I’m not a crossfader guy: mixing with the volume faders has always made the most sense to me. However, over the last year, I’ve come up with some fun uses for the crossfader on my VCM-600. I use it to switch between my main channels and my effect returns. Today, I’ll show you a basic […]
THE (UN)LIMITER
Folks often discuss whether or not to use any compression or limiting on the Master track of a set used for performance. (There’s no one right answer to this.) For a set where some of the material is already fully mixed and mastered, the answer is mostly no. For my current hybrid DJ set, I […]
SEND TO CUE
From time to time, you may encounter a situation where it’s more practical to cue tracks by using a send instead of Live’s built-in Cue feature. The setup looks like this: In the above example, return track A is set up as a cue track. Check out it’s Audio To routing – anything sent to […]
ONE BUTTON, STATUS AND CUE
One thing I find is that no matter how big, or how many controllers you have, you’ll always run out of buttons or knobs. Somehow, you always use them all up. To solve this problem, it helps to find simple ways to get multiple uses out of individual controls. I just discovered a very simple […]
MORPHING FILTER
The morphing filter that I’ve been referring to over the last couple of days consists of three chains: a high pass filter, a band pass filter and then another high pass filter. The zones are set up like this: The first high pass filter quickly crossfades into the band pass, then a slower fade into […]
CONTINUE TO PREPARE TO MORPH!
If you followed along with yesterday’s tip, you should have a pretty good idea of how Chain Selector is used to switch between chains in a rack. If you play with the zones a little more, you’ll also discover that they can be elongated by dragging the edges. Anywhere the zones overlap, both rack chains […]
PREPARE TO MORPH!
Earlier in the year, I spent a few tips building a Bi-Mode Filter, which is an important part of my performance setup. It’s not my only filter though – the bi mode is only used for tracks which contain beats or entire songs. For tracks which contain vocals or samples, I use a morphing bandpass/highpass […]
LOOPIN’ AND PUNCHIN’
As I mentioned yesterday, when working in the arrangement view the loop brace is used to set the boundaries for both looping and punching. For my money, the easiest way to set these boundaries is using the Loop Selection command. First highlight a clip or region of time: Then, from the Edit menu (you’ll definitely […]
PUNCH IT!
For a long time, I was largely uninterested in Live’s punch-in/punch-out controls: That’s because I was thinking of punching in the traditional sense, the way I used it in Pro Tools – namely, to replace bits and pieces of a live recording when working with musicians in the studio. That sort of thing isn’t a […]
AUTO PAN: CHOPPER
Live’s Auto Pan device can be used not just for creating stereo effects, but also as a simple mono volume modulator. One use for this is rhythmically chopping up a signal. Try setting up Auto Pan like this: The key aspects of this setup are: Phase is set to 0. At it’s default value of […]
