Ableton Forum

I've been DJing at parties etc. always using (almost) same bpm tunes, mainly electrohouse/tribal, no problem there.
But what if I want to play totally different bpm tracks?
I've been requested to play some lounge/chillout stuff at a party, I suppose I unclick the warp button and play the tracks as they are but I won't be able to loop anything.
Is there a sensible approach to this?
Thanks.

That's all I play anymore, wildly varying downtempo tunes. It helps to organize your tracks by tempo, and stay within a certain range. All my tracks now have the tempo first in the file name, so at least they're always listed in order of their natural tempo. If you need to increase or decrease the tempo a lot, just do it over the coarse of a few songs.

Mmmmm... several schools of thought on this... depends what kinda music you play. Tribal i guess you can vary the tempo significantly but use tracks that lend themselves to this for your tempo changes

I tend to play trance/techno and the tempo doesnt change much... i wouldn't play tracks that have been recorded at more than or less than 10 bpm over my chosen tempo, and i wouldn't change it much over the course of the set, maybe increase/decrease by 1 or 2, 3 at the very max.

I'm with tarekith on this, store all your tunes by tempo (and key) in the title or in folders named after the bpm and the key, e.g. "135-C#-Loneliness.wav" that sort of stuff, and then you can get to them quickly when you're djing liveon the fly.

For large tempo changes, I do a straight cut from one track to the next without a crossfade, with the new tempo (XXX BPM) in the Master column.

When the new scene is launched, the tempo jumps immediately to the new tempo without dropping a beat.

Sometimes for large tempo jumps you can also try to play tunes with an ambientish outro, into a tune with a ambientish intro. Then you can manually increase the tempo and if done smoothly, no one's the wiser.

How do you find out the "key" of a track? Do you use special software to do this? Thanks.

lapax wrote:How do you find out the "key" of a track? Do you use special software to do this? Thanks.

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

A few more techniques:

Launch a percussive loop near the end of the first track, crossfade out the first track, ramp the tempo up/down, then launch the second track.

I also play live percussion to a click, continue playing after the first track finishes, ramp the tempo up or down with an FCB1010 footpedal, then launch the incoming track with an FCB1010 button after reaching the correct tempo. Especially cool if you're playing percussion samples/grooves/etc fromthe incoming track.

hambone1 wrote:For large tempo changes, I do a straight cut from one track to the next without a crossfade, with the new tempo (XXX BPM) in the Master column.

When the new scene is launched, the tempo jumps immediately to the new tempo without dropping a beat.

I've seen this mentioned a few times, can you explain it to me as if I'm an idiot(which I feel like because I don't get it), this is the final hurdle till I can go out every time with Live, I've done a few gigs with it and am ready to make the switch.
Where abouts is the "Master Column" - on what page, where on the screen, what section or drop down menu?

membrain wrote: Where abouts is the "Master Column" - on what page, where on the screen, what section or drop down menu?

in the session view, on the master track is the name for each scene. if you trigger a scene that you named for example "120 BPM", then the tempo will adjust automatically to 120 bpm

Just try to rename a scene "120 bpm", you'll see the launch button colour will change...

That was a great tip, I can't remember reading that in the manual.