Video: Richie Hawtin Demo's his Digital Setup

Zascar

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6n4cy_richie-hawtin-traktor-setup_music

Dam it I would love to have a play on a setup like this. I like the way he explains how the technology brings new horizons of possibilities to Djing...

djfattony2000

Hes a cheat, he even says so himself! :pac:

Great vid.

jtsuited

i still feel ableton gives a hell of a lot more 'possibilities'. These possibilities are apparently the main marketing buzzword in digital djing.

Zascar

I'm sure it does, but Hawtin is the front man for Tracktor - I'm guessing they pay him lots of money to do this and promote it around the world.

I never liked Traktor much, but I just did not find it as intuative as VDJ or Torq so enver gave it a proper go. His setup looks sweet though.

Traktor is made specifically for DJing. While Ableton is undoubtedly a more powerfull tool, it's aim is a lot wider than just Dj's...

Horses for courses really...

run_Forrest_run

good vid, thanks for posting. I'd say the purists are fuming but i think it's very interesting. I use Traktor LE (OK, a far cry from the full blown version) and it's good to see a top DJ using the same product. I wonder does he use the BCD3000 also

Executive Steve

it's interesting stuff all right - shame about the music he plays with it...


sounds like someone previewing every single kickdrum in their sample library, rhythmically, one by one... for hours.

franklyshocked

An interesting video for electronic music fans.
I would say however that this puts him in the catagory of Musician, more than DJ. What he's doing and how he's doing it removes him from classic DJing. He's a dance music musician.
He's taking individual loops or hits and layering them to produce an entirely new track. I think that pushes him over the line into musician

Zascar

I see your point but I don't agree completely. People really need to get over this idea of "Beatmatching = DJing". Some people still consider Digital DJing 'cheating' beacuse it can do the beatmatching for you. Any muppet with a sense of rhythm can learn to beatmatch - but just because someone can beatmatch does not make them a DJ. Beatmatching is simply a basic skill that you need to master to enable you to then go on to explore and learn the skills and techniques that really makesa person a "DJ".

I have a digital DJ setup which can do the beatmatching for me, but generally I still like to do it myself because i find that when you manually beatmatch your tunes you get a better feel for the music and so do a better mix, but its nice to know if you need to you can push a button and press play knowing it will be more or less the name bpm - if you really need to.

A setup like this using software like Traktor or Ableton along with a controller like the Xone 1D etc - certainly does bring a whole host of new possibilities to Djing - the likes of Sasha etc were the among the first to use the live-remixing abilities of Ableton and use it to do "Live Remixing" using loops etc - he then went one further with his Invol2ver album but this was totally different as he remixed all the tunes to his liking and then put them together in a mix album. You can't exactly do that of the fly.

I'd say if you went over to the Music Production forum and said you are now a musician because you make a few loops and play a few decks at a time, you'd get flamed to hell.

seannash

yep agree with zascar(except the anyine can beatmatch thing,it does take time to learn)but theres no way hes a musician by playing someone else loops.
anyone could buy a sample pack and make tunes or basically do what hes doing.he does make tracks so i guess i cant not call him a musician but to say this is anything above djing is a bit much.
sit down and produca a track and then see if its the same as mashing some loops together:D

Zascar

Exactly, I sometimes have great fun playing with a few loops etc on the fly, but producing is a whole new kettle of fish. I've little desire to try to make my own tracks - as good as it sounds its quite complicated and requires some serious skill. Hats off to the likes of jtsuited, jethro and any other boards members who make their own.

seannash

Zascar wrote: »

Exactly, I sometimes have great fun playing with a few loops etc on the fly, but producing is a whole new kettle of fish. I've little desire to try to make my own tracks - as good as it sounds its quite complicated and requires some serious skill. Hats off to the likes of jtsuited, jethro and any other boards members who make their own.

im so envious of that bastard jtsuited
must check out this jethro chap,what name does he produce under zascar

Zascar

Jethro is a mate of mine who I got onto boards recently, you can check out his tracks here: http://www.badbirdy.com/

seannash

wouldnt be my cup of tea but at least hes doing something.:D

Zascar

Hawtin mentioned that he has to do a bit of work beforehand to make sure all the tracks will match properly. Is this like warping in Ableton?

