Im starting to ride the pitch these days... for you guys who have been djing for yrs and yrs.. ( me only 18 months ) do you get your beatmatching spot on while riding the pitch, or do you get it fairly close then make your minor adjustments..

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Trance Is The Music God Listens To

In that scratch sample.. is that off of a CDJ?? I am not to familiar with scratching as far as trance... is it usually done with tt's or cdj's?

Becaause I'm assuming with vinyl it would be hella risky as it might cause the needle to be jumping all over the place?

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Originally posted by SpecRadio This is the setup at the club I've played at a few times. There isn't much to do but play straight tracks

Yes there is
2 double cd players and 2 turntables....on a six channel mixer. Giving you 6 possible sources.
Plenty of scope for looping or dropping things over the top of things. etc etc.

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Originally posted by DJ_RoKo ok i agree with milo but specradio also has a bita point. halliwell isnt bull shit what he does is fine and i also see no problem with using cd's w/ tempo already matched. using shortcuts like this one to concentrate on other aspects in the mix and get extremely creative is great. but i think when you do a whole mix in ableton that is no longer really dj'ing for me. beatmatching is a skill which is part of dj'ing but a big part of using beatmatching is dropping it in and mixing it smoothly, also mixing without and headphones and riding the pitch is an awesome skill and can be used with any style and if you practise enough and know what ure doing you can still fiddle with ure mixer. but hey, i havent touched my tables in months coz i got no cash for records, lol . so what would i know. peace

Hasnt Sahsa proven to enough people that he can mix with his eyes closed??? Now he wants to further his djing skills by remixing tracks live with the use of Abelton? Thats 1000 times harder to do than simply beatmatching. MOst of you who criticise Ableton have no idea just how complex it really is. All you see is dj's like Sasha fiddling round with a controller but you have no idea what hes actually doing. I guess thats one of the drawbacks of Abelton. You cant visually see whats going on and what a dj is doing, compared to when hes using vinyl and you can physically see him cueing up and using the eq's

But to say Abelton is not djing is a bit much. It requires just as much if not more skill.

Armada, I must disagree. I got a copy of Ableton, installed it, went through the DJ tutorial and before I was even done with the tutorial I had my digital tracks loaded into the program and had a fairly nice mix going on. It was the easiest thing I've ever done in my life.


Mil0, as for beatmatching without the headphones it isn't that hard. Nobody ever said anything about waiting there for 5 or 6 minutes. IMO if you only mix a track in every 5-6 minutes then you will put me and the rest of the dance floor to sleep. The crowd wants to hear good tracks and I'm sure they want to hear them coming in fast. I still use my headphones, but the way I mix I never wait to have a track beatmatched before I start bringing the channel fader up. As I'm getting the match tighter I push the fader up higher. This takes about 10 seconds. I know you like to be able to use both hands on the mixer but that isn't necessary. Most of the really good DJs I see have their hand on the pitch fader the whole time for good reason.

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Originally posted by Zild Armada, I must disagree. I got a copy of Ableton, installed it, went through the DJ tutorial and before I was even done with the tutorial I had my digital tracks loaded into the program and had a fairly nice mix going on. It was the easiest thing I've ever done in my life.

Where did i state that the installation was difficult? lol. Well if its soo easy then answer this. How often do you perform live with it in front of thousands of people whilst re-editing tracks on the fly even when theres such a high possibility that you will completly screw things up and sound like a complete idiot? Doing that like sasha does requires a lot of balls and a lot of skill. Not everyone who flames abelton knows how to use it to its maxuimum potential, like sasha and richie hawtin do.

I didn't say the installation was easy. I said mixing tracks with Ableton is the easiest thing I've ever done. Please don't compare Sasha to Richie Hawtin. I almost puked.

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I've never been able to eat a whole baby.
Kill the women. Eat the children.
It's just one of those days where you want to bend over everyone you know and kiss their ass goodbye with a big sideways boot.

