Occasionally people ask me questions about how to set up Ableton Live to work more like a conventional DJ program: how to play a musically diverse set where you don’t want to beat match anything (turn Warp off for all clips), how to launch clips instantaneously (set Quantize to None), and how to deal with that long lag that occurs when you first drop an mp3 into Live (you can’t).
Well, for me the solution is simpler than all that: don’t use Live. As I write this, I’m waiting for a gig to begin where I’m DJing an anything goes mix of downtempo, hip hop, loungey house, synth pop and anything else I feel like throwing in. For this gig, I’m using Traktor.
Every now and then, I’ll use both – but not at the same time. If I know that I’m covering both some mellow time and some dancefloor time during an event, I’ll fire up both programs, configuring them both to use the same output channels on my audio interface. When I’m ready to get the dancefloor going, I’ll just flip over to Live and segue into my dance set.
