Richie Hawtin - Traktor Setup

Richie Hawtin - Traktor Setup

I found these video tutorials by the minimal man himself… see what you think… nothing really earth shattering but still highly interesting to see how he does it all with his setup…

NI video tutorial :: Intro

NI video tutorial :: syncing & beatmashing

NI video tutorial :: needledrop

NI video tutorial :: looping

NI video tutorial :: doublemacro

NI video tutorial :: controller setup

NI video tutorial :: 4decks & mastersync

Discuss !!

http://m-nus.com/media/syncing_beatmashing.mov

http://m-nus.com/media/4Decks_MasterSync.mov

Great videos helps the imagination

Neato thanks for the movies, people are always asking questions about how to do these simple tasks so ill be sure to send them to this thread :stuck_out_tongue:

Shees.. you beat me to it.. :stuck_out_tongue:

no worries.. I am a massive fan of Richie Hawtin so was really stoked when I heard these were out…

Same here!

“Close to the Edit” is still a regular on my carstereo. :wink:

i couldn’t get the syncing beatmash and the 4decks master sync videos to work.

but from the ones i did see i noticed:

  1. that he double syncs two decks…when he starts just givin’r – Ive never even thought of that. i usually sync, unsync then bend together…cuz usually sync button just makes the track jump and avoid using it as much as possible. but im gonna give double syncing a try.

  2. also this double macro… i really havent gotten into hardcore midi mapping yet… but it was really cool what he could do. whenever i tried to assign two functions to a control in traktor… it highlights in red and cancels one or the other out. how do u even do it – double macro?

  3. he uses a 2nd computer for effects. i wonder how thats rigged up…do you think the pure audio runs right through into computer 2? or its somehow smart mixed… wonder how he rigs that stuff up.

either way…after watching this video i realized ive got a lot of work to do.

whoa…just watched the remaining two videos…i guess ill add a thought…

  1. if he’s sending his master sync…over ethernet to these other computers and they are syncing it to it… they must all be using programs other than traktor ya? so im wondering which other programs can receive a clock?

i know ableton does…

what else? serato? vdj?

Answer 4.) Ableton mostly. :smiley:

I take it your not using beatgrids then, you should rely on sync without beatgrids.

They don’t cancel one another out.

Smart mixing is not porting audio, smart-mixing is the use of side chain compressors in place of equalizers. If hes syncing over Ethernet he is probably also porting his audio over Ethernet.

the original post is here:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=73388562&blogID=428835413

  1. ya i really only use beat grids when traktor doesn’t analyze correctly… i should be setting beat grids for everything then? do you mean i should rely on sync…WITH beat grids? sync without beat grids gets outta control – jumps all over the place.

  2. huhn…i thought they did?..this is huge information…haha.

  3. i didn’t even know you could port audio over ethernet…does that cause more latency than using 2 programs within one machine?

geez…this is awesome – thanks bentosan for getting back to me and thanks for 4nT1 for this post!!

As much as I hate to say it, Hawtin has moved beyond Traktor Scratch into full controllerism. Respect to him.

I love his setup for loading tracks - swap to a page with everything minimized, travel the folders to the tracks, select a track, single key deck load PLUS page swap back to the main view. I’ll be adding that to my setup tonight!

He has great ideas for managing large track collections - scrubbing through a track, synced looping, handling 4 decks by syncing at every operation.

His looping was basic (I prefer the Ableton model of jumping the loop window around the track), but the idea of always resyncing on loop release is interesting and requires a bit of investigation.

Less impressed with his FX setup - I suspect he really does most of his FX using Ableton Live and he was being a good salesman for Traktor on these videos.

I still think DJing is not about the FX themselves but about the effect of the set itself.

You are right, it’s The Journey, not the color of the wrapping paper. However, as Hawtin says in the videos when you have Traktor doing the syncing work for you as a DJ you are morally obligated to use the additional time to do interesting things. FX are one of the interesting things you can do, as are layering tracks, adding loops and launching additional layers. Fast access to these operations is the heart of workflow.

Personally I think of filtering as another one of the effects, but it’s often treated in tutorials as just a kind of crossfade - like a blend operator in Photoshop.

Anyone have good enough eyes to figure out the track listing in the videos?

Adam Beyer is a big fan (or was atleast) of Hawtin and so am I :slight_smile: and i like Adam aswell ofc.

It’s just too much in there. :smiley:

judging by the amount or music Hawtin goes through daily with demo’s etc.. I doubt even he knows the track listings… he just grid’s them, plays them and moves on to the next lot of tunes… I saw an interview else where with how he manages his collection… I will see if I can find it and include it here..

Tada

Music Organisation:
http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/richie-hawtin-how-to-organize-a-digital-music-collection/

Set Construction:
http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/richie-hawtin-on-cocoon-ibiza/

Amusing
http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/no-red-on-mixer-ibiza-clubs-tell-djs/

Making The Switch
http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/richie-hawtin-makes-switch-to-traktor/

Previous Controller / Mixer
http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/customized-dj-mixer-stolen-from-hawtin/