AbletonDJ 101: Three Essential Things You Should Learn

1. Warping

Warping is overly emphasized and feared aspect of Ableton. If you spin genres like electro house, trance, or whatever made with computers which isn't based on old disco samples or similar, the beat is constant. This means Ableton will easily know the BPM. All you need is to set one warp marker in the beginning, right click, select "Warp 1XX BPM from here", set the second warp marker in the end, and that should do it. No videos you need to watch, or lengthy tutorials to read. Nothing.

But... Because of the next tip I usually go on and add a couple in between, usually right after breaks and big changes in waveform, wherever it is easy. When you learn it, warping a track takes minute or two, and then it's set forever.


2. Follow Actions

Follow actions are under the launch panel on the bottom left. Basically you want to take your track, create a duplicate (cmd/ctrl+d), loop first 8 or 16 bars, or whatever makes a good intro loop. Rename it "Intro Loop", or something along the lines. Then duplicate the loop you just created, take the next 16/24/32 bars that usually constitute a melody intro. Rename the loop. Continue until the track is split into small pieces.

From the follow actions, choose the corresponding amount of bars each clip takes, and below that select the arrow down option for "launch next". Some sections you don't want to add the follow actions, which gives you loops, and rest of the track you can launch from wherever, whenever, and have the track play normally from that part forward.

Finally, color code the loops differently from the ones with follow actions enabled so you can easily see by a glance which parts are going to loop until infinity, and which are jump to the next one. Launchpad and APC40 will indicate with blinking button that there is a clip coming on. If you listened to my instructions, the whole song should be on top, working as the track name indicator.

Then you just need to copy the track name from Finder/file explorer, select all the clips you just created and drag them to Ableton's browser to create als-file. Paste then name copied, and everything is now saved.


3. Dummy Clips

Dummy clips can send midi commands within or outside Ableton. Inside Ableton you can create fader/knob actions that work by launching the clip (which can be really handy for someone using grid controller such as Launchpad). The perhaps cooler application is to create midi clips, send midi out of Ableton, and into a VJ software such as CellDNA. That means you could basically control another control without ever leaving Ableton.

Easiest way to get started with dummy clips is to download Will's template that I mentioned in an earlier post. Explaining everything in detail would take too long, so instead I point you to an AbletonLiveDJ Forum thread. You need to register, but you really should, too.

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