editing in the DAW for almost DJ style situations

[pounce]

thought i'd toss a "how would you do this" question out there.

there is a chance i could do some editing work for a group who would want short, tightly edited music sequences (think choreography or cheerleading type things) mixing various songs together. i can edit with the best of them, that is one skill i -do- have. but with respect to in effect beatmixing the songs so that i can edit them, is there any "best" way to do it within a DAW of some sorts?

should i find a main tempo and tc/e them all to the same bpm and then edit per usual? while i have DJ'd before, it was records when i did it last (some time ago). so while i would normally do my two track editing in Peak, or possibly load the music elements into DP or another DAW, finding the -most efficient- way of getting it to all sound like a single tempo is something i'm not sure of. i can think of a way or two to do it, but if anyone does this kind of stuff and can point me towards the best way to do it so much the better. i'm on a mac so acid isn't an option, but there are some DJ minded programs out there, i think ableton live does some of this.

anyhow, i'd be curious to hear any thoughts on this kind of stuff.

[loafer]

Hi pounce

I would definately check out Ableton Live, it's perfect for these kind of situations. Just lock the warp markers to the beats in your tracks and they will all play in time to the user defined tempo. You can change the tempo and the tracks follow in realtime etc...it's all completely non-destructive as well.

I do a lot of mix cd's for DJs and Ableton has shaved days off the amount of time I used to spend messing around with turntables and editing in Logic. It's a pretty cool music production tool and loads of fun...

Check out some of the movies at the Ableton site, especially the 'For DJ's' movie: http://www.ableton.com/live6-showcase

Have fun

Alan

[malice]

Ableton is great, drag and drop segment into the main page, znd bang, it plays at the good tempo, you can tune them in real time etc ...

great program.

malice

[pounce]

this was the answer i suspected. if it looks like any quantity of this work will really be coming my way i'll go ahead and get Live. having the right tools around is a good thing.

[malice]

Live looks great.

I'm planning to produce a lounge/house band with that thing.

My idea is to bring the guys in the studio and record them "live" like I would do with a regular pop/rock band.

Except it will be loops and synth and samples.

The thing is they will perform like they are doing on stage instead of finetuning 2 measure beats all day.

I'll be recording the thing with a multitrack, vocals included and we'll work from there like we would have done with drums, bass, etc ...

Really curious of the results.

malice

[otek]

I'm planning to produce a lounge/house band with that thing.

:icon_eek:

That sounds like a really cool idea.

I have to hear the results sometime.

[malice]

As soon as we start this thing, I'll post about it. It'll be somewhere in spring if all goes well.

I'll have the band coming here, they are cool cats.

malice