how to dj with ableton live-a tutorial and mix
pjl2000xl
1,795 Posts
I spent all day rigging this shit up like i want it. check it outfirst thing you have to do is go from seratos line outs to your soundcards in. Then you have your interface go out back to the mixer. There is only one set of rca outs on my interface so i had to buy a Y stereo rca mono female pieces that go to 1 mono rca male piece so i could plug one into the left side and one into the right to have 4 mono tracks go back into the dj mixer to fake stereo for the channels. like so 
once you have all your shit rigged up, you need to setup ableton for djing. What i did was layed a few audio tracks down, hard panned them as stereo pairs, and made the inputs come from 1 for track 1 and 2 for track 2 respectably. i had a set of Microwave ins, set of line ins, and a set of cue tracks that i muted. Once you do that turn the master off, and have all your left channels send A turned up and all your right channels turned to B. Then on the return tracks have the 1st one going out to ext out 1 and have the second return going to ext out 2(i just noticed in the pic i have the 2nd returned panned to the right, i think it should be centered). Now your setup. I also threw down a filter, a delay, and an eq on each track all set to 0%dry and flattened out freq wise and turned off. So i can turn them on smoothly. This is what you should have. 
download the pic too to see it betterhttp://download.yousendit.com/195421995317B95CNow right click on the directory where you have your music that you want to use in abletons browser and do "analyze all tracks". It takes a while and makes analysis files for you. Now when that is done, you wont have to do it again, take like 10 to 20 tracks or whatever and put them in the cue tracks. I also threw down some drum breaks to play with. And then i used the keyboard assign to have q assigned to triggering clip left side and p to trigger clip right side. And thats about it. You have to work on the fly and i did get some drop outs, but i think if i get a better soundcard that shouldnt be an issue. this tascam thing is buggy as shit and sucks balls. Here is a quick 10 mb mix i did to show you guys. All the beats are mine. For the first track i loaded a breakbeat into the left side and when the other track was coming in i turned on the delay and brang up the wet then killed the clip and it rang out with the echo trail. I also do some filter sweeps during another drum loop part. Its my first day doing this though and i think it came out decent. there is some problems but i gotta just practice using this shit. here is the mix AbletonDJset
once you have all your shit rigged up, you need to setup ableton for djing. What i did was layed a few audio tracks down, hard panned them as stereo pairs, and made the inputs come from 1 for track 1 and 2 for track 2 respectably. i had a set of Microwave ins, set of line ins, and a set of cue tracks that i muted. Once you do that turn the master off, and have all your left channels send A turned up and all your right channels turned to B. Then on the return tracks have the 1st one going out to ext out 1 and have the second return going to ext out 2(i just noticed in the pic i have the 2nd returned panned to the right, i think it should be centered). Now your setup. I also threw down a filter, a delay, and an eq on each track all set to 0%dry and flattened out freq wise and turned off. So i can turn them on smoothly. This is what you should have. download the pic too to see it betterhttp://download.yousendit.com/195421995317B95CNow right click on the directory where you have your music that you want to use in abletons browser and do "analyze all tracks". It takes a while and makes analysis files for you. Now when that is done, you wont have to do it again, take like 10 to 20 tracks or whatever and put them in the cue tracks. I also threw down some drum breaks to play with. And then i used the keyboard assign to have q assigned to triggering clip left side and p to trigger clip right side. And thats about it. You have to work on the fly and i did get some drop outs, but i think if i get a better soundcard that shouldnt be an issue. this tascam thing is buggy as shit and sucks balls. Here is a quick 10 mb mix i did to show you guys. All the beats are mine. For the first track i loaded a breakbeat into the left side and when the other track was coming in i turned on the delay and brang up the wet then killed the clip and it rang out with the echo trail. I also do some filter sweeps during another drum loop part. Its my first day doing this though and i think it came out decent. there is some problems but i gotta just practice using this shit. here is the mix AbletonDJset
Comments
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro-main.html
i think this would be perfect for this ableton and djing.
plus the Y cable thing might fuck with your impedence giving you a lower output and lesser fidelity going into your mixer. spring for a 4 output interface (that is not m-audio).
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controll...egoryNavigation
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controll...egoryNavigation
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controll...egoryNavigation
ive hurd some good things about the focusrite, but id do some research... or save up and spring for:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controll...egoryNavigation
this is solid, and will be crucial if you wanna do multitracking later on.
That's what I'm going to try and figure out myself when I get home from school. God I can't wait.
Dude, using something pre-beat matched and all that seems real weak.
republican
Nah, mang I saw this cat using it and it just seemed silly, I mean are u
i hear what your saying, it is kinda eeh if its so damn simple. and your right, but it does level the playing field. and thus increases the amount of garbage djs out there.
real schitt: fuck beat matching. good djs string moody moments.
i definitely feel that. i'm annoyed by DJs who use software to get around an inability to beatmatch, but i'm sure using ableton in conjunction with existing DJ skills, one can do a lot of innovative shit.
given that ableton supports many many tracks, is there a way to use it in conjunction with Microwave and a two-channel mixer that would give you the option of mixing more than two tracks at a time?