Hey guys, I’ve been using Ableton for a little while, and separately using Traktor to DJ, but I paid a lot of money for the powerful Ableton, I now want to use it to perform live.
This is where I need help
My aim would be to play tracks that I’ve purchased through Ableton and be able to make use of the great send and return effects and other feature of Live. However, I can’t decide on the best way to go about this..
My initial thoughts would be to spend a few hundered hours in the studio cutting up my tracks into sections so that I could play different sections of different songs through clip launching, then possibly also use EQing?
I would sell my Traktor S4 to buy an APC40 or something similar if I chose to go through with this method.
As I’m new to this, can you suggest any methods close to mine, or different ways that I hadn’t thought of?
my main wish is really to be able to use Ableton to effectively DJ but have more control, and still be able to play other producers tracks from my library.
Yeah I’m just really not a fan of Traktor for some reason, I don’t know what it is about it.. I wanted a way to use Ableton to play all of my tracks and give me control, then should I have to use decks in a club/someone’s house etc, I’d just use Flash drives and play through the CDJs instead
I’ll have a look at this site, see if there are any solutions for me, cheers for the tip
[QUOTE]My aim would be to play tracks that I’ve purchased through Ableton and be able to make use of the great send and return effects and other feature of Live. However, I can’t decide on the best way to go about this..
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[QUOTE]Yeah I’m just really not a fan of Traktor for some reason, I don’t know what it is about it.. I wanted a way to use Ableton to play all of my tracks and give me control, then should I have to use decks in a club/someone’s house etc, I’d just use Flash drives and play through the CDJs instead
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Set up your Cue channel to be the same as your Computer’s master out and you can preview and then drag and drop directly from iTunes into Ableton clip slots.
Analyzing/warping only takes a few seconds for the majority of tracks.
No theres no need to have CDJ’s as well in order to do this.
Alternatively you can just drag and drop ALL your tracks into Ableton and just scroll up an down the grid and use it like a playlist.
I figure I’ll load the first two “deck” channels with tracks that I will definitely want to play, then just make a folder in Ableton’s browser and chuck all my tracks in there - even organise them further with genres etc!
My issue now is that I need help mapping the EQ to the controller, I need to be able to control the EQ of two channels simultaneously (is this possible? If so, how?) and where do you think the best location of the EQs would be? I was thinking the top right bank of four rotaries, could become a horizontal 3-band EQ with maybe the fourth rotary mapped to an Auto Filter for sweeps etc?
I started to feel same way about Traktor, and as much as I like it, I find Ableton to be much more fun when mixing. When I DJ with Ableton, I slice each track into 5 clips:
Intro/Drum Loop
Song Intro (not loop)
Drop 1 (not loop)
Drop END (not loop)
Drop 2 (not loop)
Outro/Drum Loop
This allows me to mix in/out easily, and get to all of the important parts of a track quickly. I’ll usually have 2 duplicate channels of tracks, and then 2 other channels for extra drum loops and acapellas. Then you can do simple mashups and live “remixes”.
Of course, this is how I do it, so it may not work for you. No matter what way you use Ableton, you should get an audio interface if you want to monitor with headphones.You can probably get the best bang for your buck with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. Also, an APC40 is probably a good choice, since you can get full control in one controller.
Where do you think the best location of the EQs would be? Because Honestly the only person that can answer that is YOU.
What help do you need with mapping? Ableton mapping is as simple as hitting ctrl(or cmd)+m, clicking an object and moving something on your controller.
I only use ableton for production and my APC as a mixer surface, but my preference for EQ is each channel ONLY has an EQ plugin so when you select a channel with the APC the device control section is always the same knobs controlling the same respective controls of each channels instance
Yeah I plan on doing the same thing once I start getting into the DJ world. I’m a drummer at heart but want to get into producing and djing. Want to get Ableton Push and probably the APC Mini to launch my clips when performing live.
Is the APC40 still the best way to go here? I’m sort of in the same boat but have no controller to speak of, and my CD decks are pretty old so they don’t have the functionality.
I recently got Ableton and have read that it’s hard to map a MIDI controller so you can simultaneously EQ two different tracks… is that true? I.e. the impression I got was that you can only map one set of EQ knobs / buttons and then have to switch between tracks, rather than having a set for each chan / track in Ableton (if that makes sense).
Not sure im understanding correct but your saying its hard to map 2 seperate sets of knobs or the same set of knobs to control two separate EQs?
If your talking the former then its ridiculously easy. just map one set of knobs to one channel and the other set of knobs to the other channel. you can set up as many channels and knobs as you wish. I.e. the APC40 has 8 sets of these.
If you want one set of knobs to control multiple devices you just need endless encoders so every time you switch devices the knobs jump to the last setting.
Both options are doable.
As for the “Best” surface, its all relative. I have used and owned stuff from akai, vestax, etc. I have sold most everything and love my Ohm RGB slim from livid. It just fits how I like to play best. Again, it all depends on how you do stuff and how you want to set stuff up. I did REALLY like my apc40 before trying the Ohm…
hope any of that helped in some way. good luck brotha.
it’s super easy to map whatever to whatever … the track switching thing sounds like something that’s automapping based on track selection.
put ableton into map mode, click what you want to map, then input the controller function to map it. you can set max min ranges and map whatever you want. If you’re controller will allow you to EQ 8 tracks then you can EQ eight tracks.
Thanks for replies, I was a bit suspicious of the info I’d gleaned from other sources, and it does indeed sound like it was b******s.
So to apply this to the APC40 Mk2, you’d just add an EQ3 to both of the tracks you’re DJing from, then map 6 of the knobs to control one of the levels each? You’re right, that is ridiculously easy…
If only the knobs were stacked on top of each other like on a mixer rather than horizontally!
)