Ableton Scratch Live

[Kartoshka]

http://www.ableton.com/serato-partnership

DJs, remixers and producers on the forefront of technology, watch out. Serato and Ableton are happy to announce a partnership which will pave the way for the future of Digital DJing. With shared artist rosters from hip-hop (DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Nu-Mark, A-Trak) to electronica (Paul Van Dyk, DJ Sasha), both Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live are renowned as the premier performance platforms in clubs around the globe. While Serato's Scratch Live excels in vinyl emulation, music library control and lightning quick hands-on scratching, Ableton Live provides the tools for production, on-the-fly remixing and beat creation.

"Ableton and Serato take different approaches to modern musical performance," says Ableton CEO Gerhard Behles, "But both companies live by the philosophy that software should be straightforward, easy to use, and most importantly, reliable and stable onstage and in the studio. Ableton has never had an answer for the DJ who wants vinyl control, and rather than try to emulate what Serato do so well, we simply make sure that our products work well together."

Serato Audio Research CEO Steve West agrees. "After years of talking together, we're thrilled to be working with Ableton. It's exciting to think about what we can offer to DJs and producers: the ability to go beyond just spinning records and add a personal stamp to the music they play."

Just where this Serato and Ableton collaboration will take us has yet to be seen but one thing is clear: the worlds of DJing, remixing and production for artists worldwide have changes ahead.

[cimo]

...LAME !

i use MsPinky s timecoded vinyls as a VST plugin in Ableton since more than 1 year, good marketing though, let s see what they will have to offer, the only feature i am missing is automatic beatmatching/synch between the plugin and the host, which i do tapping on the tap tempo ..

Simone

[huck]

@ kartoshka thanks for posting this

@ cimo i knew that people were using mspinky as a vst, how is it working for you?

i have used serato for awhile now, and ableton is my daw of choice, so i am excited to see what comes about

[cimo]

hi

as mentioned the only missing feature is synching to the host, that s it, i wouldn t ask for anything else

[Kartoshka]

my guess it's gonna be my next gear... still scratchin with tfs1.5

[rasteri]

I'm hoping for tighter integration between timecode vinyl and ableton than is currently possible with mspinky. Being able to scratch clips and switch between them with a foot pedal or something would be frickin awesome.

[cimo]

I'm hoping for tighter integration between timecode vinyl and ableton than is currently possible with mspinky. Being able to scratch clips and switch between them with a foot pedal or something would be frickin awesome.

doable in this very moment, i switch among them with my MIDIBoxMindController

EDIT:

I took a screenshot:

the first VST on the left is the newest standalone plugin but it hasn t got midi control over file browsing

the other one is the Pluggo (Max/Msp) version with full files browsing

[cimo]

... just to bump it up, editing was not a good idea, whattya think rasteri?

[rasteri]

Very cool - what's the latency like on it?

I've been thinking about getting mspinky...

[cimo]

1) There are approximately 155 totally unique physical position stamps per rotation of the record. These physical position stamps can be read by the software whether the record is spinning in the forward direction, or in reverse.

2) The duration of record playback at 33-1/3 rpm is 12 minutes 40 seconds per side, and each side of the record has unique position stamps.

3) Ms Pinky's software reads a new physical position stamp every 11.6 milliseconds when the record is played at 33-1/3 rpm.

4) Ms Pinky's software reads new velocity and direction information every 0.725 milliseconds.

As opposed to other commercially available "timecode" vinyl systems, Ms Pinky's vinyl can function as a generalized controller in the digital dimension. With Ms Pinky's vinyl, users can cue up and scratch digital audio files as if they were tracks recorded on a vinyl record. And many more exciting possibilities exist thanks to the fact that all digital control data derived from Ms Pinky's vinyl is available to other software clients to use in almost any way they wish. For example, you can use Ms Pinky inside the Max/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment to scratch audio, video, and just about anything. C/C++ developers on Mac, PC, and Linux platforms also have access to all Ms Pinky control data through our SDK.

+ sound card latency of course

[Kartoshka]

+ :does max/msp works with other vinyl emulation systems?

[cimo]

+ :does max/msp works with other vinyl emulation systems?

torque

[Kartoshka]

well torq based on m-audio's connectiv as mspinky itself.

serato/nifs?

[cimo]

well torq based on m-audio's connectiv as mspinky itself.

serato/nifs?

mm dunno what you mean but MsPinky is not based on M-Audio s connectiv, in MsPinky software you can choose the input mode: Gen1-Gen6 vynils, MP CDs, Torq vynils

Linuxers may want to have a look at www.xwax.co.uk

[Kartoshka]

i meant if running it with different soundcards, i understand it only requires 2in/2out which is perfect for any card/external interface then.

[cimo]

MsPinky can run on any decent soundcard, you need RIAA preamps but mic preamp will do, you need  A STEREO INPUT FOR EACH DECK.

