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-- Sasha & Digweed (Ableton)
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| Originally posted by Nyquist_Theorem wondering how many of the ppl posting in this thread have actually a) seen sasha play live with ableton b) used ableton in a dj setup c) dj'd at all d) grasped the relation between all of this having been/done all that, seriously, the sky is not falling. a dj is someone who researches, picks, plays, and presents music to an audience as a performance. the tools will change, but the audience's desired elements will not. nothing to worry about folks, just modern technology making the scene we love that much more exciting.  |
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| Originally posted by Nemesis44 Actually, probably the most refreshing post in the world... probably. Cheers Nem |
ok those greyarea/infusion pictures - thats what im talking about - check out the nord lead 2 keyboard. its the little red one in the first picture at the bottom of the screen. the modular sequencers. digital drum pads! if you are gong to DJ using a sequencer like ableton - thats what you want to aim for. especially since quite a few DJs are also producers and there is close link between the two artforms (i tend to think of one aspect of production as seemless mixes and builds between instruments. i think of DJing as seemless mixes and builds between complete songs). bringing your synths with you and improvising synth hooks over existing tunes. heck you could even at some point drop the other tunes and launch into your own ones completely live. theres nothing like the spontaneity and energy of live performance. it completely redefines what being a DJ is. it redefines how you can prepare for your sets and what you can do in those sets.
a DJ using ableton that triggers some samples from his laptop is a shit DJ. dont blame ableton or anything like that for a boring, uninspired set by a boring and uninspired DJ.
Personally I could care less if somebody uses a harmonica as a deck controller. When I'm at a club I'm there to LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, not gawk at the DJ put a vinyl record on the turntable or click a mouse. I'd watch him a few times but the rest of the time I'll be too busy dancing.
So who cares? I certainly don't. As long as the music's good and makes me want to dance my legs off, use whatever the hell you want. And if you can get a more "exciting" set from using ableton, maven, cd decks, vinyls, harmonicas... so be it.
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| Originally posted by starlabs Personally I could care less if somebody uses a harmonica as a deck controller. When I'm at a club I'm there to LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, not gawk at the DJ put a vinyl record on the turntable or click a mouse. I'd watch him a few times but the rest of the time I'll be too busy dancing. So who cares? I certainly don't. As long as the music's good and makes me want to dance my legs off, use whatever the hell you want. And if you can get a more "exciting" set from using ableton, maven, cd decks, vinyls, harmonicas... so be it. |
I have a question:
how does abelton work?? Can you still use vinyl records and just have the sound routed though your laptop than back out to the mixer???
Or do you have to be 100% digital to use the software???
I like how you can change the synth sounds and add effect and layers to trax. It does make dj'ing more exciting imo.
Cheers
ableton live isnt really mixing software although i suppose you could use it for that purpose - its a fully fledged sequencer, multi track mixer and instrument library. like cubase or reason or floops. its fully VSTi and DXi compatible and its user interface and gui is heavily streamlined with lots of visual feedback making it feel easier to use in a more live kind of capacity. you know. jamming and doing one shot takes. it just makes it easier and more fun to do that kind of stuff.
you dont need to be 100% digital. you will still probably have to beatmatch whatever sequence you have in live though to the music you are playing out. it just allows you to play midi sequences over the tracks you are playing. and because all your synth gear is hooked up and midi'ed up theres nothing to stop you from playing your own parts live. you could for example just have an acapella track and build up the rest of the song completely on your own, playing parts of it or all of it live for a live remix. you can do this with cubase though and its been possible to do this kind of stuff for years. it just hasnt really been a fad until recently and ableton live seems to have stolen alot of the limelight.
since there are many DJs out there that are producers as well its something id be interested in seeing.
i like many of tiesto's productions but having read some of his interviews and such, he sounds like he doesnt have a fucking clue what various production tools do. it would be interesting to see how many dj/producers rely on other producers and engineers for their work. if they were even competant they should be able to do at least some rudimentary live performance in addition to spinning their own tracks.
Ok, I'm going to play devils advocate here for a few moments.
Derivative, that's a great and informative post but I have a few questions with regards to how this software may work and some of the potential outcomes may disturb me more than anyone could imagine from a DJing perspective.
I'm just thinking about how one would do this in Floops and the thing that strikes me that in order to be able to do this it would be a good idea to do a lot of pre mix preparation (Not a bad thing in itself). You may even want to match all the tracks to a particular BPM so that they will work together (Not being familiar with how this works in Ableton).
I know you can stretch and pitch etc in floops and indeed a lot of the others too. Although, this process is perhaps a little too time consuming to do it on the fly and there is really no smooth way I can think of to do this live. As stated, there must be a lot of pre performance preparation involved in Sasha's live shows. I know I would do the preparation for maximum effect.
I would imagine that you can put key points on wav/mp3 readouts to make life easier (again not a bad thing) so you know where to stick a mid or other audio clip that is matched.
The use of VSTs is a nice idea but again you would have to use a preset or pre made sound as to start creating a sound from scratch unless it's one that you use frequently is not really practical and can be time consuming to say the least, thus does not work well on the fly.
