Music | Code | Misanthropy
Warping and Splitting tracks for DJing
Several people have asked me to do a video covering this, so here goes:
A video covering the basic methods with which I warp tracks into Ableton and split them into musical components so I have more control over how they get played.
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about 8 months ago
Thanks for the tutorial, nice advice.. but I don’t quite understand why you would go to all this effort?… do you do this on every track you dj?
I mean its useful to have the parts separated if you want to loop the intro or out-tro for a while, but it seems like a lot of work if you just want to play a song and not the kind of thing you would want to be spending your time doing whilst DJing live…
It seems a heck of a lot easier just to setup a few cue-points in traktor and once they are setup in traktor they are saved into the track and easy to be dropped back in quickly..
if you did this for every track in ableton you would have a HUGE file and bits would be everywhere, might get kinda confusing?
perhaps you could help me to understand your thinking behind why you would do this and an example of using it live?
Cheers
Paul
about 8 months ago
Good question! The answer is a bit complex.
Firstly, it’s less time-consuming than it looks. I was going very slowly for the video. You are right, however: it does add effort.
I do it when I prepare sets for events. I don’t do it when I’m jamming, DJing casually, or trying out new tracks. I really only do it as part of my highly-OCD preparation for something important.
It has all the same functions as cue-points, but with clips and names rather than a waveform. Personally I find this more descriptive. Additionally, you can re-arrange tracks, edit out bits you don’t like or make stuff repeat. Obviously it’s more effort than Traktor’s cue-points, and arguably the interface isn’t as nice, but it’s more powerful/flexible.
Once you’ve split up tracks like this you can save them and get them back later without problems. It’s not unlike Traktor in this regard.
You can end up with a pretty long file: but I manage this two ways. Firstly, by being quite careful about colour-coding and layout, and secondly, by keeping most of the tracks in the searchable library (usually sorted by genre) until I need them (then I drag them into the set). Ableton has good tools for zooming around a set, so it ends up being quite easy to manage.
I should point out. While Ableton does a fine job of DJing from MP3s like this, Traktor is arguably better at it. The real power of Ableton is that it is extendable and ultra-flexible, so you can DJ in entirely new ways. A couple of video examples would be http://www.ableton.com/launchpad and http://www.vimeo.com/1701545?pg=embed&sec=1701545. I’m currently using Ableton to DJ from MP3s, but I plan to move to more advanced forms as soon as I have all the required material.
I kind of envy Traktor’s easy-access and waveform display. It focuses on specific information, and definitely displays that specific information better: but this makes it overall less flexible. Obviously, if you’re more into A-B mixing and oldschool styles, Ableton isn’t the tool for you
about 8 months ago
are these videos downloadable?
about 8 months ago
Of course!
http://www.vimeo.com/8008872
On the bottom right of the page for each of the three videos it says “Download Quicktime version”
about 8 months ago
42 is not a multiple of 4
about 8 months ago
good video!
it would also be intersting, how you would than work with these splitted tracks.
about 8 months ago
Heh. True. Woops.
about 7 months ago
HI,
Okay, so you’ve split the track, and you can do pretty much want with it now. However, how do you save the split tracks?
Do you save the individual pieces and then load them one by one(which, I’m assuming is going to mean creating a new file for each piece on your hard-drive) or is there some way to save the split pieces to the original files, and then only load the original file and the pieces will appear as you have split them when you next load the file.
Basically, once I have split the file, How do I save the results, so I can easily load them the next time I start Ableton. My apologies if this is a retarded question, but for the life of me I can’t figure it out.
Thanks
Sam
about 7 months ago
See http://vimeo.com/8134150 for a video I’ve done explaining this.
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