I've been trying to bring up my game when it comes to DJing. I noticed that many of the top acts I see bring a laptop and use Ableton Live to arrange their show. It sounds great, often better than vinyl. When combined with a MIDI controller, it seems to be extremely powerful. I was encouraged by my friends Satsi and Lorin to spend time learning this program, and even the last two times I've seen Lolo he was using a laptop.

I've had so much to learn. It feels like it's taking forever. I learned beatmatching using turntables and CDJs, and even a few different ways to mix tracks together. Ableton can make this part easy, if you prepare it to understand the tracks by warping them. Just the same, I haven't been satisfied with the mixes I've prepared. I set out to find out why.

There's a concept called harmonic mixing. It works by determining the key a track is in, say D#, and then figuring out the keys of tracks that are compatible. So, not only do I match BPMs, I match the keys. This was tough to work out, because I couldn't seem to remember that D# was compatible with Cm, A#, and G#, much less any of the other 23 keys that a song might be. Then I found this Camelot Easymix System, which assigns keycodes such as 5B to a key, which is compatible with any adjacent keycode such as 5A, 4B, and 6B. Now I can view the song's keycode, and instantly know what matches, or even bring the key of the song up or down a semitone (by adding or subtracting 7), and therefore knowing it matches 12B, 12A, 11B, and 1B. It all makes sense if you look at the little wheel Camelot designed. The mixes sound so much better to me now once I found Rapid Evolution (www.mixshare.com ), a tool for determining song key, and put this knowledge to use.

But I'm still having difficulty using Ableton Live. Ableton organizes songs by a thing it calls clips. When one clicks on a clip, the display on the bottom either shows the waveform, warp, and loop markers, or it shows the effects applied. When I want to time starting one track based upon where another track is playing, I haven't figured out a way to see both track's waveforms so I can manipulate the sound, or how to switch quickly between the effects rack and the waveform display. That's not much different than using vinyl or CDs, but Live doesn't really have a way I've found to nudge the track a beat or two to line things up on the bars. Ugh. I've tried various quantization settings, and that helps, but if I use too high a value, it will sometimes require me to pause while I wait for an action to trigger when I might prefer to perform or setup another. If I use too low a value, it's easier to miss the cue a little bit.

Another area I'm studying is trying to get my MIDI control surface to control Ableton Live. It's easy enough to program keys to launch clips, or adjust fader position or track levels. It's quite another to get it to initiate interesting transitions and sweeps. For example, I haven't figured out a way to get the MIDI controller to alter the bass level of only the highlighted track. Once I assign a knob to the bass level on a track, it stays that way. Since I only have eight knobs, that kind of limits my options, especially if I wish to use more than two tracks. Sometimes, I'll add in an effect, and it will assume control of one of the knobs I've assigned elsewhere, other times it doesn't. Baffles the hell out me, I'll tell you that.

Looking around on online forums can be helpful, but few people seem to really describe how they use Ableton Live, or if they do, they use terms that are way beyond my understanding (like I've prolly done to some of you, here). Then one day, I found a video on YouTube by PhatConductor that described how he set up a template for a particular MIDI controller and was able to do cool effects and juggle clips. And from that I was able to find lots of other videos. Sometimes the topic was dry or uninteresting, but I still got to peak at how they used Ableton Live, the type of controllers they have, and what kind of expectations I should have regarding what I can accomplish. The ableton.com site is simply frustrating to me, because I find that when they repeatedly describe every action as "simple", when it is far from that for me, it just sets me off.

I've spent weeks studying all these topics, and I have made some progress. I promised myself that I would make a long mix on Friday, Dec 14, and I still intend to do this. But I'm still not sure that it's a mix I will feel truly represents all the power of the program or of my musical expression. I feel like I still have a great more to learn, and a little success would go a long ways toward fueling that effort. Here's hoping for success tomorrow.