The Bridge is the result of a partnership between Ableton and Serato to create a way of interfacing their Live and Scratch Live products. The concept has been out for around six months, but it’s fair to say the concept has not yet really set the world on fire. A lot of resistance is based around the notion that maybe you CAN connect Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live, but why should you? Well, as much as fervent defenders of their favourite software will assert that what they use is the perfect solution, some software is just more suited to certain tasks than others. Scratch Live is one of the best Digital Vinyl Systems on the market, whilst Live is ideally suited to live production and on the fly remixing. Is pairing the two a marriage made in heaven?
The Bridge comprises two functions, Mixtape and Ableton Transport Control. Let’s have a look at what they both offer.
MIXTAPE
Mixtape records each of your decks (Scratch Live decks only – your actual vinyl/CD inputs on the input through channels aren’t recorded) and the SP-6 sampler into separate tracks of an Ableton Live file. Using an SL1 or SL3 (or the new SL4), that’s all that happens – not particularly inspiring. However when using a TTM57 or Sixty Eight mixer the MIDI capability of the mixers is utilised. Fader and EQ movement is recorded in automation lanes, so that when the Live file plays back, your performance is replicated perfectly (perfectly except for Scratch Live effects NOT being recorded). This affords you a number of opportunities, from offering something of a hybrid middle ground for DJs who find all their enthusiasm comes from being behind the decks, but want to be able to clean up their mix with Live standard precision, to those who want to think of the live mix as step one in a much bigger, effects, loops, and instrument encompassing mixtape.
You can’t load a Live set into a deck when you’re recording the set with Mixtape and have it paste on the actual Live set into the new recording – it simply comes out as audio. It’s a shame, because the idea of incrementally adding to a mixtape by loading a half finished Mixtape into a deck and then carrying on was one that really appealed to me – and cutting and pasting tracks, automation and all, between Live sets isn’t really possible. Some way to resume a Mixtape recording would be fantastic, because as it stands once that record button’s unpressed, that’s the end of your mixtape.
ABLETON TRANSPORT CONTROL
Broadly speaking there are two reasons to use the Ableton Transport Control: Playing songs you have created in Live and retaining the capability to remix them on the fly, and utilising it as a sound bed and synth panel on steroids.
For the former, load an .als file into a Scratch Live deck and you’re away – cues, loops and effects are all at your disposal on top of full control of your instruments and effects in Live. Because Live is synced to the platter, speeding it up and slowing it down will affect Live’s playback; changes in speed will result in the same sound you would expect from a record, in that a faster deck will raise pitch and vice versa (you can see this at the beginning of the video). Scratch Live isn’t playing an audio stream from Live though, it is actually controlling it – moving the platter in reverse will rewind Live’s transport, which stops playback as opposed to audibly rewinding the track. This means that scratching is out of the window, and also that any effects that rely on Live being in a play state, such as Stutter Edit, will stop playing.
For the latter, where having an entire deck dedicated to effects and keyboards isn’t feasible, you can sync ATC to one of your decks (around 5.56 in the video). This method is perfect for loops and drops, albeit with the caveat that it is tied to the crossfader channel that the Scratch Live deck it’s twinned with is. Users of an SL3 box can avoid this by simply utilising their third deck, and of course Sixty Eight users have four channels at their disposal.
Beat grids have quietly made their way into Scratch Live, and this facilitates mixing tracks in with Live. Traditional waveform displays don’t show in Scratch Live for an Ableton Transport Control deck, but its beat markers do; because ATC syncs to the BPM of a Scratch Live track, the success of quantising and so on relies on the accuracy of your Scratch Live track beat grids.
BUT SHOULD YOU USE IT?
First things first: with a box style Rane hardware, The Bridge is effectively half as useful (assuming each of its capabilities is worth the same) as it is with one of its mixers, as Mixtape is a little pointless without recording fader and EQ movements.
