How do you do playlist Management for Ableton Live?
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  1. #1
    Tech Convert
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    Aug 2009
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    Default How do you do playlist Management for Ableton Live?

    Hi Folks,

    I'm an avid user of Live. I love the power that it offers. However as I'm sure you'll know, the DJ workflow and playlist control just doesn't exist.

    At the moment I have a portable hard drive of all my music divided into folders for tracks and genres, loops etc. When I'm preparing for a set I will typically work my way through my collection and write up a playlist in a text file of the tracks that I think I might play.

    On the night I'm typically flicking between Live and that list to work out what I might play next. Sometimes I'll load a bunch of tracks up and then decide at the last minute exactly which one will work best.

    Does anyone have any really good methods - particularly for preparation?

    As an aside, for those interested I'm working on a Macbook Pro Retina at home for prep and play out with an 11" Macbook Air with a Xone2D, Xone 62 and starting to integrate a Push.

  2. #2
    Tech Guru Patch's Avatar
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    iLL.Gates has a filenaming method for tracks that he uses in Live. Check his site (or youtube) for that video. It might help.

    There's another way using iTunes and copy/paste to Live from iTunes. That's pretty good if you have smat playlists set up in iTunes based on detailed tags...
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  3. #3
    Tech Guru deevey's Avatar
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    The grid across 4 channels is my track playlist, I have about 200 full length tracks loaded which are both ordered and color coded Buildup > Bangers & then a separate section under all that for classics that I know I might throw in mid-set.

    e.g Grid starts at blue and progresses through various greens yellows and finally reds - kinda looks like a color palette with a row of blanks between genre changes so I can see it on the APC.

    Next 4 channels are stems and loops which are laid out similarly

    For live drag and drop I have iTunes setup with the Cue output on the Soundcard set as system default so I can pre-listen if needed directly within iTunes before dragging something into Ableton.

    I drop everything to the grid directly from iTunes initially so the analysis file stays with the track.

    Its a real PITA that Ableton did not allow for iTunes Playlisting as a feature in 9 as its a much handier method of organizing loops and stems IMHO.

    Last edited by deevey; 03-26-2014 at 07:21 AM.

  4. #4
    Tech Wizard
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    Sounds like you could solve your problems with Traktor!

    I used Ableton for DJing briefly, and did all my browsing and file management in iTunes, running both at the same time, and dragging and dropping files into Ableton to play them.

    Whenever I added new tracks to my collection I dropped them from iTunes into Ableton to set the start point and warp makers - you only need to do it once as the Ableton clip info file is saved in the iTunes media folder right alongside the track.

    I tried really hard to like DJing with Ableton as I love it for production and edits, but in the end went back to CDs - then I got Traktor! Everything I felt was lacking from Ableton for DJing (track browsing and playlists) is done really well in Traktor, and your method of organising with files on a hard drive will work well too.

    I'd strongly recommend you try the demo before you invest too much time into developing a work around for Ableton. Once you get Push, you can do your main DJing in Traktor, and send a midi-clock signal to Ableton to keep everything in sync



    Good luck!!

  5. #5
    Tech Wizard
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    iLL Gates has a cool video tutorial on track naming and organization. He's the man.
    MacBook Pro 15" |

  6. #6

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    Ok, I'm using a system where I have a preprepared project with all the clips I want to use for a particular set already loaded. I have each genre in its own pair of tracks as A and B decks, in ascending order of BPM. Each track I also colour code green for poppy/commercial/cheesy, yellow for house, blue for trance, grey for drum and bass, purple for old school/acid and red for any track that does weird stuff that I need to pay attention to. I also make the shade darker for deeper/harder sounding tracks so I can more easily mix things with similar vibes and so I can adjust that depending on the crowd mood. I will also use colours that are inbetween two of the main ones I use if it spans genres or vibes, such as a blue trance track taking on a purple tinge if it has acidy old school elements to it.

    I route all the tracks to 2 blank ones in the middle that are then routed to master. Those tracks contain the EQs and effects so I can map my controller to just those and it will affect all the ones routed to it. This also makes it easy to see on my launchpad where the A deck tracks end and B tracks begin. I also have another track off to one side that routes nowhere but takes from master post mixer so I can hit record on a clip there and it doesn't feed back or mess the set up. I also arrange the genre tracks so they radiate out from the two middle ones so as I go through the night I can delete the tracks containing played material so new unplayed stuff replaces it from the sides and I don't need to scroll around on the launchpad as much.

    During set up, I just need to make sure Ableton is seeing my interface instead of on board audio, load the project, wait for the clips to load, then i can sound test and make sure my midi mappings are doing what they are supposed to before the doors open. The tracks are in a grid in front of me ready to go so I don't need to load them from the library unless I decide I really want something already loaded. I try and make sure that tracks that mix well together are on opposite sides so I almost never have to drag stuff around while live.

    While some of this may sound completely pants on head retarded, I'm using 8 intro so there are no tutorials for me to follow to learn how to set this up, so invented my own method that works around the limits on scenes and effects.

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