I saw a 'quick' demo of how to warp tracks in Ableton and it took bloody ages! Fine if you are a superstar dj and can pay someone else to do it, but I don't think I could be arsed.

Right now I have a M-Audio Torq Xponent with jog wheels. Would be interesting taking them out of the equation and just having something like the the Xone 4D:

electrofilth

tasty

seannash

Zascar wrote: »

Hawtin mentioned that he has to do a bit of work beforehand to make sure all the tracks will match properly. Is this like warping in Ableton?

I saw a 'quick' demo of how to warp tracks in Ableton and it took bloody ages! Fine if you are a superstar dj and can pay someone else to do it, but I don't think I could be arsed.

Right now I have a M-Audio Torq Xponent with jog wheels. Would be interesting taking them out of the equation and just having something like the the Xone 4D:

most warping of recent dance music taskes like 10 seconds.
you will get the odd one that takes a bit longer but for the most part its prety quick.
theres alot of bad tutorials on youtube about how to do it but once you understand what your actually doing you can fly through it

Zascar

Ahh ok cool.

Whats your setup sean?

seannash

im on cdjs,i tried ableton,did a few gogs with it but i never used it to its potential and could easily recreate what i was at on cdjs so i went back.
more fun for me that way.
i like ableton and what it cn do is amazing but if your not doing something that cant be done on cdjs i dont see the point.but thats just me

Zascar

I went out and bought CDJ's and sold them after 2 months - they were very enjoyable to mix on but piissing about with cd's did my head in. Hate a tiny screen that only displays 12 characters.. much prefer a monitor to choose my tracks

seannash

yeah it does take organising.like writing out what songs are on what cd and **** but it was more like the feel i preferred.ideally i should have routed the individual channels in ableton into the channels on the club mixer but thats seems like an awful lot of setup,so cds for me im afraid.
although im sure the next cdj 1000s will incorporate the same usb functions you have in the pioneer 400.

jtsuited

i cannot understand how Warping tracks confuses so many people. But then again ableton is much easier for us production geeks.

as sean says most tracks take a couple of seconds to warp, and then you'll never have to do it again because it creates a .asd file.

which is a lot shorter than properly learning to beatmatch etc.:pac:

franklyshocked

Zascar wrote: »

Hawtin mentioned that he has to do a bit of work beforehand to make sure all the tracks will match properly. Is this like warping in Ableton?

I saw a 'quick' demo of how to warp tracks in Ableton and it took bloody ages! Fine if you are a superstar dj and can pay someone else to do it, but I don't think I could be arsed.

Right now I have a M-Audio Torq Xponent with jog wheels. Would be interesting taking them out of the equation and just having something like the the Xone 4D:

Most video tutorials I've seen on warping tracks on youtube seem to have been posted by idiots. There are multiple methods for warping tracks in the live engine and once you sit down and figure out which method gives the best results for the type of tracks you use then you'll be able to warp and save the track in a couple of button presses.
The simplest tip i can give you is if you are mainly using dance tracks, find out the BPM of the original track and set the master tempo to the same BPM before you start warping.

rabbitinlights

Zascar wrote: »

I have a M-Audio Torq Xponent with jog wheels[/IMG]

How do you find it? How long have you had it? I played with one about a year ago, but didnt get a chance to have a proper sit down with it.

S.

Zascar

Yeah I like it a lot. I think its the best solution without spending Way more money. All you need is a laptop and the Xponent - nothing else. And it comes with effects and looping ability as standard. Others in the same bracket either need a souncard of their own, don't have as much feature wise, or are much more expensive.

Scubadevils

I am still so tempted to invest either in the Xponent or a set of CD decks. Most of the music I buy these days is on CD and I have such a burning desire to mix again!!! My poor Technics rarely get switched on even these days

brianc27

beatgridding in traktor takes literally a few seconds

its worth noting that traktor has been used by the likes of speedy j and chris leibing or the last 2 years or so aswell as various other fairly well known djs, speedy j and leibing were pushing the software for years, you'll find a good few youtube clips of them giving tutorials on it, hawtin has only taken to using it over the last year. switched over to it myself over a year ago, i think its brilliant, the looping in it is fantastic and the software is very very reliable