Ableton Forum

(rant)
Hey, I thought I'd start a more lighthearted thread for Johnisfaster, u always gotta look on the positive, amusing and quirky.

anyways.. everyone i know can use records and cdj's but me... my good mate who is a longtime professional dj and resident at some bigname club keeps telling me i should learn to use decks and mix that with Live...

he's probably right and im avoiding my experiences from a few years back when i last touched someone's turntables... this is going back 6 years but my beat matching skills were pretty damn scary and back then i tried to think of tricks to avoid beatmtching like choosing tracks with massive non percussive breakdowns and just mix the breakdowns together...

now when i think of the prospect of mixing with decks i immediately think of tricks like getting tracks and warping them to a specific bpm and then burning that to CD so I have almost no work to do in getting things to sync up and then i think .. if im gonna do this im gonna do it right or just do the whole live + some synths or drum machines/trigger pads ..

then the choice is massively narrowed down in a sense because of the cost of a pair of CDJ1000's and mixer is akin to buying a kidney on the black market in beijing.

on top of all that ive also seen pictures and footage of me playing live and i too suffer from looking like an AOL user on stage..

so any advice from masters or the wheels of steel .. are decks overrated?

is the control of being anywhere you want in the track worth it?

sweetjesus wrote:so any advice from masters or the wheels of steel .. are decks overrated?

No ... I mix jungle/drumnbass and its all about the decks for me...granted I would love to get into the whole digital thing but have not yet. I love my decks cannot see me ever not loving them.
Don't have much else to add though, others will have much more to say about this I'm sure.
Have a nice day

Serato is worth investigating as it has the feel of using vinyl but you can play tracks off your laptop. Combine that with ableton and a lot of practice and you will be able to conquer the world

I am not the worlds greatest mixer but still love the sound and feel of vinyl and as long as you get your bpms right beat matching isn't rocket science. Use the eq's on the mixer to drop stuff out before your mix comes in and usually you can avoid major trainwrecks.

Or you could automate a set in Ableton and have it all flawlessly mixing and pretend to mix it all off vinyl.

I have an urge to learn how to scratch. I´ve been thinking of getting Ms. Pinky, a Numark TT200 and a mixer

Good idea? Bad idea? Suggestions for mixer or better but not too expensive turntable?

it took me ages to figure out to beatmix. my ears just couldn't catch them getting out of sync, and everyone seemed to pick it up much faster than me. one thing i tried that worked for me (i know some people dont like it) is deciding to mix with a mono split mode so that the master comes through the right ear and the cue comes through the left. i found that i learned pretty quickly how to match bpms after that.

i misread your thread title and thought it said DYING instead of DJING. phew!

sweetjesus wrote:
on top of all that ive also seen pictures and footage of me playing live and i too suffer from looking like an AOL user on stage..

so any advice from masters or the wheels of steel .. are decks overrated?

is the control of being anywhere you want in the track worth it?

I've been mixing with vinyl for 13 years. I like it it's fun. The switch to using Live for someone used to vinyl is tricky unless you feel you have similar control via a decent controller that you are comforatble with. This one thing is the reason why you see so many people banging on about midi controllers on the forum and has even lead to some people designing their own.

The flexibility of Live (I like playing techno and house slow, I like to re-edit, I like to be able to mix and match percussion when I'm playing) and the ability to have such a huge range of music with you at any time is why I still stick with Live but I still have moments when I miss vinyl.

The combination of Live + Decks fookin' rules, man! When you come out of the decks and into Live you have SO much scope for live performance it's rediculous.

And scratchin' is the most fun you can have with your clothes on!!!

I am desperately trying to figure out a way of running Serato and Live together (I haven't bought Serato yet because I don't want to use it unless I canincorperate the digital scratching into my Livesets, live) but am unable to determine if both can run at the same time on the same machine...

I think if you are going to learn to DJ with Live, you should at least have an understanding of the limitations of DJ'ing with CDs/Vinyl. By understanding the limitations, the amount you can actually DO with Live becomes much more apparent.

rbmonosylabik wrote:I have an urge to learn how to scratch. I´ve been thinking of getting Ms. Pinky, a Numark TT200 and a mixer
Good idea? Bad idea? Suggestions for mixer or better but not too expensive turntable?

The TT200 is pretty good value for money TT - for scratching you've GOT TO go Direct Drive. Certainly good enough to learn to scratch on. I would suggest NOT going the Ms. Pinky route for learning. One of the main points of scratching i it's simplicity - just throw on a record and go! Buy the TT, a half decent scratch mixer (you shouldn't need to pay more that £150 for the mixer) and record the output in your Laptop/PC/Mac. Stanton have a couple of good value scratch/battle mixers. And don't forget to switch your turntables battle style!

