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Introduction to DJ Corner:
Welcome to the first chapter of DJ Corner, with myself David Thompson (aka 13). The purpose of this column is to discuss the state of DJing, news, products, as well as actual techniques for producing remixes and actual live DJing. Secondly, there will be interviews with some of my favorite DJ/Producers, in which we will discuss techniques they use in their studio and stage setups.
In my almost ten year career as a DJ I have performed with DJ Icey, Ministry of Sounds Paul Sparkes, Kazell, Eva, and Medway, to name a few. I have also been lucky enough to collaborate on a remix for Kelly Osbourne, with Medway and Eva.
Currently my DJ rig consists of a Powerbook G4 1.5ghz machine, with 1.5gbs of RAM, a 7200RPM internal drive running Logic 7.2 Pro, Ableton Live 5.2, and Rane Serato Scratch. Of course I also have a zillion or so plug-ins that I use as well. This is not only the machine I use on stage but also the machine I use in the studio.
One of the most common topics that I get asked in my position as a Sales Tech with audioMIDI.com, as well as in my travels and meetings with other DJs is how to DJ with Ableton Live, and what sort of benefits does it provide over traditional methods of DJing, as well as any possible drawbacks. This will be the focus of the first installment of DJ Corner.
This will be a two part article and first we will talk about the basics of getting Live setup to DJ with, and getting tracks ready for the stage. In the following article we will talk about advanced techniques, and actual performance methods
Let’s begin..
Open a new session in Live and change the master tempo of the session to a tempo that you would like to work at. Setup two audio tracks in the main mixing view of Live. It should look something like the screenshot below, when were you’re done. You can quickly create two audio tracks using the hot keys apple + T (or ctrl + T for PC) for new audio track. Once you have created two tracks, go ahead and pick out a couple of songs to use in this exercise. It really doesn’t matter what the tempos are, and herein lies the beauty of Live, you can take any piece of audio and match it to the tempo of your session, quickly and easily.
 Now comes the somewhat tedious part of actually preparing tracks, but if you follow these steps closely, it can be very painless and after a few attempts, it becomes much easier. Most times I am actually able to warp tracks on the fly while I am DJing, although I find this takes away from the purpose and benefit of Live, but sometimes you just have to play that new track you just downloaded.
Next we will prepare each of these tracks for warping and eventual mixing. In the wave form view of Lives mixer, zoom in until you can easily see the first few bars of the song. It should look something like this:
Turn on Warp Mode and Loop mode, so that Live knows we plan to warp (tempo shift) our tracks to the session tempo, otherwise Live will just play audio back at the tempo it was created. Loop mode because at first we want to loop over the first few bars, to make sure we’re in time.
Next move the warp marker on the left hand side of the waveform to match up with the first beat of the song. Make sure it’s the first beat of the bar, you may need to listen to the first bar or so to figure out where the bar starts. Being very accurate in this first critical step will save you some time and possible headaches here on out, so learn to use the handy zoom functions of Live and zoom in tight to make sure you’re right in front of the beat. It should look something like this:
Go ahead and zoom out back to the first bar or so. Now set your loop marker over the first 4 bars, again it helps to be accurate here. Then turn on the metronome, this will give us a reference to make sure all the beats line up with Live. Go ahead and press the play button on the actual track you are working with. Often times Live will have already figured out what the original files tempo is and everything will line up, if this is the case we’re 80% done, and life is great. Live 5 is especially better at this than previous versions, and I expect version 6 will be even faster and more accurate. On the other hand sometimes, we need to tighten things up a bit. Keep the loop playing, with the metronome on, and listen for spots where things don’t line up properly. Zooming in over one bar at a time often helps, as well as changing the loop size to one bar, so that you can work each bar until they all line up perfectly. When you find beats that don’t line up, double-click on the waveform timeline to create new warp markers, then slide them to line up with the beat. Remember that the more warp markers you create the tighter the groove will be, but our goal here is to simply allow two grooves to play nice together, not to create perfect robot beats. Or maybe that is what you want. Either way Live can help you create seamless mixes between previously difficult songs. A fully warped bar would look something like this:
Here I have put a warp marker on every attack in the loop. This creates a very tight feel. This particular track didn’t necessarily need this many warp markers, but this is a good example of how warp markers are used to create a groove template.
Once we have the first few bars lined up, we can then use that as a template for the remainder of the song. The closer and more accurate we are during these first few steps, the less work we will need to do later. I generally warp the first 32 beats or so, and most times this gives me an accurate measure of the song, and most times I don’t need to do any more work to have Live match up correctly. Of course this is much easier with electronic music, or any music which is created with computer based timing, but these same methods can be used for live grooves, albeit with a bit more work.
The final process for preparing a track with Live is to right click on the last warp marker, you have created, and select the warp from here function as pictured.
When you select the warp from here function, Live will then create more warp markers throughout the song, based on the information we have given Live thus far. Once this part is done I find the easiest way to check the timing of the track is to play it all the way through, with the metronome on, and make sure it sounds right. Sometimes, especially with vinyl recordings (as drift is inherent in the playback of vinyl) you will need to adjust for this more towards the end of the song. Adding a few more warp markers is pretty quick and simple though, you can again double click on the timeline to add them at any point in the song.
Once you have checked the song, and it plays along with the metronome, you can move on to your second song and repeat the steps as we have outlined so far. Once you have two songs mapped out in Live, you can really go to town mixing the two together, creating the ever popular mashup, or my personal favorite seamless mix.
Don’t worry about the other warp from here functions, or the different types of time stretching available in Live. I promise to talk about them in my next article, as well as how to fix problems, and avoid the pitfalls of DJing with Live.
If you have DJ-related questions for Dave he can be reached by his private hotline at david@audiomidi.com.
As always, stay tuned to the audioMIDI.com eNews for the latest reviews and new product info.
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