Simone

[cimo]

BING! I ve just received this message from the MsPnky team:

If any of you OSX Ms Pinky users are ready to try something new, please download the "very early beta" version of Maxi-Patch_AO 3.6.9. There is now a new tabbed view, and one of the tabs is "MIDI out". Under this tab you will find controls for selecting available MIDI out devices, and enabling either of the two "modes" of MIDI Output I've come up:

Mode 1: MIDI CC (Control Change) Output -- in this mode, MIDI CC messages are sent out on the device you choose, on the channel and controller number that you specify. The frequency with which these CC messages are sent is also specified by you.  You also specify the "ticks per rotation" to match the characteristics of the jogwheel you're seeking to emulate. The MIDI CC messages are constructed like this: when the turntable is stopped, the value output is 64. When the turntable spins forward, the value is greater than 64. When the turntable spins in reverse, the value is less than 64. The amount by which it is greater or less than 64 depends on how many "ticks per rotation" you set, and how often you set the CC messages to be sent, and of course it also depends on the speed of the record on your turntable. You will probably have to experiment a bit with all these values to get something that works the way you want it to.

Mode 2: MIDI Beat CLock Output -- in this mode, you set a "Target BPM". If you need it, there is a little "Tap Tempo" calculator just below that can help you calculate your target BPM. After you enter your Target BPM, you'll see that the turntable speed modulates this Target BPM up or down, depending on the pitch of playback. You can set various parameters of the MIDI CLock output -- for example, I found that with Ableton it works quite well to set "Divisions of a whole note" to 96.  Ableton seems to have no trouble synching up to the beat.

Each of these two modes can be engaged or disengaged independently. To specify the output device for each mode, double-click on the little "midiout" box underneath the section that has the controls for each mode.

To get things going, I highly recommend using a great little utility you can get for free called "MIDI Monitor".

I'll be waiting to hear if anyone thinks this is useful and/or if it even works on your system.

[cimo]

..and today this one:

A new version (3.7.0) of Maxi-Patch_AO (audio only) for OSX and Windoze is now available for Fan Club Members to download. This new version includes additional MIDI output capabilities, as well as support for Open Sound Control (OSC).

OSC I/O: under a new tabbed view "OSC", you'll find a control panel for setting up Maxi-Patch to send and receive vinyl control information over an IP network. To enable Maxi-Patch to send information to another host, enter the host's IP address, and the port number on which the host should expect to receive data. Then mark the check boxes next to the three data quantities which can currently be sent (velocity, power, and position). Text edits let you modify the OSC "URL"-like prefixes which are attached to each data packet. Turntable velocity, power, and position values are sent over the network as 32-bit floating point quantities. The current version cues up a new data packet approximately every 20 milliseconds.

MIDI Pitch-Bend Output: MIDI outputs have now been divided up between two separate tabs "MIDI Clock out" and "MIDI Pitch out". The "MIDI Clock out" tab allows you to send out MIDI beat clock on a selected MIDI device. In this new version you can also send MIDI "start", "stop", and "continue" messages in order to synch with a sequencer. The "MIDI Pitch out" tab includes controls for sending out turntable pitch values as 7-bit CC's and/or as 14-bit Pitch Bend values. There are two modes in which the turntable pitch information is encoded into MIDI:

linear mode: Turntable velocity values are calculated by Maxi-Patch as a ratio of current turntable rotation rate to the rate at which the disc was cut (33-1/3 rpm or 45 rpm). So if you have pitched the deck up by 8%, the value calculated will be 1.08. If you pitch down by 10%, the value will be 0.90. Positive values of velocity indicate rotation in the normal forward direction. Negative values indicate reverse spinning. In linear MIDI mapping mode, the turntable velocity values are simply scaled and added to 64 (for 7-bit CC's) or 8192 (for 14-bit Pitch Bend). The resulting value is then limited to the range (0..127) (7-bit) or (0...16383) (14-bit). For 7-bit CC's, all values less than 64 indicate turntable reverse spinning. All values greater than 64 indicate forward rotation. Likewise for the 14-bit Pitch Bend, all values 0...8192 indicate reverse spinning. Values 8192....16383 indicate forward rotation. The "invert" switch allows you to invert this mapping.

timer-relative mode: In this mode 7-bit CC's and 14-bit Pitch Bend messages are constructed based on the turntable velocity values in conjunction with timing information. This is our attempt to model the behaviour of certain jog wheels designed for use with DJ apps like MixVibes and Traktor. The values for 7-bit CC's are 64 plus-or-minus the number of "ticks" that transpired since the last message. Likewise the 14-bit pitch bend values are 8192 +/- the number of "ticks" since the last message. Setting the number of ticks per rotation effectively scales the turntable velocity values to fit within an appropriate range for each message type. You will need to experiment with these settings to get the desired effect.