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Welcome back to the fourth installment of DJ Corner. Since the new year, I have made a lot of changes to my setup at home, including the purchase of a Mac Pro, in which I use Nicecast to broadcast my radio show on www.transmissionfm.com. Nicecast allows me to do some very cool things while broadcasting my show, including the use of standard AU plugins, as well as built in recording of the broadcast stream. I am now able to use Waves Renaissance EQ6 and the Waves L3 Limiter on the broadcast stream, which gives me a killer broadcast ready sound, and is very similar to what is used in most Radio stations today. As many of you have asked me about how I syncronize Ableton Live and Serato, this time around we will talk about using Ableton and Serato together during a DJ set.
This essential piece is the RedSound Soundbite Micro, which allows me to easily synchronize Ableton and any audio signal I have running through my DJ mixer.
This unit not only samples and creates filter fx, synchronizes audio to MIDI, but it also allow you have the much needed functionality of push/pull or otherwise known as nudge, all in real time. What this means is that now you can easily sync up Ableton and Serato, or any audio signal you have running through your DJ mixer with any piece of MIDI gear you have. Since the last DJ Corner, I have upgraded to the latest version of Ableton Live 6, and so far it has been rock solid on both my Mac Pro and my older powerbook G4. However I do wish it was a bit easier on the processor, I guess it is time I get a new laptop, as soon as I am done paying off the Mac Pro! Ouch.
If you still have the session we created last time, go ahead and bring it up, and we can go through how to setup the soundbite and synchronize your DJ gear with Ableton. First we will need to make some changes in the prefences menu so that Ableton will listen to the MIDI output of the Soundbite and synchronize itself to it. You can find the preferences menu under the Live Menu. It should look like the picture below for Live 6, make sure you click on the MIDI/Sync Tab on the left.
Click on the Sync and Remote buttons, and make sure they turn yellow. Should look like this when you’re done.
This allows Ableton to Follow Transport Controls from another device as well as MIDI clock. You will also need to turn on the EXT control function which can be found on the upper left of your Live Software. This tells Live to accept transport and MIDI control from an external source.
It should look like this when your done.
Once this is all setup, you should be able to use the play and stop functions on the soundbite or any other device which features standard transport control. If you feed the soundbite audio from your DJ mixer, the soundbite will then translate this information into MIDI and Live should follow in tempo. You must hit the play button to start Live. Keep in mind that it may not sync up perfectly depending on whether or not you started on beat or not, but this is where the push/pull features come into play. Use these functions to get everything to sync up, in a similar fashion to using the pitch control on a turntable or CD player. Next time around we will talk more about setting up Ableton Live for a DJ set, and some of my new favorite plugins that I am using in Live. Good luck and Please don’t hesitate to give me a call or drop me a line if you have questions. Cheers!
If you have DJ-related questions for Dave
he can be reached by his private hotline at david@audiomidi.com.
Or call him at (818) 993-0772, or toll-free at (866) 283-4601.
As always, stay tuned to the audioMIDI.com eNews for the latest reviews and new product info.
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