Brooo I’m telling you from experience do not save your crates on your project file. I was one time doing some tinkering with my project, long story short ableton crashed and it took about 3-4 hours to reopen the project because it had to load in all the song (I had like 100+ songs). Since then I’ve made a separate project with all my tracks so I can just drag them in whenever I’m gonna play.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm starting a psytrance project soon and I want to do my own stuff. Most tutorials are either about producing or mixing it live, never doing original stuff live. Could I do it all through ableton and decks or do I have to get Serato/Rekordbox as well?
Maybe I missed it....but what CONTROLLER are you using to do all this? Are you just using keyboard on laptop and mouse? Or are you running a midi controller / controllers … if so which ones ?
11:04 I completely agree. I DJ in Ableton Live too, and I like that you don't have to beat match. It allows you to spend more time on other elements of the performance. For me I control lighting with my Ableton setup as well so not spending any time beat matching allows me to focus on lighting too
I realize there is no need to beat match because every track is warped. However, what about adjusting the tempo? Or do you simply keep everything running at one BPM, say 130 BPM, even though you have a track that is maybe 126 BPM. Do you ever adjust the master tempo of the Ableton session to that of the track?
@@joshuaswonke3126 yea, ideally I always try and get back to the original tempo that the track was made in. I have an Ableton Push so the master bpm adjustment is just a dial. Lets say Im transitioning a song that is 130 bpm to a song that is naturally 126. I start the second song and slowly adjust the tempo until Im at 126.
Maybe I missed it....but what CONTROLLER are you using to do all this? Are you just using keyboard on laptop and mouse? Or are you running a midi controller / controllers … if so which ones ?
Thanks for posting this! I've been working through some of the longer-form tutorials you've put out for Megaset, but this is the perfect format for a launching off point! Still like messing with my old vinyl, but this opens up so many more doors for experimentation. Cheers from California!
Thank you for sharing your technique to this level of detail! Its refreshing to see the innovation you bring into a DJ set, beyond beat matching and moving from track to track!
Hey Tom ... I bought the Megaset Pro ... but not sure how to go about setting up headphone monitoring? Could you maybe do a video that explains how you would setup a headphone cue?
Awesome insight into your mixing process man 🙏 Was just wondering which warp mode you find works best for mixing tracks like this. Also how would you normally handle moving between tracks with larger tempo differences? Cheers!
Pitch mode, always for DJing. Big tempo changes = flood everything with reverb (The DJ Megaset has a "panic" effect on the master that does this), change tempo, remove reverb :)
This is awesome. Do you use a mouse/trackpad during the set to drag and drop tracks into the decks? I presume there isn't a way to do this with a controller. I'd be interested to know how the deck strips work with the launch control xl.
I also use Ableton Live to DJ, it's very convenient. Have you ever had any caching issues? I remember it first coming up as my tracks increased which I remedied by upgrading to an m.2 ssd for the cache (source files are on a regular 2.5" ssd) but loading still takes a while. How are your tracks loading so fast? Clips always have to load into cache on startup, is there any way to have the caching folder be permanent? as It always erases when Live is closed. Someone else brought this issue up on the Ableton forum saying the problem of the cache erasing on quit came up in the recent Live 12 update. What are your settings? Is there something one needs to do to optimize Ableton for DJing with thousands of full track clips? I want to make sure I never have caching issues again which has led to audio dropouts for me.
Could you go into prewarping and syncing for us total newbies? I was considering getting into Serato mixing because of how it color codes parts of tracks to line up phrases easily. But I see in ableton the waveforms are monochrome and wonder if there could be a way to integrate a waveform analyzer into ableton for this purpose. But I also have no idea how you prewarp/sync your tracks. Thank you!
Hi! Really love the video and it showed up fist but.. I don't understand when people work with sound and the sound of the video is really really bad. It really makes your time you put in such a shame. If you any any help with set up, plugins for buzz or mixing let me know. Even if you have a shitty room you can still do alot in the end. Keep it up!
This still feels super chaotic haha. Though i dont know which hardware you use to control this. But it feels wrong to not use a controller to DJ for some reason xD
This looks awesome. Have been dj-ing on the SP404 MK2 but now push3 has come out. Wonder if your method would work on the P3. Would be ace to be able to produce and dj on the same tools
You can click the Solo button in your Main/Master track, to change the mode from solo to “cue”. Then all the solo buttons on the other tracks change to a headphones button - click on it to route that deck track to your headphones output. The cue loudness is determined by the Cue volume in the master channel/track. Map a button on a controller for each deck track’s cue on/off toggle and you are off to the races.