If you already own both Scratch Live and Ableton Live then you’re presumably au fait with each piece of kit’s strengths – The Bridge is just waiting for you to have a poke around and see whether it opens doors for you. You can stop reading now, go check it out!
If you’re an Ableton Live user looking to integrate your performances into a DJ set, The Bridge is the most elegant way to do it; being able to play a Live set as if it were a record, albeit one that can only play forwards, makes mixing between Live and Scratch Live more straight forward than any other production software / DVS pairing. It’s entirely possible to run both Live and another piece of DJ software at the same time, perhaps even using MIDI to sync the two, but the single screen, cue and loop ready ease of The Bridge blows everything else away when it comes to integration; The Bridge could be the deciding factor for a Live user not sure whether to add Scratch Live or Traktor to their set.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The reason The Bridge hasn’t really set the world on fire is because it’s not really revolutionary, but it definitely offers the best way available to syncronise a DVS and a live focused sequencer (Live is really in a league of its own when it comes to feature set, but nevertheless). Give it a go, and see what you think. It could be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
I tried this back when it came out. I bought serato and gave it a go. The bridge was super unstable when attempting to run larger Ableton sessions and apply FX. Did they keep developing this? I went back to Traktor right away, back 6 or 7 years ago.
[…] moons ago there was The Bridge – a joint effort by Serato and Ableton to link the two pieces of software. When The Bridge […]
how do i get abelton for the bridge ? i registered my serato on rane not showing up in seratos site though do i download the free version
Still waiting on Bridge for Itch…
leakweed 4:01 PM 21 February 2012
hey i have ttm 57sl and i just bought a apc 40 can u help me how to set-up the apc 40 to ttm 57sl? cause when i connect the apc40 to my laptop and the serato is open it would show the ableton icon on my serato home page! i try to find and type in the search icon and look the “all”crates but nothings there! can u help me how to set-up my apc 40 to connect in serato ttm57sl
just to let everyone know know things like this can already be done by syncing
traktor and ableton together, which even allows more creativity than the
bridge, and if you like the idea of the bridge mixtape, you can always
internally route traktor into to ableton and map your mixer controls
into live so everything can be automated inside live
I think a lot of it has to do with customization. We use ableton and logic to produce most of our tracks, as well as fl studio for some chaos and pro tools for mastering, however we only use traktor pro 2 to perform; I think the reason that Bridge hasn’t caught on as much is because there seems to be less emphasis on creatively making you’re setup; it almost makes it too easy for me? We try to treat out live setup like a band: we have and Akai mpd32 running adv fx; a traktor x1 running our top two decks/loops etc, and an Akai mpd24 running deck C and D as sample libraries. This way we have more than one way of doing everything, which works for us. I feel that we’d have to have two computers running/timecoded together to make the Bridge work for us.
Sydney harbour bridge 😀 <3
Mutis Mayfield, DJPC3…Serato does have a beat grid. It uses the same beat grid tags that itch uses. There’s even a clearly visible ‘GRID EDIT’ button in current versions of serato to make it overly obvious. Also if you’re mixing in pure software and have your grid & bpm’s properly tagged on files serato will load up the next tune automatically. on tempo and start playing on the right cue point. The grid for the deck selected as the source for ableton will align this grid with the bear/beats in ableton..etc.
Fwiw I own Traktor2/3/Pro (Pro2 on preorder), have owned FS1/SL1/TTM57 and currently use the Rane 4 channel mixer. I like traktor in the studio but still prefer serato for gigs, if not using ableton exclusively.
Mutis Mayfield, DJPC3…Serato does have a beat grid. It uses the same beat grid tags that itch uses. There’s even a clearly visible ‘GRID EDIT’ button in current versions of serato to make it overly obvious. Also if you’re mixing in pure software and have your grid & bpm’s properly tagged on files serato will load up the next tune automatically. on tempo and start playing on the right cue point. The grid for the deck selected as the source for ableton will align this grid with the bear/beats in ableton..etc.
