Ableton Forum

Anybody out there got any thoughts/techniques for doing more interesting things with live (in a DJ context) other than fading/dropping in or out channels etc?

No offence, but Ive never been a fan of the sasha/any other trance DJ/gentle fading technique, and have much more respect for house DJ's like coxy/dave clarke etc who have got hip hop backgrounds and like to f*ck with their records a bit in the mix.

So if anyone has worked out/stumbled across some weird and wonderful techniques, Id be interested to hear what they are.

I am a trance dj, and I sometimes play 3-4 tracks at once, making surprising mashups (2 -or more- totally different tracks on top of each other), firing alot of acapellas, and elements from other tunes (mostly in key) on the tracks I play.

Live was just a revelation to me, as now I can do the necessary changes to a track on the fly which previously was impossible with vinyls/cds. I'm using it for almost a year now, did alot of gigs with it, and wouldn't go back to the 'usual' way for anything.

Anyway the 'gentle fading technique' gets a new meaning when you put something on top of the 'transition'

Cheers!

Shane

there's lots you can do to emulate typical house dj techniques.

Cuts & Splicing: set all the clips in a certain track to the same low volume, and assign a midi controller to slam the volume on all the clips in that track up and down.

Backspin: starting with an original loop, set up a reverse clip of the last quarter bar of that loop, automate some clip transpose, and a follow action to a version of the original clip that begins on a separate bar.

EQs: obviously enough, use the eq-3 on the master, or one on each track.

What other house dj techniques were you referring to? I would actually suggest trying to use live to develop new techniques rather than emulating house djs - unless you're using 1200s and a mixer, it will always be slightly different. Instead, try messing with sample offset live, throw in a supertrigga, do some harsh cuts on a channels while increasing the send amount to a reverb effect, etc etc.

I'm gonna be watching this thread very closely - those were some fantastic tips, m-laboratories.net...

shane, touche nice comeback to my cheeky dig at trance...

but nice one for posting, Id like to get a bit more into this thread...

Firstly, im not into replicating the 1210 approach (as we're talking about the evolution of performing here...). But like M-lab hinted at, I wanna investigate what I can do data-wise that maybe I couldnt do deck wise.

When I exclusively used 1210's, I would do a lot of transformer 'scratching', millsian cuts and chops, screwing with the platter when the power was off, backspins, quick and dirty eq-isms etc (plus using my beloved Korg Kaos pad)...but that was when I just had two records playing. My stuff now tends to be very loop based rather than a tune for 2 or 3 mins, so I am throwing 4 or 5 loops together (2 or 3 drum tracks, a bass track, melody track, fx track, coupla midi tracks, vocals etc). Im finding the results of this to be much more interesting that just 2 beat mixed records...every couple of minutes I find myself going 'yeah, that is groovy as f*ck' and its stuff that I may never replicate again, even with the same instruments and samples...

Sooo...i really want to find out what digital-only techniques people are using...

Great post, thanks!

you can always use supatrigga vst for double copy techniques, line switch cutting, and that start/stop button brake slowdown sound.

supatrigga? hmm, never heard of it. will investigate. nice one.

We have a google group dedicated to performing live sets and DJing with Live as well, come join:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Live-DJs

A bit slow at the moment as it just started, but as we get more people to join, it'll pick up.

Tarekith wrote:We have a google group dedicated to performing live sets and DJing with Live as well, come join:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Live-DJs

A bit slow at the moment as it just started, but as we get more people to join, it'll pick up.

This is a good idea!

yep, i'm also subscribed