you can change permissions on the folder containing your sets to read only so that you don't accidentally save a part-deleted set.

I see the general concensus for a starting point is that alot of you pre-select the set and have it ready to go in session view.

My issue right now is that my starting point is different. I really prefer to choose tracks from Live's browser because I am able to toggle the window open and scroll quickly with my griffin powermate and it also allows me to view the full name of the song including key, bpm, track, remix, and date modified info because i have my browser window set to open up nice and big for me to see. The Live set itself takes up 8 tracks and the clip names do not mimic the filenames so it is hard to see what track is next by name. Of course I can cue it, but again pre-selecting my set kind of takes the fun out of it for me. I also start to feel a little inundated when all the damn lights are lit on that APC40 haha. It also forces me to hit the shift key on the APC to go to another "blank" area of my set in order to mess with loops or hack up a song or do doubles or triples of the song that is playing.

Mostly, I really enjoy the feeling of not knowing what i'm going to play, but going that route keep running into the problem of "did I play that two hours ago? etc..." Especially if i'm just picking a track and using 8 bars to tear to all hell with my APC40 and all the crazy effects I built in (include some Tarekith effects i might add ).

Any other creative workarounds? I'm really trying to get around pre-arranged sets, but still be able to use the browser, and know what i've played. Tarekith's blank track method is my best option as it stands now i suppose.....i shoulda went with a bigger screen on my lappy for that though, damn. I suppose i can use my "master" button on my APC40 can be set to go to the blank track. I've been saving that button for "lock to current control surface" if it ever were to materialize. oh well.....

If you can't remember you shouldn't be on the decks

If you're only 4 beers deep at hour 5, you shouldn't be on the decks

LOL! @garyboozy!!

and @ djsynchro...bring the heat man!

i like to have free control over lots at once so i can be creative. that can mean something as simple as mixing two songs or something as complicated as mixing 4 songs plus dropping in one-off samples, loops etc. and hacking up the actual full songs that are playing on the fly. i like to keep my clipslot area clean to start within Ableton because banking around on the APC too much can get me lost sometimes. it's still a fairly new Live set i'm working with, so i will get better with it, but i'm trying to get rid of some of the little nagging issues that come with the territory, ala did I play that four hours ago?

perhaps i am not drinking enough garboozy???!

what would be the problem with playing a track twice?

i lately have seen a minimal dj playing the same record all over again and again.. 2 times the same record on booth decks... great stuff.. from the timecode label or so...

lmfao for real!!

LOL! that might actually work for minimal!

i think my next set i will just pick one minimal track (preferably with a looping vocal of something being said in german), for 5 hours. that'll totally free up more time to drink beer and hit on the girls.

RCUS wrote:LOL! that might actually work for minimal!

i think my next set i will just pick one minimal track (preferably with a looping vocal of something being said in german), for 5 hours. that'll totally free up more time to drink beer and hit on the girls.

no good idea ..the girls will be too engaged in dancing than