We pause from our regularly scheduled tips to bring you the results of a highly unscientific audio interface poll! Question: “Who LOVES their portable audio interface? What kind is it?” The winner is a tie, with the Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 and the Motu Ultralite both receiving 5 votes. Here’s the full rundown of […]
INTERFACE REFLECTIONS
So, I wanted to know who feels strongly enough about their portable audio interface to say that they love it. My experience is that most peoples feelings on this subject could be summed up with “meh.” For the most part, this is how I’ve felt about it as well. I’ve owned a few of the […]
GO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW
At the end of my workshop today, the question came up – what’s the best way to get started DJing with Live? If you’re experienced as a DJ, but you’re just getting started using Live as a DJ platform, the answer is clear: use as much of your existing skills as possible, and get Live […]
THE OTHER NUDGE
A number of weeks back, I wrote a couple of tips about using the Clip Nudge controls to navigate within your clips during a gig. (see: The Big Nudge and The Little Nudge) What I didn’t mention is the extra mappable area that appears in between the nudge controls when you’re in the MIDI map (see […]
WHY SCRUB?
In my case, the reason to use the Clip Scrub control as described yesterday is to save space in the Session view. In an earlier tip, I talked about breaking a song into 4 clips to have unique launch points for performance. The problem with having every song broken down into 4 clips is my […]
RUN THE BETA
If you’ve been having problems with Live being stable lately, there’s a good chance you’re running Live 8.1 (or 8.1.1) The folks at Ableton have been hard at work on a major bugfix update which looks like it will be available very soon. In the meantime, there’s a beta version of this release available to […]
CRATE TRACKS
Here’s another concept to check out if you’re using Live as a DJ platform: use a set of tracks as your virtual record crates for a gig. Take a look: The tracks on the right are set up for Cueing only while the two Deck tracks are used to send a track into the sound […]
GROUP CRATE TRACKS
You may find at some point that you don’t have enough room on your screen for all of the crate tracks that you want to use. One way to organize your crates and save space on the screen is to use group tracks: Once you’ve grouped the tracks together, you can fold them to make […]
FIGHT THE SUNLIGHT
On Sunday, I played a set on the Do Lab stage at Coachella with my friend Wolfie and was once again reminded of the difficulties presented by playing in bright sunlight. Not only does the computer screen become difficult to see, the LEDs on your controller can become washed out as well. There are a […]
SIZE IT, SKIN IT
Live has two built-in tools to help with visibility issues, both of which are controlled from the Look/Feel tab of the Preferences screen. First off, Live 8 allows you to adjust the zoom level: 110% has become my standard setting for gigs. Even when I’m playing indoors under normal conditions, I find that this gives […]