Fwiw I own Traktor2/3/Pro (Pro2 on preorder), have owned FS1/SL1/TTM57 and currently use the Rane 4 channel mixer. I like traktor in the studio but still prefer serato for gigs, if not using ableton exclusively.
They should build live tunnel and traktor pro 2. since serato bridge and live sux
They should build live tunnel and traktor pro 2. since serato bridge and live sux
The bridge is pretty weak in my opinion. The mixtape function is really nice, but due to the fact that you can’t scratch the aincoming ableton audio it is pretty much worthless. Agreed that it is nice to see everything on one screen but not really worth it.
I preferred serato over traktor until now but gotta say the new colored wave forms, zoom + their effect are so much better than serato’s.
After all the bugs get ironed out I bet traktor comes out on top
I really like The Bridge simply for Mixtape. I love that I can increase each individual track gains without rendering the whole mix. I recently did a mix with many 60’s tracks and I used Mixtape to adjust the levels and beef up the tracks that lacked volume
The Bridge with Traktor is easy as adapt remote scripts for its vinyl signal and mixer midi out (as easy to learn python, reverse these scripts and manage hardware handshaking… doh!)
Scratching Ableton warped tracks is (still) not possible due to Live audio engine not developed to do it. Using directly mp3 neither.
Scratching Ableton clip content is possible throught some API tricks but not so cool (maybe the audio on fly content…). Use PinkyVst or Maxipatch AO is still not useful due to “pureness” of its developer who thinks like Serato about classic turntablism paradigm (no sync, no beatgrids…)
Traktor could improve Maschine to fit record audio in from traktor and so on but in stage situation is not really necessary. At studio you can map midi out from your midi mixer (if you have one of course) and do the mixtape with any DVS (maybe in this situation PinkyVst will be a bit better with Ableton or maybe a pain in the ass…)
At video side Serato has Video-SL plugin and mixermergency addon which are possible to integrate into the Bridge.
Ableton has the video feature not so much developed (only in arrangement view), maxforlive needs maxmsp 5 full license to enable Jitter…
Ms. Pinky has a bit step forward in this feature with maxipatch AV (doesn’t needs maxforlive like PinkyVst, it works with maxmsp runtime)
Traktor (still) not have video but it needs it?
Conclusion:
Wait for ITCH 2.0 at Musikmesse (crossed fingers) and for improvements in Maschine (audio/midi track recording, video sampler and some other features could be implemented to defeat the bridge…)
Peace.
-m!
nam
NS6 with APC40 would be a great way for me to play with the bridge.
On second thought, I think I’ll just upgrade my Traktor Scratch Pro to TSP2 for ~$80, and upgrade my Maschine to 1.6 for free. The Maschine update will let us host VST plugins in Maschine. Maschine can be midi clock sync’d to TSP2 using either a mac, or midiyoke for PC. Only one soundcard needed for both.
Getting all of our gear and softwares to play nice together is really the next step as far as I’m concerned.
I just bought an vci300 and apc20 but yours (with Ns7) will be my ideal home setup.
NS6 not NS7. NS6 has 4 channels, Dual FX, really tight “over-sized” jogs, with ITCH of course. But it also works as a analog mixer connecting LINE inputs only. Also other softwares (traktor) could be used with this controller.
The only hard decision now is do I want a all in one ITCH controller running the bridge, or a kick ass Denon X1600 mixer for the new Traktor 2.
I know I know… I was talking about MY desire home setup… I prefer portability from vci300 over 4 channels from NS6 and motorized platter over Included FX unit in NS6… well really I will love for home will be one V7 and Fretless fader… 😉
Traktor Scratch Pro 2 + Maschine 1.6 + Suite 8 + APC40 > The Bridge.
Simple maths!
Having one screen with The Bridge is nice, but seriously…
Hitting Alt-Tab isn’t that difficult!
