Digital 'Laptop' DJ's cannot beatmatch manually... - Page 2
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  1. #11
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ibarry View Post
    Sync is only great if you spend the time to beatgrid your songs. Sometimes I don't have a song that has a spot on beatgrid so just play without sync. If i'm playing with my dj duo and were doing a mix with more than 3/4 tracks sync will probably be used.
    I spin with Live, so…I don't really have another option. I mean, technically it can do it, but then I lose a lot of what Live is good for and can't key-lock anything. Frankly, I don't care. Beat matching is the most boring part of DJing and stands to do nothing but give you the potential to screw up. It's not like taking shortcuts in playing guitar because either it's right or not…there's no expression in beat matching. And even people who cheat at guitar (like keith richards, who always uses open tunings and just bars chords) can still be extremely expressive and creative…just like DJs.

    It took me a while to come around, but…I'll probably never play live without sync again…and I don't care.

    Seriously…nothing pisses me off more than seeing someone DJing with a controller who isn't using sync and is flaming all over the place. If you want to do it the old fashioned way, fine…but at least be as good as the computer is…otherwise it's jut useless wanking that degrades your performance.

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by LanceBlaise View Post
    lets see u dj with a set of TTs... Those ridiculously old CD controllers were crap, they had that +/- thing to nudge the tracks... total garbagr! I think anyone could dj with those things...
    I'm actually looking for a set of 1210's I miss vinyl. Soon as I buy a set i'll post a video Yep really don't like them. If anyone wants to buy them though feel free Dunno where I got them from, I certainly didn't pay for them
    Last edited by ibarry; 11-16-2010 at 01:06 PM.

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by mostapha View Post
    I spin with Live, so…I don't really have another option. I mean, technically it can do it, but then I lose a lot of what Live is good for and can't key-lock anything. Frankly, I don't care. Beat matching is the most boring part of DJing and stands to do nothing but give you the potential to screw up. It's not like taking shortcuts in playing guitar because either it's right or not…there's no expression in beat matching. And even people who cheat at guitar (like keith richards, who always uses open tunings and just bars chords) can still be extremely expressive and creative…just like DJs.

    It took me a while to come around, but…I'll probably never play live without sync again…and I don't care.

    Seriously…nothing pisses me off more than seeing someone DJing with a controller who isn't using sync and is flaming all over the place. If you want to do it the old fashioned way, fine…but at least be as good as the computer is…otherwise it's jut useless wanking that degrades your performance.
    I'd like to go down the 100% ableton route. I have experimented with a traktor + ableton setups in the past for some gigs. But much prefer traktor. I know in ableton you can do so much more etc, don't like how you have to make sets beforehand in ableton. I like to just turn up and play what the crowd is wanting.

  4. #14
    DJTT Tankard fullenglishpint's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ibarry View Post
    I'd like to go down the 100% ableton route. I have experimented with a traktor + ableton setups in the past for some gigs. But much prefer traktor. I know in ableton you can do so much more etc, don't like how you have to make sets beforehand in ableton. I like to just turn up and play what the crowd is wanting.
    I agree. I've tried ableton several times, but I always end up using Traktor because it's just easier to pick a tune that you want to play and play it.

    I rarely plan sets cos choosing on the fly is much more fun.
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  5. #15
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ibarry View Post
    I'd like to go down the 100% ableton route. I have experimented with a traktor + ableton setups in the past for some gigs. But much prefer traktor. I know in ableton you can do so much more etc, don't like how you have to make sets beforehand in ableton. I like to just turn up and play what the crowd is wanting.
    Yeah…you really don't. You have to prepare stuff, but it's no more complicated than using traktor or even rekordbox to set beat grids, loops, cues, etc.. Everything is done a bit differently because it's not specifically DJ software, but it's all there. For example, "hot cues" are done by having multiple clips for a track with different "start clip" markers set. You store multiple loops the same way. And on-the-fly looping is possible (and easy) though a bit quirky owning to the fact that Ableton only allows full controls over one clip at a time. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be the playing clip and it's pretty quick to switch between them with any controller designed for it…or any controller if you're enough of a geek.

    But, if you don't want to pre-plan your sets, then just don't. I've dragged in saved versions of songs (with cues/loops set…some with follow actions to 'beat juggle' different parts of the song with some randomization or to skip sections every time) from the browser. It works just fine. The way I'm using it now, it looks pre planned, because it loads all of my songs (about 8GB of a cache file in total) with all of their clips when I start it. But the arrangement of clips is just organization, not a set list. With 10-100 tracks from 5 different (though related) genres spread across 5 decks with another TMP deck to fix flaws in my organization at my finger tips, my sets tend to vary as much as anyone else's.

