Ableton Serato The Bridge

Ableton and Serato bridge the gap between music production and DJing with The Bridge. The Bridge requires Serato Scratch Live 2.1.1 and Ableton Live/Suite 8.2 or above. Open both programs at the same time with Rane hardware attached to activate The Bridge online.

Remix Your Own Tracks Live

The Bridge gives you turntable-style control of your own multitrack productions. Simply drag an Ableton Live Set to a deck in Scratch Live and use your turntables or CDJ to control the transport. Scratch Live enhances your productions with deck control, mixing, nudging and DJ style looping, while you can remix, mute/solo tracks, use virtual instruments, change drum patterns, manipulate audio, tweak effects and launch loops on the fly in Ableton Live.

Welcome To The Next Level

Apart from your Scratch Live hardware, using an additional dedicated controller such as Akai Professional APC40, APC20, or Novation Launchpad opens up your game for more mixing, effects handling and for triggering clips.

Learn How To Set Up Your Gear

If you're just getting started with Ableton Live, you'll want to go through the Ableton Live lessons, located inside the program in the Help View

The World

Behind the scenes, Ableton and Serato have implemented a two-way communication link to connect the programs. The timing is tight and it doesn't matter which program you open first.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

How Do You Do


This is just one in a million ways you can use these two glorious programs together. You can learn these ways in the ableton community and also Serato forums.

  1. I open up scratchlive and go into to my history. And pic the night that I knew I rocked out.
  2. Select all of those files, copy and make a new folder on the desk top and paste them in that new folder, and export the playlist.
  3. Exit out of scratchlive and open up itunes and take the files in the folder and drag and drop into itunes.
  4. Select all files in itunes you just dropped in and convert files to waves.
  5. Open up ableton, and drag all the files into the audio channel. Arrange them by looking at your playlist you exported. "By doing this you already know these songs work toghter cause that's how you played them in front of a crowd."
  6. Insert more track to work with files while warping, cutting, and cropping different tracks. Just taking the break or the hook of the song, or all of the above.
  7. Insert a midi track with a drum, double click on clip to make a blank midi clip.
  8. This you will need a midi controller push in to select midi notes using as a step sequencer. Or having the bar length set to repeat for as many bars you wish. "For playing live drums over your clips"
  9. Insert one audio input track, and two audio channel.
  10. Change the input of the two new audio channels to the input channel.
  11. Add another sound card to route the record,or booth output of your dj mixer into the input track. To trigger a clip to loop from your turntables. "This also can be done using the looper device in ableton also with just one track.This is just a preference."
  12. Now add effect devices to your channels, group to use certain parameters on certain effects with the macro knobs.
  13. Collect and save. "Name Set"
  14. Delete new folders on desk top.
  15. Open up scratchlive.
  16. Select all on the crate browser in scratchlive.
  17. Start to beat grid all your files or the main ones you know your gonna play.
  18. Set save loops, cue points.
  19. Make a crate just for your live set for the file you will use for the live set.
  20. Only loop at your laptop when finding, or selecting the next song.
There are many ways out there you can use the bridge. There's no wrong way or a right way. It's how your gonna use it, and how you dj what works for you. If you know scratchlive in and out ok. Leave it alone for awhile and work on ableton to increase your craft of performance. So if you think you know ableton good enough ok. Leave that alone and PLEASE work on basic scratching and mixing skills. When its all said and done, put all you have worked together into one flow of continuous head banging party rocking club on fire you will remember me after this.