Bear in mind that running Serato and Ableton Live at the same time can be REEEEEEEEALLY computer-intensive, and increasing latency leads to poor results. If you’ve got an i5 machine or so, you’ll probably be just fine.
Anyone who doesn’t think the Bridge is THE BOMB should stick to playing other people’s CD’s and being a Disc Jockey. I’m sure you’ll get the odd wedding gig and maybe the local bar will let you play a Tuesday night. For the more accomplished digital artists amongst us : The Bridge provides endless creative potential for live performance. The ability to create your own unique sound, integrate smart mixing, and use beat-synced VST’s, ableton instruments, and warped samples is simply mind blowing and certainly goes a lot further than midi sync which can be incredibly unreliable. Unfortunately I am as yet unable to unleash my creative potential to its full extent as I am a Serato Itch(DX) user. I have created my own temporary bridge using a Korg Nano Pad to generate midi-clock from the Itch audio output which I then use in Ableton. It works pretty nicely and I’m careful to monitor closely to avoid train wrecks particularly during breakdowns or tempo changes but I am seriously looking forward to the release of Itch 2.0 which is now reliably rumoured to be on the cards for release some time in April 2011 if you are to beieve the recent post on Serato HQ’s facebook page.
“Anyone who doesn’t think the Bridge is THE BOMB should stick to playing other people’s CD’s and being a Disc Jockey. I’m sure you’ll get the odd wedding gig and maybe the local bar will let you play a Tuesday night”
Your a dickhead mate
Did I touch a raw nerve there Dean.
This comments section needs a ‘dislike’ button.
Or maybe a ‘douchebag’ one.
Yes he is. And anonymous. Jealous mo-fucker.
OH SHIT GIRISH KHATIWADA IS HERE???? WOW SUPER STAR!!!!
oh wait…. your just a random…. it does NOT elevate you to a higher level by default for having forum avatar and signature which is most of the time an effort for you to belong here (so sad)… it gives you no right to go after someones comment cause they didnt log in….
I didnt go after you for being a wierd foreigner who who thinks he’s the Kanye West of Curry.. or for your cliche avatar pic of the deep tormented artist with too much on his mind to look at the camera his own portrait. lmao
Because it doesnt matter…like him being Anonymous and having a voice.
Nevermind. Do your thang. I just dont like hate comments espeically on a community of artists. I apologize if you got hurt.
Respect opinions, “musician”
http://www.djtechtools.com/2011/02/03/time-to-clean-up-the-comments-your-input-needed/
This seems something of a contradiction in terms “humanitarian”
Where did we get you? Are you simply out to cause ‘controversy’? The way you have presented your argument makes you such a badass… i mean it… you’ve completely swayed me with your in depth anaylsis and conclusion of people who really couldn’t give a crap about this product because they use other systems… Silly little boy…
I do not object to the concept of the bridge… I objected to the way the argument was projected. Insulting everybody who sees little use for the package. Ean has not swayed me at all… I use what I use because I enjoy using it, not because someone else promotes it. It would not bother me in the slightest if any big DJ stopped using what I was using and moved to another platform. To make such brash assumptions only makes you the silly little boy… Congratulations, you’ve taken the title. Round of applause for this guy…
I do not object to the concept of the bridge… I objected to the way the argument was projected. Insulting everybody who sees little use for the package. Ean has not swayed me at all… I use what I use because I enjoy using it, not because someone else promotes it. It would not bother me in the slightest if any big DJ stopped using what I was using and moved to another platform. To make such brash assumptions only makes you the silly little boy… Congratulations, you’ve taken the title. Round of applause for this guy…
I respect your opinion, as condescending and pretentious as it sounds. In my opinion, the Bridge has way too much happening for on one screen. Find yourself a MIDI signal transport system that works, and just run Live on another machine. The M_nus Contakt show was based on this. A master signal generated by Traktor, fed to numerous computers via router to sync multiple artists. Now that was a solid system.
