Adding Ableton to my DJ set-up - advice / recommendations wanted

[sliding down the banister]

By way of background I am a long time vinyl addict and have DJ'd on and off as a hobby since the late 1980s. In the last couple of years, I have found myself in the fortunate position to able to dedicate more time to music, as I have taken on the role of stay-at-home dad, whilst my wife pushes forward with her career.

My musical tastes stretch far and wide, but centre around soul, funk, disco, afro-beat, latin, underground & golden age hip-hop, electronic and left-field house and I have promoted myself as someone who looks to play sets across these genres [think Mr Scruff]; but can focus on a subset to suite specific events, in the smaller market I am currently working in. Having hooked into to the relevant scene here, I am now picking up a steady flow of gigs to keep me happy.

When DJing, I am usually presented with the following either Technics or Pioneer CDJ2000nexus + Pioneer DJM200 4-channel mixer. Consequently, I am set-up and happy to play:

- vinyl only turntable sets.
- Serato DJ turntable sets.
- CDJ sets using USBs / Rekordbox.

Over the last couple of years, I have also been studying music production via Ableton [and a small assortment of hardware] and now wish to incorporate Ableton into my sets. I do not want to spend money on any additional technology, until I have got comfortable with the concept and have developed things a little further, so as things stand I have the items listed in my signature are what I am planning to start with.

My research thus far has got me to:

Rekordbox / Pioneer CDJs + mixer
The solution here seems fairly straightforward and with this small piece of code/software, ethernet cables & hub, I can sync Ableton with the CDJs / mixer; so at the moment I am pulling the cables together to give this a run.

https://github.com/g-zi/CDJ_Clock/bl...Beat_Clock.pdf

Serato / SL1200s + mixer
I have both Serato Scratch Live + DJ and so am looking at 'The Bridge' for the former. But I am conscious that this is not a decent long-term solution as Serato is no longer supporting Live and it is already not possible to run Scratch Live on the latest version of Mac OS. As I am likely to need to replace my laptop next year; I am loathed to spend a lot of time on this option as I can see issues fast approaching with the lack of support / upgrades for it.

Consequently, I am on the look-out for an alternative solution to Serato + Ableton. Tracktor seems to be an option; but the thought of having to migrate all of my files / cues points / playlists et all over to the new format fills me with complete horror...let alone the hardware outlay; so it is going to take an awful lot to persuade me that is the way to go.

Can others who use Ableton in a DJ set-up alongside more traditional CD / DVS systems offer up some advice & suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[astromech]

If I were you, I'd just slave the TR-8 to Serato or rekordbox and use that. Why complicate?

EDIT: You need to really think about what Ableton will add to your set. If it's just a few beats n samples, then you could find a sampler for that.

[sliding down the banister]

If I were you, I'd just slave the TR-8 to Serato or rekordbox and use that. Why complicate?

EDIT: You need to really think about what Ableton will add to your set. If it's just a few beats n samples, then you could find a sampler for that.

Thanks for your reply. After spending the last couple of days researching; I have concluded that you are right in terms of over-complicating things. The simple solution is to just to have Ableton connected to a third channel on a mixer and simply manually sync things between rekordbox & Ableton.

My aim with Ableton is to incorporate my own music / remixes into my DJ sets; but move towards a live performance element, as opposed to just mixing in the end result.