APC40 DJing

[OfficialDAPT]

Long story short I have an APC40 and I want to start DJing. Any technical tips or personal experience as to how to set it up? (I've already seen the Tom Cosm video and various others.) I also realize its not actually "DJing" but for lack of a better word..... maybe just "live sets" or something, but whatever.

[ogunslinger]

pre warp your tracks
make your set
press buttons and get down

[elyhess]

pre warp your tracks
make your set
press buttons and get down

this

[itzDetrimental]

You might want to check out M-lover's DJ FX rack for Ableton too.
http://mloversonline.com/ableton.html#djfx

[Gangsterish]

I would recommend sending the left 4 tracks to Deck A, the right 4 tracks to Deck B, then map the cross fader to the.. cross fader. I like setting the cross fader to 'Fast cut' so you can crab scratch like a real mixer. You can even route each deck to it's own Send, and easily apply effects to one deck or the other.

I have a free volume rack for the APC here: http://gangsterish.com/free/GangsterishSmartVolume.adg
It let’s out your mids first, then your highs and lows at the end. A lot silkier than a straight volume control. Put this on all 8 of your tracks and map it to that tracks' volume fader.

Other than that I'd say experiment with mapping any buttons you don't use while DJing to an effect or something on one deck or the other. I have all the knobs on the left of the APC mapped to EQ and effects for the left Deck A, and all the knobs on the right are for the right deck. Mapping the master fader to tweak all your FX and have other buttons turn them on/off seems to work well.

There's also a bunch of pre-made DJ templates out there, like ill.Gates's, Will Marshalls's, and my own. I'd recommend taking a look at how they are set up and trying to duplicate some of the functionality on your own. (That is if you choose not to just buy a pre-made solution of course.)

[Hircine]

get the illgates djing template and modify the hell out of it, great functionality + pretty lights all over.

[mikeyp]

i downloaded the free will marshall one, i hate it tbh. gonna buy the ill gates one soon, and eventually get an apc20 and buy yours gangsterish

[Hircine]

i downloaded the free will marshall one, i hate it tbh. gonna buy the ill gates one soon, and eventually get an apc20 and buy yours gangsterish

the illgates is really cool when you get rid of all the FXs and remap them, the pad VUs provide a lot of eye candy for live situations.

[Gangsterish]

I personally hate how much of the APC40 the VU meters in the ill.Gates template take up, seems like a giant waste of space and hardware. Maybe most DJs are fine with just using 4 tracks, but I need at least 8 (I prefer 16 via the APC80). If you're that concerned about clipping, get your volumes right ahead of time. Eye candy that no one else can see (except maybe at house parties) seems like a big trade off for half of the controller's buttons.

[OfficialDAPT]

I would recommend sending the left 4 tracks to Deck A, the right 4 tracks to Deck B, then map the cross fader to the.. cross fader. I like setting the cross fader to 'Fast cut' so you can crab scratch like a real mixer. You can even route each deck to it's own Send, and easily apply effects to one deck or the other.

I have a free volume rack for the APC here: http://gangsterish.com/free/GangsterishSmartVolume.adg
It let’s out your mids first, then your highs and lows at the end. A lot silkier than a straight volume control. Put this on all 8 of your tracks and map it to that tracks' volume fader.

Other than that I'd say experiment with mapping any buttons you don't use while DJing to an effect or something on one deck or the other. I have all the knobs on the left of the APC mapped to EQ and effects for the left Deck A, and all the knobs on the right are for the right deck. Mapping the master fader to tweak all your FX and have other buttons turn them on/off seems to work well.

There's also a bunch of pre-made DJ templates out there, like ill.Gates's, Will Marshalls's, and my own. I'd recommend taking a look at how they are set up and trying to duplicate some of the functionality on your own. (That is if you choose not to just buy a pre-made solution of course.)

Sorry, but I have no idea what all that lingo means... what is deck A and deck B on an APC40? I've never DJed at all before so I'm probably pretty out of the loop on this stuff (no pun intended).

[ogunslinger]

deck a <<<< >>>> deck b

he is talking about having 2 decks, one on each side of the crossfader

[Gangsterish]

Sorry, yea. Two decks. If you click the small circle X in the bottom right of Ableton, it will bring up the crossfader section. Here's a screenshot of the expanded area at the bottom. Click 'A' for the tracks you want on your left deck and 'B' for the tracks you want on the right. Then the crossfader will actually work like a real DJ mixer crossfader would.

[OfficialDAPT]

Sorry, yea. Two decks. If you click the small circle X in the bottom right of Ableton, it will bring up the crossfader section. Here's a screenshot of the expanded area at the bottom. Click 'A' for the tracks you want on your left deck and 'B' for the tracks you want on the right. Then the crossfader will actually work like a real DJ mixer crossfader would.

so two vitual decks basically?