I need correcting if some of these points are not correct and keep in mind they are speculation not fact, but if Ableton is providing these functions then we are truly pissing against the wind. This is not DJing. This reminds me more of EJay than anything else. As I said though, these comments are speculation and I don't want to be flamed for this or anyone else to pick this up and think that it's fact.
My point is that if Ableton has these functions then it is truly laughable as they have created a tool that has taken the DJ element out of it, and I would only describe this as live sequencing. It can be argued that DJing is just a crude method of the same thing. But this actually makes it very easy.
The skill with this tool sounds more in the pre mix work than in the actual performance although having good ideas is still a key point as is reading the crowd, but we all know that Sasha doesn't read the crowd anyway as he is probably the king of doing the same mix for a month. Still need good ideas, but if you know how to harmonically mix this tool is like Fisher Price for DJing by the sounds of it.
Disclaimer: The above comments are based upon what I have been able to find out about Ableton through a quick mess about with the application, how I would have carried out the same thing in other sequencers (I am a producer and do know other software to a decent level) and a few assumptions which may or may not be correct.
Cheers
Nem
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| Originally posted by Scottaculous +1 If you're so worried about whether a DJ picks up a record and goes to his record box for another, then you're forgetting why you're there: To dance! Not stand around like a muppet and gawk at the DJ. I'm sure the DJ would much rather you dance and enjoy yourself than care what he uses. If you want to see more than you hear, go watch a turntablist. |
The average dj never goes beyond basic beatmatching.
So have no fear Ableton may never take over, unless the kids suddenly wake up and decide to get a little creative and not do the same that 10 million other kids have done before them.
I can definatly remember reading an interview with Sasha where he states that he does not have to beatmatch with Ableton.
yep, no beatmatching in the traditional sense... you have to 'warp' the tracks before hand to be able to mix anything together reasonably. You CAN warp tracks as you go, which would be abletons equivalent to beatmatching, but i would say its an equivalent level of difficulty or harder to do on the fly than beatmatching with vinyl (try it sometime ). Once warped properly, the tracks will never get out of phase...
www.ableton.com ... they have forums that go into more detail.
I played around with it a couple times on my friend's computer. Basically you play song A, que up song B by dragging it in from the file location on your computer, and the software does the beatmatching automatically. There's a simulated crossfader that you drag left or right, left channel to right channel. Of course, there's more to mixing than beatmatching, but still. It felt strange seeing the computer beatmatch perfectly in a quarter second when it took me weeks to learn how to do it poorly.
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| Originally posted by CleverName I played around with it a couple times on my friend's computer. Basically you play song A, que up song B by dragging it in from the file location on your computer, and the software does the beatmatching automatically. There's a simulated crossfader that you drag left or right, left channel to right channel. Of course, there's more to mixing than beatmatching, but still. It felt strange seeing the computer beatmatch perfectly in a quarter second when it took me weeks to learn how to do it poorly. |
Well yeah, you can tear the song apart layer by layer and all that crazy shit, but essentially that's how the matching works (at least in the version I used).
If you dont cut up (tear down) the track beforehand, you wont be able to do what Sasha is intending to do. By just playing the tracks in full, it is just like spinning, but without the beatmatching as mentioned before. By cutting up the tracks, you are able to loop portions of the tracks and mix in ways that is either not entirely possible to do with a standard setup.. or possible but with much more effort. Pioneer cdjs could probabaly do this with saved cue/loop points and just looping portions of the track as you mix in other portions of the track or other tracks.
Once the tracks have been "warped" in the Ableton software, you can drag and drop then as you wish and they will automatically be beatmatched.
So, yes, at a basic level you do not have to beatmatch in Ableton Live and you could in theory just mix from one track to the next like a standard DJ set. However (IMO) this is not the point of the software and barely touches on the power of the software.
But what you can do is drag and drop and arrange on the fly 18 different tracks (read: 18 different parts from an infinite number of actual songs, vocals from one, bass from another, guitar riff from another, etc.) into the mix resulting in some unique and interesting output. That is where I see the true power of the software coming through.
In essence, this allows us as DJs to move past the concern of programming a set from the perspective of BPMs since Ableton automatically time stretches/compresses everything on the fly. To me, it affords a greater creative element to DJing, one that I and I think most users of the software are just learning to harness. The possibilities are undefined at this point - time to think outside the box.
Regards,
JM-8
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| Originally posted by JM-8 Once the tracks have been "warped" in the Ableton software, you can drag and drop then as you wish and they will automatically be beatmatched. So, yes, at a basic level you do not have to beatmatch in Ableton Live and you could in theory just mix from one track to the next like a standard DJ set. However (IMO) this is not the point of the software and barely touches on the power of the software. But what you can do is drag and drop and arrange on the fly 18 different tracks (read: 18 different parts from an infinite number of actual songs, vocals from one, bass from another, guitar riff from another, etc.) into the mix resulting in some unique and interesting output. That is where I see the true power of the software coming through. In essence, this allows us as DJs to move past the concern of programming a set from the perspective of BPMs since Ableton automatically time stretches/compresses everything on the fly. To me, it affords a greater creative element to DJing, one that I and I think most users of the software are just learning to harness. The possibilities are undefined at this point - time to think outside the box. Regards, JM-8 |
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