Phew.

It's sad isn't it .
I look at the world and it's like you know ......













































all gone Pete Tong .

sweetjesus wrote: i tried to think of tricks to avoid beatmtching like choosing tracks with massive non percussive breakdowns and just mix the breakdowns together...

lol that doesn't work...you still have a rhythmic element going even in the sparsest of breakdowns

i'll never give up my 1200's i love the feel of holding onto a mix for as long as possible...
good fun.. but not something you can pick up in just a couple of tries.. it took me years to get to the point where i can cue a track and mix it instantly (almost)

mike holiday wrote: it took me years to get to the point where i can cue a track and mix it instantly (almost)

maybe thats why you dont wanna let go of them!

hehe

nah i hear ya, and this was 6 years ago before i knew anythin about anything but as you can tell from my newer ideas that i never give up on finding a cheap way to achieve a result.

Decks are definitely not over rated. I've been Djing vinyl for close to 7 years. The past two I switched over to traktor for all of the advantages that the digital medium offers.

I just could never really get into Ableton for djing for some reason. So, I ran traktor through my pioneer 500 so I would still be able to use a hardware mixer. Over the past two years I would still fire up the 1200's occasionally, but I focused mainly on digital and my 12's collected dust for the most part. What happened for me was mixing totally lost all of its fun.

I recently bought serato, about a month ago and djing is so much fun again. There's just something about having my hands on the platter and riding the pitch bend that can't be replaced by midi controllers and automatic beat matching. I tried it, but I don't want to have to prepare tracks before hand and have the software match beats for me. I'd rather do that myself.

I think ableton maybe is better for cats that are more studio oriented. I started out djing vinyl and got into making my own stuff later, so I don't really feel comfortable djing any other way then with my 1200's and a mixer. Traktor most def stole my soul for a while there.

Automatic or manual beat matching, whatever. People talk about cheating, cheating isn't an issue, if you ask me there's no such thing as cheating with this. If you aren't feeling what you are doing then you are cheating yourself. Bottom line.

I've found that with serato I can have fun again, but still exploit all of the advantages of digital media, not to mention I have the ability to expand as new technology presents itself. The drawback is that I have so much music to choose from now that I find myself getting confused. Christ, with all of the quality, free net labels out there now I have stuff I haven't even had a chance to properly check out. Matter of fact, last dj gig I had I played all tracks I had not even listened to yet. It was actually a lot of fun and turned out well.

I'm also interested to hear how people are using serato and ableton together. I know people are for a fact, and I've found discussions about how they have it set up. What I'd really like to see is a discussion, step by step, of what people are actually doing with the two.

smutek wrote:I'm also interested to hear how people are using serato and ableton together. I know people are for a fact, and I've found discussions about how they have it set up. What I'd really like to see is a discussion, step by step, of what people are actually doing with the two.

Join the queue, son!!! I'm holding off buying Serato until I can determine if I can use it on the same laptop, at the same time as Ableton...

Patch wrote:The combination of Live + Decks fookin' rules, man! When you come out of the decks and into Live you have SO much scope for live performance it's rediculous.

And scratchin' is the most fun you can have with your clothes on!!!

I am desperately trying to figure out a way of running Serato and Live together (I haven't bought Serato yet because I don't want to use it unless I canincorperate the digital scratching into my Livesets, live) but am unable to determine if both can run at the same time on the same machine...

I think if you are going to learn to DJ with Live, you should at least have an understanding of the limitations of DJ'ing with CDs/Vinyl. By understanding the limitations, the amount you can actually DO with Live becomes much more apparent.

rbmonosylabik wrote:I have an urge to learn how to scratch. I´ve been thinking of getting Ms. Pinky, a Numark TT200 and a mixer
Good idea? Bad idea? Suggestions for mixer or better but not too expensive turntable?

The TT200 is pretty good value for money TT - for scratching you've GOT TO go Direct Drive. Certainly good enough to learn to scratch on. I would suggest NOT going the Ms. Pinky route for learning. One of the main points of scratching i it's simplicity - just throw on a record and go! Buy the TT, a half decent scratch mixer (you shouldn't need to pay more that £150 for the mixer) and record the output in your Laptop/PC/Mac. Stanton have a couple of good value scratch/battle mixers. And don't forget to switch your turntables battle style!

Phew.

Fuck Numarks, seriously. Buy Stanton STR8-100s or something, or better yet a second hand pair of 1210s.

And btw, I really miss my 1210s and 32 =(

Ableton gives u a lot of options, but its just not nearly as fun.