Latest Mix

heh, the mp3 sample is listed as Umek - Overtake & Command, and I am guessing he scratches with vinyl as thats all he did live.


Donald glaude rarely cues up his tracks on his friday night reidency here so I am sure a lot of other good djs also do that. There are more important things to do like pump up the crowd and program the set.


and I have no idea where this thread is going, you guys have talked about like 8 different things. I lol'd at teh i just installed ableton and had a pretty good mix, that is not even close to what sasha does live.


bottom line is see halliwell live and then judge him.

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Maybe it's because i've only played at shitty clubs I can get gigs at around here. It's mostly DNB, House, or Hip Hop here. Non of which, I play. This is the setup at the club I've played at a few times. There isn't much to do but play straight tracks

If you dont try youll never know... learn beat juggeling and sampeling tecniques and you can do a shitload on 2 turntabels let allone a 6 channel mixxer with 4 differn sources.

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mil0, as for beatmatching without the headphones it isn't that hard. Nobody ever said anything about waiting there for 5 or 6 minutes. IMO if you only mix a track in every 5-6 minutes then you will put me and the rest of the dance floor to sleep. The crowd wants to hear good tracks and I'm sure they want to hear them coming in fast. I still use my headphones, but the way I mix I never wait to have a track beatmatched before I start bringing the channel fader up. As I'm getting the match tighter I push the fader up higher. This takes about 10 seconds. I know you like to be able to use both hands on the mixer but that isn't necessary. Most of the really good DJs I see have their hand on the pitch fader the whole time for good reason.

Hey im the one that stated that, takes me no time at all nowadays to beat match often don tuse the headphones to do it for my fast mixes.

quote:

Im starting to ride the pitch these days... for you guys who have been djing for yrs and yrs.. ( me only 18 months ) do you get your beatmatching spot on while riding the pitch, or do you get it fairly close then make your minor adjustments..

I personaly allmost always ride the pitch, i get the song as close as possibly but about every 30 seconds ill have to make an adjustment just becouse im cueing up records so fast i dont take the time to beat match exactly on. Keep in mind though i play progressive house and breaks which usually tends to have faster mixes as aposed to trance

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I have to say I agree with Zild on this one.

Sure Ableton does open up lots of creative possibilities for better or worse but the fact remains it's easy to use. Especially if you are a producer then it becomes childs play almost on the Fisher Price level.

If I am remixing then I prefer to do it properly not some half arsed version on the fly. The reason why I stopped using Ableton is because it bored me to tears. Playing sound bytes is not what floats my boat, spinning tunes and getting into that is what makes me feel good.

The thing about Ableton is that it's really only a good thing if the end result is better than what you acheive with vinyl or CDs and I haven't actually heard anything that totally convinces me of that.

Carl Cox is still the man in my opinion and he does plenty of stuff with decks that you couldn't hope to acheive with Ableton.

The thing about Richie Hawthin is that he was also a great versatile and creative DJ before he hit Ableton.
As for Sasha, he could program a set for a month and they play it back to back seamlessly which is about as far as it goes. Don't get me wrong, he has paid his dues as a quality producer no doubt but based on his skills alone he doesn't do it for me.

If clubs make the jump and just book Ableton DJs ( a term I use loosly) then I will make the transition but I'm having too much fun with what I am doing atm to be bothered with it.

Cheers
Nem

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I agree with nem on this. Though i feel that being creative is a big part of mixing and i will fight in support of any dj that does something new and creative even if its with abelton. But i myself mix using 2 turntabels 2 cd players a efx unit and maby a sampler. Its the way i like to get creative durring my mix. But just becouse of that im not gonna go out and say that djs that use abelton arent proper djs. Its like cds or vinyl its all a differnt means to the end.

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The Dual CD Decks are .10 pitch. You CAN'T keep your hand off the pitch bends or it'll loose the sync in maybe 20 seconds. Put that in front of any top DJ and they wont play it. They'll refuse.

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