Holy fuck Tom. I haven't checked in for a while, but this is incredible. I was really impressed by your workflow but then you scrolled to the effects section. I'm always floored by your creativity and drive. Thanks for being an inspiration!
I dont get why you need the this deck 1/deck 2 thing on the right? What even is that? Why shift stuff around into the deck channels and back out again. this makes no sense to me.
Organization and mapping? The setup is pretty straightforward. The other bits are just bins he pulls from and builds his mix from. The deck channels are where all the controller mapping is macro'd to. I dont even use midi gear or ableton, and that was pretty evident. It's not just 1 mix. it's his whole workstation.
Would be nice if Ableton could have a window for track artwork, and read this from metadata. So while you are clicking through your "crate" it would show artwork in a seperate window/tab. Do you think it would make it easier to find tracks rather than just relying on the names?
This was awesome to watch and im probably going to pick up the project file but i have to know. been searching for months. if i wanted to do tempo changes such as going from drum and bass at 172 to lets say trance at 140 how would i accomplish this with this sort of setup
I'm just stating to dabble in the world and art of DJ. Found this tutorial super useful. I've got Abelton on my computer so going that path rather than the typical CDDJ route. I also want to mix in live instruments.
Hey Tom, is there anyway to load tracks into the decks with having to using the mouse pad? I really love this setup and the potential for sound design but don’t want to touch the computer
This is pretty amazing - both the tool itself as well as your willingness to share your impressive knowledge. As a Traktor user, there are a couple of features that I’ve not seen you cover in these vids - and they all to do with the Traktor browser. Namely, the ability to search or filter your large music collection, and displaying key matching or harmonically compatible tracks. Does your tool have these features somehow? Or do you have a process in your workflow for this? (You may well cover this in a different video, so my apologies if I’ve not yet found that.)
I assume the reason why you have this setup rather than just making playlist folders mapped in the 'Places' section is because you've adjusted the tracks with settings that Ableton would need to save in the project for it to be reflected. Otherwise, you can just drag and drop from any of your content folders without loading up other tracks. It will work fine either way because Live is really good but it seems like you could replace all the clutter with just making some folders in your content management and then just drag them in. I can see this view being useful for a short time but if you're playing every few days for a year or two, you end up with hundreds of tracks, which is unwieldy. If you play a couple shows a year, then sure, you're good for a few years.
i legit thought you stopped youtube as a whole for some reason youtube hasn't been showing me uploads for years even tho i have the bell activated lol only way i noticed it was because i started searching up djing related stuff again after nearly 10 years youtube is so lost these days i swear
Thanks my man.. Doesn't take long to know Serato, etc is too tight of a box to be stuck in. This is a great template. Using the Launchcontrol is perfect too
Great video thanks! Do you spend much time warping when ingesting new (not-yet-warped) content? Do you use any features in Ableton 11 or does your approach for DJing work fine with Ableton 10? I cannot see any new features in 11 which are specific for DJ'ing sets. An aside, I've used Ableton for many purposes, one being an occasional at-home DJ set for fun... but I found warping to take an enormous amount of time, took the wind out of my sail when I'd have an inkling for an at-home set... it's unlike traditional MKIIs and mixer (I'm dating myself) where it's very tactile and you just make it work right away. Ableton does not seem to have any nudging or pushing concept, that sort of thing. Maybe I'm trying to use it as a rekordbox and maybe that's wrong... but I mention this in case you have any inspiration I should revisit Ableton for at-home func DJ casual creativity. I watch these DJ vids from time to time... I don't do much of that these days but fun to keep in touch, try things out at home now and then. Kudos again for you vid... take care.
Hey @TomCosmNZ, amazing tutorial and DJ Strip! I am loving it! Got the 3.3, and I am having a lot of fun using it to mix on Ableton Live 11, Push 2 and Akai APC40. I do have a question though, and apologies if it was asked before, but when I map the In, Out and Ext buttons on the DJ Strip to my Push 2 user mode, it doesn't work like when I click it with my mouse. Meaning, it toggles the In, Out or Ext on, and then I have to push the same assigned pad button again to switch it off... Is there anything I need to do in particular to make this work like it would when mouse clicking on the same buttons? Apologies again for the question if it was asked before.
do you have any troubles / challenges with your physical setup in this CDJ world? i assume you feed the house a simple stereo out. i was hoping you'd go more into the interesting fx stuff to the right of your "decks". cheers!
