Happily Munching Down on My DJing-with-Live Words

So a few days back, as I’m known to do, I laid down a solid proclamation that DJing with Ableton Live was broken, and that it was not for me. I had invested a fair bit of time I didn’t really have to figuring out how to use the program for DJ purposes, and was quick to give up when my results were unsatisfactory. Giving up was a disappointment, though: the sheer potential for creative sets in Live is huge. I was bummed that I wouldn’t get to do a cool Live set for the Adjective Records release party, and bummed further at the prospect of using and paying for Traktor, software so buggy that Native Instruments should be paying me to use it.

Thanks the stars, then, that my main man 5dots has blossomed into a total Live guru since introducing him to the program a couple years ago. We sat down last night and, having never read any of the information out there on using Live for DJing, he pulled together a couple tracks quite accurately.

(Caution: the following is only relevant to Live geeks) My problem, it seems, was not zooming in enough to the waveform clip display in the session view where warp marks are laid. The folks on the Ableton forums had suggested that warp markers need only be nailed down every 8 measures or so (your average musical phrase in a song with a 4/4 beat). For the rhythmically complex material I spin, however, this proved to be inadequate. Craig took the tact of zooming in quite close and nailing down markers measure-to-measure, which actually goes fairly quickly once you get the hang of it, and which yields flawless results. I was cutting seamlessly between a couple of tech-house tracks in minutes.

Needless to say, it’s a wonderful feeling to not be the expert for a change. I’ve always been the go-to guy for technical knowledge in pretty much every social realm in my life: family, friends, coworkers, classmates. It was great to be shown something I couldn’t figure out, and cooler still to realize what a Live guru Craig has become. Hats off.

Amusingly enough, Craig said he’d never think of DJing with Live, as all that warp marker-laying is “too goddamn much prep work.” This coming from a guy who lately has been running Absynth in Bidule ReWire’d into Live for recording short step-sequenced synth lines. Whatever, dorkus. DJing with Live is a lot of prep work, and I still stand by my statements that its interface and audio format support could be more DJ-friendly to alleviate some of that work. But even as it stands, it’s worth the time for being able to deliver a performance that will really stand out.