How many of you regularly do personal track edits of stuff you DJ often with?

[NRG]

@mostapha

I’d kill for audio stems from the Alive 2007 tour, for example. But IMHO, it’s not worth dealing with the crowd noise to just play those tracks.

these guys have remade most of alive 2007
http://www.thedaftclub.com/forum/showthread.php/8561-Alive-2007-(Remake)-Final-Version-Soon

[Xonetacular]

@mostapha

There was a period where I was spinning more personal/custom edits than full tracks. I kinda gave that up at some point.

Mostly, they were just structural edits, as that’s the easiest thing to do without screwing up the track too badly…that’s also about all I did when I was spinning on Abelton, other than occasionally adding drums, a capellas, or synth lines and running everything through a very light compressor to kind of tie it all together (set for maybe a couple dB of gain reduction).

I wouldn’t mind getting back into it, mostly because there are some old songs that I love and would love to spin more often (old Daft Punk, Orbital, and Underworld stuff, mostly) where the drums just kind of don’t fit with modern music anymore. Re-doing the drums for those would go a long way to make them fit with a modern house set.

I’d kill for audio stems from the Alive 2007 tour, for example. But IMHO, it’s not worth dealing with the crowd noise to just play those tracks.

The biggest stumbling block I see in doing custom edits/remixes, is that it’s pretty limited what you can actually do without stems. You’re basically limited to adding sounds to an already-mastered track…maybe squeezing them in with filters, EQs, or sidechained compressors…but all of that adds noise and can make things sound really muddy and over-processed if you overdo it. And then to get it to sound right, you kinda have to do a half-assed mastering job…which means compressing it even more than it already was. And that can really squeeze the life out of it.

So, I say go ahead and experiment. My tools of choice are Ableton Live, Pro Tools, and Logic…just like for everything else in a studio. But, you can use a lot of different stuff. Just be realistic about what you expect to accomplish and occasionally ask yourself whether your edits are really making an improvement or just being different.

Also, xone, I think you own Maschine. IDK what you use it for in your DJ set, but it’s really insanely powerful for doing some of those edits live.

If you can work out the sync issues, I’d seriously consider starting by getting some construction kits off sounds2sample or wherever…maybe just working with the included kits to do things like adding breakbeats or little flourishes over your normal DJ set.

The routing gets weird, but the experiments I’ve done are pretty cool. It’s kind of like the best parts of an Ableton hybrid DJ/Live set with a more straightforward way to just play tracks and a damn-good live production setup that you don’t really need to look at the computer for if you put in the prep work.

I have hardly delved into maschine at all, it has been mainly a midi controller and to look pretty since I haven’t invested the time to sit down and really learn it inside and out.

I think I will play with some edits this weekend when I have a minute and see what I come up with. I also really am intrigues to see what The One offers for live edits. I don’t like DJing with ableton and The One looks like it brings everything I like about traktor with the editing capability I want from ableton while keeping it simple.

[ame=“http://vimeo.com/29831504”]The One Teaser on Vimeo[/ame]

[Bassline_Brine]

@brian_johnstone

i like the sound of that, do you have a soundcloud where we could have a listen??

Will be throwing some stuff up at some point soon. Right now I’ve mainly been mixing it on vinyl, and so haven’t had to have the computer hooked up for recording at all.

I’m starting to find the whole mash-up genre of doing things really interesting, and I definitely know there are some songs I’m going to want to cut parts out of.

I think once people reach a certain point with their mixing/playing, you just want MORE personalization, and that’s where this kind of stuff comes in.

[photojojo]

@mostapha

Mostly, they were just structural edits, as that’s the easiest thing to do without screwing up the track too badly

This, but not so much now. 20 years ago it wasn’t as easy and my method was pretty backwoods. I really wish I could find some of them now and see how bad they really sounded.

[V-Hoff]

@sarasin

They would not believe me when I told them.

Jess would know it… Eskimo - Party Pooper.

“sorry everyone…the police are here and we had to stop the party!”

Crazy track! I had Eskimo - Scorpion on my latest set
Comment there when you find it hehe

[V-Hoff]

now in topic…
I really want to get into that aspect of djing… I would like to extend some peaks or do a perfect beatmasher thing right before drop. I will try it sometime

[belchman]

dude, edits are where it’s at! Even if it’s just things like throwing in a rebecca black sample or rick astley within a track.. boosting or quickly re-mastering tracks which are missing depth or don’t match up to the rest of your library.. and obviously restructuring tracks, although this is increasingly irrelevant when using traktor.

Also, i often make cheeky 3 minute mashup edits or two editted tracks which work together for a mid-set scratch routine or intro track or whatever. And i’m sure I’ll get a lot of stick for revealing that, but lets be honest, the vast majority of the crowd a) don’t care how you mix and b) love it.

in the same vein as the use of the sync button, edits generally enhance your set a hell of a lot, and i don’t think i’ve really met a big name pro dj who doesn’t use them. get on that shit!

[sarasin]

@V-Hoff

Crazy track! I had Eskimo - Scorpion on my latest set
Comment there when you find it hehe

Yep!

I saw it!

Not into his live sets tho…we have had him here a few times!

Lots of Energy that kid!

Fucking hell!

But I find its too start and stop for me to really get into…

But good he is!

[sarasin]

Then again…he was borne with the silver Chillum in his mouth!

His dad is John Phantasm…

[mostapha]

@Xone, I haven’t looked into it tremendously, but I’m not that excited about TheOne yet…seems a bit like a bunch of Hokey UI stuff to me more than useable tools. But I could be wrong.

And you owe it to yourself to learn Maschine, IMHO. $600 is a lot of money to pay for a prettier trigger finger. It’s a freaking bargain for what Maschine actually is.

[Patch]

@""milo""

yeah i’ve chopped out the lame synth solo from don’t stop til you get enough by mj… Much better!

heathen!!!

[killerfanatics]

+1 on editing your own tracks. Adding intro’s and outros to songs that don’t have them. Making short edits, quick edits, removing, adding parts to the song is a bit essential, for me at least. What I’ve been working on lately is fixing the fluctuating bpm’s on older funk/disco and cumbia songs. I don’t want to take away from the original song, so I just fix, and sometimes add, the intro and outro to be exactly on point, and the rest of the song gets warped every 32 bars to keep it somewhat in place. It use to take me about 30 minutes to fix a song. I’ve brought that time down to about 10 min. a track.

[killerfanatics]

Here’s a sample. Not the best, but it’s something.

Original:

My short edit w/ fixed bpm:

I just wanted a shorter version of the song, since in the middle it’s about a minute of instrumental. I looped a section before the start of the instrumental and ended the song there. Nothing fancy, but it helps me with not having the loop and release at the right moment. Plus I mostly just wanted to fix the fluctuating bpm.

[wrong_chris]

yup. usually just minor things like change the length of tracks, switching the arrangement around or making a blend/mashup. sometimes if i need to make a radical key adgustment i’ll do an edit in ableton versus relying on traktor’s key lock feature (because it sounds like shit).

[mostapha]

I actually used Audacity for that, though I’ll probably give Logic’s a try at some point. Changing the tempo in Audacity and then pitch shifting not in real time by a percentage (after doing the math) yields very good results, especially considering that it’s free.