Comments on: Warping Tunes for Live Sets with Ableton Live

By: Sean Smith

Sean Smith — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:35:46 +0000

Surpised to see someone mentioning the Players Association here. LOL. I am also using Abelton to remix some of my disco records and raregroove. With disco records it takes a long time to set up all of your markers. I found the best way is to set the markers on every 8 count then go back to fix the markers inbetween the 8 counts. Also set it to complicated material instead of beats.

By: DJ Mark Almond

DJ Mark Almond — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:33:01 +0000

Having dj’ed since 1980, Ive a huge collection of vinyl. And yes Ableton is fantastic when warping dance tunes of recent years… I’ve just recorded from vinyl 2 tracks from 79, GQ Disco Nights and Players Association – Turn the music up. For those not old enough to remember these records have changes throughout of bpm. Players Ass Intro is 116bpm the first verse, 118, the bulk 120, then that break near the end, 116.
Ableton has a nightmare trying to warp this!!! And the GQ track! If you got these tunes, give it a go! I tried for an hour to manually adjust the markers, but the sound when played back is “warbled” if you understand what i mean!
Just wish drum machines were invented back in the 70s!!!!!

btw found this article gr8.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:33:53 +0000

The analog / wax debate is just too old now; it’s time to look beyond media.
Imagine a world where all you could play was what reached wax. How boring for us all, and expensive… I’d rather make and play my own in Live.

By: Greedyfly

Greedyfly — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:54:25 +0000

everyone should check out the moldover channel on you tube or controllerism.com. Differnent technique to djing. You can download ableton template files which takes a bit of learning but in the end are good fun.

Also shows how to set up and organise your songs/samples – 5 tracks song a song b drums vox and instruments with same tempo songs grouped to gether with 5 different coulours used to group them in the 5 keys ( circle of fifths)

By: Ableton Live Tutorials & Free Samples / Live Packs | Jesse Brede

Ableton Live Tutorials & Free Samples / Live Packs | Jesse Brede — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:04:25 +0000

[...] Warping Tunes for Live Sets with Ableton Live [...]

By: Sciamachy

Sciamachy — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:34:04 +0000

I think deadmau5, based on what he said on Radio 1 last night, sees himself as more of a musician/composer than a DJ. While he expressed gratitude to trad DJs who “present his work” he doesn’t seem to see much skill in playing “someone else’s tune” & another “someone else’s tune” & making them fit together – I’m paraphrasing here because I can’t remember his exact words, but that’s the gist anyway. I’m a fan of his work, & I DJ online via streaming services, & while his comment was kinda dissy I can see why he sees it that way.
I see Ableton as a tool to do more than just beat-matching & mixing tracks together though: I reckon you could get some pretty sweet results using sampled sections of songs, beatmatched, into scenes in the session view, kinda play them like an instrument – check the new Akai APC40: you could use that like a live instrument & get back some of the spontaneity of vinyl twin-deck DJing

By: Philippe Levy

Philippe Levy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:27:47 +0000

Mo,

Given your experience with the software I have a question about workflow. I’m transitioning in from using Serato as my DJing environment. I’m attracted to Ableton because of it’s potential for highly choreographed sets. Mostly I got tired of the two channel system, not being able to easily drop acapellas or mash songs up live. But before I go crazy warping my library, I’d like to get a few pointers.

So my needs are two-fold. On the one side, the ability to produce live with ultimate creative control (Ableton). On the other, having the flexibility to react to the dancefloor real-time by having all my music ready (Serato is good for this). Reason is, I often find myself in the face of tough crowds that require me to try a lot of music out. Test the crowd, find out what it’s going to take to get those hips moving. Once the energy is up, I can ride that into a choreographed set. Obviously running ableton+APC40 and serato+decks+mixer to get the best of both worlds is ridiculous.

As great as Ableton is, the browser is hella clunky. I have about 2000 tracks prepared in Serato with cue points. I can sort by bpm, artist, genre, etc. It seems a lot more complicated to organize a large volume of tracks with Ableton. Say I prewarp all my tracks. Do I then drop 2000 tracks into a session view? Furthermore, to make cue points, seems the only way is to copy the song clip over several times and change start markers. So, say I want 3 cue points per track, I’d have like 6000 clips in one session view to have both cue points and all my tracks.

Trademark from Evolution Control Commitee (search youtube ‘video mashup screen’) looks like he has about 1000 clips (300 songs with 3 cue-points/clips each).

To solve this problem some of my friends use iTunes, pre-warp their tracks (all the asd files get stored in the iTunes folder) and drag and drop the track they want into session view. But unfortunately, you then have to redo your cue points time and time again while you play. When dragging and dropping a track into session view, Ableton only looks for an ASD file with warp parameters, not a ALS file for clips.

I realize this is somewhat off topic, but the level of discussion here is about as good as it gets. Other forums I’ve posted to have left me with mediocre responses.

The only solution I’ve come up with is to simply reduce my flexibility and give the axe to 80% of my music. That or create an ALS project file per genre of music and drag and drop that into session view if I need that genre. Friends have cited that sometimes this can cause gaps in audio, especially if you’re dragging in 80 clips.

Any ideas?

.:pl

By: Rohan

Rohan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:16:45 +0000

the problem is that too many people are taking to softwares like live & playing.making absolute crap on stage in the name of music…

i have nothing against old or new…but the thing is that when people play on decks & turntables…there is no doubt that they can mix…
but when people start with live & claim to play a “live set” you dont really know what they are upto…ive seen too many new acts springing up who pretty much play a mediocre preprogrammed set…
i totally agree about the point that the tools don’t make it any better or worse…if you suck as a dj/live act…you will no matter what you use….but i’d much rather listen to mediocre sets by someone who is actually trying to mix than someone who is playing an absolutely tight but uninteresting preprogrammed set (& pretending to act cool with a lot of hand gestures + tweaking knobs to no effect)

By: M pleez

M pleez — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:21:20 +0000

DJ’s are musical waitrons, no one cares wether you’re playing on vinyl or not, the only people who deserve respect for that are the true beat juggling “scratch you a new one’ turntabilists…. using applications like ableton allow for so many more creative and musical possibilities never mind performance options, but you might not understand that if you’re just a DJ, you just might be conceited enough to think that you’re doing something unique with those 2 turntables that hasn’t already been done for the last 20 years.

well said KHS – if you’re boring – it has nothing to do with your tools – you’re still gonna be boring.

rather than asking “why am I better for sticking to the old” – and subsequently getting left behind, why not ask how you could use new technology to enhance your performance, and do something new, creative and interesting to an audience outside of your four bedroom walls and your sad ass goldfish.

By: Mo Volans

Mo Volans — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:14:11 +0000

this isnt always the case Chris. if a track has been ripped from vinyl, or edited manually then you WILL need to create more markers. Sometimes an artist will use a very heavy shuffle or groove quantize in these situations it is sometimes also necessary to apply more markers.

Of course if you can get away with simply letting the markers fall into place then thats the ideal situation but after warping literally thousands of tracks and using them live i can tell you this isn’t always enough.

I clearly state in the tutorial that you would only use this method if the track requires it.