DJ Styles

[SirEsquire]

I'm new to this, so I'd like to get a feel for how you guys (and gals) go about DJ'ing. I'm familiar with the basic setups for Ableton, so my question pertains mostly to style/technique.

One way would be to simply load/warp entire tracks into Ableton, and then mix them live - pretty basic.

But, how many of you take a track, "deconstruct" it by making stems/loops and then re-mixing it, etc live? Is that a standard way of doing things, or am I just making things more complicated? It seems like the latter way of doing things allows for more improvisation and creativity?

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions you veterans have would be appreciated...thanks!

[Tarekith]

Might want to check out AbletonLiveDJ.com too.

[SirEsquire]

Might want to check out AbletonLiveDJ.com too.

Wow. Great resource, thanks! I read your post about how you setup your sets for live performance - really informative!

So far, my live sets are comprised of all original material. A couple of questions:

I'm assuming that you're rendering any/all of your MIDI clips in the original song to Audio format? Then, bringing in those rendered audio clips into your live performance setup?

Here's a pic of a song in it's original format:


The colors denote sections of the song, ie same-colored clips are meant to be played together (though not necessarily at the same time). So, from what you can see, the song has two sections (the blue and the yellow).
Most of the clips are only 4-8 bars in length. So, how would YOU go about rendering this track down to a more simpler setup for a live performance based on what you've done already?

You can listen to the song here:
http://soundcloud.com/matthewbarlow/daydreaming

[SirEsquire]

Here's another original track. This one is way simpler - I write a lot of ambient/downtempo songs, too.



So, these types of songs would be much easier for me to render according to your live setup.

You can listen to the song here:
http://soundcloud.com/matthewbarlow/wait