I didn’t intend to sound condescending or pretentious and to be frank I thought the community here had a little more ambition, drive, and self-esteem than to be offended by my remarks. I certainly apologize to anyone I might have upset if I got it wrong. I would have expected that anyone fooling around with these kinds of tech tools would be aspiring to play to massive crowds and headline events and if we look at the current movers and shakers in the international arena they all have a significant aspect of live production, performance, and remixing going on in their live sets and are invariably hybrid skilled audio engineers, musicians, music producers, sound designer, composers, and finally DJ’s. The Bridge brings all of these elements together in one place. I share your concern about the busy-ness of the screen although at the same time I try to look at the screen as little as possible and tend to go for controllers with a significant amount of visual feedback.
Good to see ur positive comments. Keep Spinning.
The ‘D’ in DJ isn’t talking about a Compact Disc…. I assume you’ve never played on turntables… It’s great that you want to be an artist… but DJing is an art in itself… and you would know that if you weren’t playing on the itch… that thing is like a tinker toy… I’ve played on it, it is like playing on cdjs… trash. You want to be an artist… be an artist… but don’t trash talk DJs… It’s great that you are behind serato… I believe that it is the best digital interface for vinyl djs to date… But remember… all of the most famous DJs now got there with just 2 turntables and a box of wax…
I was gonna say the same exact thing, I use Serato to VJ and Ableton to make mash-ups (and edit my mixes), so I’ve “tampered with the Bridge, and I have to agree that both Ableton and Serato are trying to work together without changing anything major of their respective software.
That just can’t work…
For Serato to truly work with Ableton, it would have to add some type of beat-grid/sync function to their software… as it stands now I can use Traktor and Audacity to almost the same functionality as the bridge; editing my mixes, and re-doing part and pasting it back together.
So I really don’t see an advantage.
As its stands now though, Traktor is somewhat behind, they need to come up with a DAW (more than just Maschine) to work with TSP2, so I can have all the functionality that the Bridge has (built in) as well as new features to give it an edge…
I have used TP, and the midi sync with ableton, not in a live situation but practise. What I like about the bridge is the whole integration built in one user interface (with tractor i either have to use 2 displays or remember my ableton sample setup. That said im TP all the way and i look forward to TP2, where ableton integration then would be over top and to much for me.
Too bad Serato has nothing on Traktor.
too bad you had to be an ass munch and make this about some sort of Serato/Traktor debate.
the one thing I’d actually would want to see is a vst or AU version of traktor, to run in ableton and feature easy on the fly browsing and stuff, without having to sync programs up over and over again.
Ableton offers great possibilities for me if I somewhat prepared my set, but sometimes the crowd just wants something else than all the electro tracks I’ve warped and sorted bij key and stuff… then it would be easy to just have a sort of backup and run traktor in the same program, without having to change my workflow with the effects and synths too much live
Traktor as a plugin/VST/AU within Ableton. Thats will end the converstation. NI.. lets do it.
agree, or some kind of browser functionality that can read id3 tags. I sometimes wonder if the is a way max could accomplish this
if they would get it working with itch, it would be a different story. Scatch implies all the hardware (decks and mixers) that ableton lets you leave behind…
I think that Serato should have spent their time enhancing the SP-6 and efx instead of doing the Bridge. Another way to say that is: I wish Serato would go in the direction of Traktor Scratch Pro 2.
I like the idea but wish that you could scratch whatever you are running from ableton. It’d be better if Ableton just included a DVS plugin.
Well there is, you can use the MsPinky Plugin inside of life and it works great
I think if Live had true MP3 support it would drive many more into it. My personal problem with Live is you need everything as Wav files, or watch your cache get loaded with the converted filed.
Sorry for the newb question but does Ableton have the same cache problem with Apple Lossless files? I started using it because of Scratchlive’s issues with .wav tagging.
It’s ok…I won’t poke fun…but I don’t know the answer.