[mikeyp]

I personally hate how much of the APC40 the VU meters in the ill.Gates template take up, seems like a giant waste of space and hardware. Maybe most DJs are fine with just using 4 tracks, but I need at least 8 (I prefer 16 via the APC80). If you're that concerned about clipping, get your volumes right ahead of time. Eye candy that no one else can see (except maybe at house parties) seems like a big trade off for half of the controller's buttons.

i think his is more aimed at playing full tracks in a traditional style and yours (from what i remember, watched your video awhile ago) is using a lot more stems and samples. his, 4 tracks work fine. yours, you need more

[Gangsterish]

so two vitual decks basically?

Yes.

i think his is more aimed at playing full tracks in a traditional style and yours (from what i remember, watched your video awhile ago) is using a lot more stems and samples. his, 4 tracks work fine. yours, you need more

Absolutely, that's why I said personally. Even if you're not using stems however, it still seems like a lot to give up. When using full tracks (rather than stems) I like to make patterns with my clip launch buttons that give me visual clues into what the song is, and where in the track the different buttons are set to launch. So I'll arrange a bunch of launch points for a track to spell out a letter or something on the APC. Having only two columns per deck isn't quite enough to make that feasible. Also ill.Gates's template is designed to drag in clip packs on the fly, with 4 or 5 cue points. So if that's all you need as well, that might work great, but personally I hate having to look at my laptop during a gig. To each his own though.

[motox2121]

I've never dj'ed before or really had any desire to DJ but I have an apc40 that I use for producing, and a potential gig opening for one of my buddies local shows. I was thinking about learning how to set everything up so I can do a simple set to help him out, and was wondering if its really worth it to buy gates' template or is a self-binded template just as effective? I already understand how to warp tracks but dont have any real-world experience when it comes to BPM selection / beat matching. If spinning house music what bpm do you set your master to assuming your tracks are all in the 120-130 BPM range? And do you use re-pitch or complex for warp mode?

[mikeyp]

okay so i just got paid today and decided i was going to buy a template..

ill gates was my first choice because it's cheaper and more for playing full tracks which is what I do now

however

when i get to the point where im playing mostly my shit id love to use gangsterish's 80 template. thats awhile down the road but since i could still use the 40 for what i want to do i don't know if i'll just be wasting the 50 bucks on the ill gates one or what

does anybody have experience with either of these? gangsterish how does your 40 template compare to ill gates'?

[OfficialDAPT]

okay so i just got paid today and decided i was going to buy a template..

ill gates was my first choice because it's cheaper and more for playing full tracks which is what I do now

however

when i get to the point where im playing mostly my shit id love to use gangsterish's 80 template. thats awhile down the road but since i could still use the 40 for what i want to do i don't know if i'll just be wasting the 50 bucks on the ill gates one or what

does anybody have experience with either of these? gangsterish how does your 40 template compare to ill gates'?

So you like the Ill.Gates one?

[mikeyp]

okay so i just got paid today and decided i was going to buy a template..

ill gates was my first choice because it's cheaper and more for playing full tracks which is what I do now

however

when i get to the point where im playing mostly my shit id love to use gangsterish's 80 template. thats awhile down the road but since i could still use the 40 for what i want to do i don't know if i'll just be wasting the 50 bucks on the ill gates one or what

does anybody have experience with either of these? gangsterish how does your 40 template compare to ill gates'?

So you like the Ill.Gates one?

just used it for the first time.

i like it so far. mostly just dicking around since im in bed but this weekend ill dig deeper into it but so far, so good

[Gangsterish]

The 40 template is basically identical to the 80 template, except you don't get the extra tracks having the APC20 gives you obviously. So in the DJ version of my 40 template, you have 4 tracks on each deck rather than 8 (still twice as many as the ill.Gates template). In the Producer version, you get all 8 tracks on each deck, but can only view/control the clips of one deck at a time, switching back and forth with the left and right arrows. EQ and FX for both decks are always available on the knobs.

As far as how it compares to ill.Gates, again it's more a difference in philosophies. His is a much more DJ oriented setup for playing full tracks as single clips whereas mine is more Producer oriented for playing with a bunch of clips at once; such as when you have stems to a song, want a ton of launch points on a full track, or have a bunch of different samples that you want access to.

Also ill.Gates's template is designed to drag in clip packs on the fly during a set, which means searching on your laptop for tracks to drag in, one at a time. Mine is designed to import songs ahead of time, and provide easy navigation around them so you don't need to even look at your laptop during a set.