When creating MIDI mappings for a performance set, it’s important to note that there are a number of mappable areas in Live that may not at first be obvious. An important one to know about is the Track Status indicator: This allows you to display the Clip View for whatever clip is currently playing in […]
ABLETON LIVE: NOT SO MUCH
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 […]
SAVE A (SUB)SET
Once you know the secrets of Importing from the browser, there are all sorts of interesting things you can do. In particular, you can save Sets that are designed strictly for importing into other Sets. For example, take a scenario such as the one I described in One Song, Multiple Clips. Once I’ve broken down […]
MASTER OF IMPORTS
Yesterday’s tip covered the basics of importing from one Set to another but there’s a bit more to know if you really want to take full advantage of Live’s import functionality. In addition to tracks, you can also import individual clips from the tracks within a Set, as long as those clips are contained within […]
IMPORT A TRACK
In yesterday’s tip, I mentioned a situation in which you will need to import a track from one Live Set into another. This is done via the browser. If you locate a Set in the browser, you’ll notice that it can be opened as if it were a folder: Opening a Set reveals all of […]
SAVE A COPY
This is a good one. Live has a few different options for saving: Save (save changes to the current version), Save As (save changes to a new file and open the new file) and Save A Copy (save changes to a new file, but keep the current file open). On a day to day basis, […]
FILTER DELAY: DJ LOOPER
With all of the different live setups that I’ve created, there’s one thing they all have in common: a delay device on a return track. I find myself using the Filter Delay the most for a variety of reasons. One reason in particular is that this device can double as a looper. Take a look: […]
CUT THE BOOST
Yesterday we left off having created a custom DJ EQ with +/-30dB on each band. Today we’ll modify it so there’s 30dB of cut but only 15dB of boost. The trick lies in the technique I demonstrated in Adding Auto-Bypass. The first thing you’ll want to do is rename the second EQ 8 – otherwise […]
BOOST THE CUT
The next step in building the custom DJ EQ we started yesterday is to put the EQ 8 into a Rack, and map the Gain of each band to a Macro, so it looks like this: (If you’re new to building Racks, take a look at One Knob, Multiple Functions) The problem with this EQ […]
DJ EQ
If you’re designing a Live set that needs EQ on a few tracks, the obvious thing to do is to use the EQ 3, Live’s DJ-style EQ. The problem with this device (without getting into any issues regarding sound quality) has to do with how it works with a controller. Simply stated, the problem is […]