    The closest things to pre-planning that I do (other than saving hot cues and some loops) is chopping songs up when I don't like their structure. Live's follow actions allow you to reliably skip around in songs or between loops in a set way (just like doing an edit would). But, Live also gives you the option to incorporate randomization so that even pre-made edits don't play out the same every time. In addition, it allows you to change the arrangement of these types of edits on the fly with no real latency while making it really hard to screw up so badly that the audio just stops. It's really easy to f-up the phrasing, so you still have to know what you're doing, but it really does give a lot of options even when you're working with full tracks.

    I've had people come up to me and ask where they can get that remix of some track they almost recognize, and the only thing I can tell them is "well, I just made it…and I wasn't recording." Or–if they're hot–"I just made it and I was recording…give me your number and I'll make you a tape."

    One of the other advantages is that if you are recording, Live records instructions to re-do sets. It records every control motion, every clip state and launch…everything. So if you do a live edit that you really like, you can go back after the fact, pull it out of the mix, tweak it if necessary, and render it as a new song. OR…if you don't want to give it out, you can figure out what you did and set up follow actions to reproduce it by "just pressing play." If you used effects doing it, then you can perform those Live and still do something other than just pressing play…or you can use dummy clips to make the effects identical too, though that requires slightly more complicated routing.

    The trick to doing it is making your organization flexible, due to some of Ableton's constraints. I actually have one 'deck' devoted to copying and pasting clips from the other decks just for the times I want to mix between 2 songs that start out loaded into the same deck. That's why I originally didn't load tracks, but because of the way Ableton uses its cache, it actually seems to work better this way. It takes 30 seconds to start instead of 10 (or a few minutes if I cleared the cache because I needed/wanted the disk space) but everything just happens and I never have to wait for clips to load again.

    I got long-winded again, but…don't let the people who do all planned sets in Live make you think that it's not possible to be spontaneous. It's actually remarkably easy, you just have to figure out how to set it up so you can do it.

    Oh…and while I have read quite a bit about other people's techniques DJing with Live (most notably s4racen, Tom Cosm, and Will Marshall), I do things a bit differently than a lot of people and most of the weird stuff I do…I just figured out when I thought "you know…[some hairbrained idea] should be possible."

  6. #16
    Tech Mentor PartyMcFly's Avatar
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    I've played with Ableton DJs who haven't come up from the manual beatmatching paradigm and could do it just fine. I just make sure my laptop is in a place where they can see the tempo on the playing deck, they'll dial it in, and use a global pitch bend to phase it perfectly.

    Been a lot of fun, actually.

  7. #17
    Tech Guru LanceBlaise's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ibarry View Post
    I'm actually looking for a set of 1200's I miss vinyl. Soon as I buy a set i'll post a video Yep really don't like them. If anyone wants to buy them though feel free Dunno where I got them from, I certainly didn't pay for them
    haha... I feel you bro. I remember way back showing up to a gig and seeing those things... horrible :eek:

  8. #18
    Tech Guru sarasin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LanceBlaise View Post
    haha... I feel you bro. I remember way back showing up to a gig and seeing those things... horrible :eek:
    I would refuse to play on it.

    Have in the past....

    Now....if its a smallish party of unknowns....i always ask what they have.

    Nowdays....i take my own rig!'

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  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by sarasin View Post
    I would refuse to play on it.

    Have in the past....

    Now....if its a smallish party of unknowns....i always ask what they have.

    Nowdays....i take my own rig!'

    What do you take to your gigs? I usually take my laptop and controller or use cdjs with timecode. Im in the process of getting a room set up in my home with all my audio gear, I want a table that I can insert a couple of 1200's and a 4 channel mixer directly into the table. Room for a couple of cdj's on stands and a laptop stand would be preferable as well. I've been looking for a few months for a decent table

  10. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by mostapha View Post
    I've had people come up to me and ask where they can get that remix of some track they almost recognize
    happened to me long before using ableton was commonplace... those moments are cool, when you just point at the mixer and grin "this shit is live, baby!" but it feels way more rewarding when it happens while using traditional gear (like 2+ decks and a hardware loop sampler that you have to keep in check using your brain and hands). I can't tell you why, it just does...

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