I’m a PC guy, and I noticed when I open MP3 files in Live it converts it to a Wav file and then places it in the cache. If you have all your music as Wav files then it won’t do it.
You can use Ms. Pinky or Deckadance but the true problem is about Live Audio engine… maybe with something like Beatlookup in maxforlive with scratch capability… or even better as vst plugin sure!
TS + Jack + Live = Happiness
Exactly the smart-mixing articles on djtt that is the bridge right there and think that is should be applyable to seraton in the same way making it point less
I think another reason why I and many others haven’t used the Bridge is that you need a the full version of Live. Those with Lite can’t use it. Its a waste of money to go the full version if you don’t use all the features of Live 8.
I was way more excited about the Ableton/Serato collab before it actually happened, and it was the last thing making me hold on to my Scratch Live setup. As soon as I tried it out, I bought a Traktor S4 and haven’t looked back.
Same here! IMO Traktor is exactly what I was hoping and daydreaming the Bridge was going to be. A crossbreed SSL/Ableton DJ-workstation. Perfect for the old school DJ who understands (comprehends) digital DJing.
Same here! IMO Traktor is exactly what I was hoping and daydreaming the Bridge was going to be. A crossbreed SSL/Ableton DJ-workstation. Perfect for the old school DJ who understands (comprehends) digital DJing.
I’ve actually seen it first hand run flawless. My friend uses it without problems, and does so week after week. You have to remember that Serato users are blessed (and cursed) with a program that is extremely resource light, and doesn’t have many bells and whistles to bog it down. I’d be a bit scared to run Traktor and ableton, but honestly, I think with a little bit more prep work, you can do almost everything in TSP2 that you could do in a Serato and Ableton setup.
‘Would really like to see The Bridge with Traktor Scratch Pro 2!
Yeah, that could be a way for Traktor to get back to their “smart mixing” capability that was around back in Traktor DJ Studio3, then quietly vanished. That was a pretty rad feature, with a few flaws that Ableton integration could clean up.
Yeah you can sync it with MIDI but its not really comparable to the bridge
Yeah you can sync it with MIDI but its not really comparable to the bridge
can’t you sync ableton and traktor without the need for another software application?
you can.. as psyconall just said: sync with midi –>
you can.. as psyconall just said: sync with midi –>
can’t you sync ableton and traktor without the need for another software application?
just to let you know things like this can already be done by syncing traktor and ableton together, which even allows more creativity than the bridge, and if you like the idea of the bridge mixtape, you can always internally route traktor into to ableton and map your mixer controls into live so everything can be automated inside live
2 software running in a dj set maybe its heavy and very dangerous
My sentiments exactly.
Plus I’ve noticed most Serato users I’ve met are very die-hard on vinyl emulation They wanted to maintain the art of vinyl and turntablism but take advantage of MP3. It’s why I’ll see many scoff at sync and other things the competition is doing. Even many who just want Serato to be kept simple and solid. That if you can’t do it all on the decks, then you shouldn’t be on Serato.
I’m sure there’s people who disagree, but it seems like Ableton DJs want to just stay on Ableton, Serato users want things more “pure vinyl”, and the rest jump on Traktor and the other competition.
I could be wrong, but this is what I get from my own observations of the people using the different choices out there.
I completely agree with your assessment here.
It has always been and it always be like this and, in my opinion, it should be the direction in which the Serato ppl focus their marketing, “the last analog thing in a digital world” thingy, for all the die hard vinyl users. Serato integrated turntable or smthg like that, anyone? And as much as all those fancy features in Traktor will make all the digital freaks buy NI’s software, I can’t see the analog geeks investing in the Bridge.
I’ve been running Traktor and Reaper together using Rearoute audio drivers for the last couple of months. This gives me the ability to have numerous sample players (which i can save and recall on the spot)
Plus I can record my sets including parameter tweaks and then fine tune the mix later if needed.( like you used to be able to do in Traktor.)
Reaper is so light on the cpu it’s unreal and i recommend anyone to give it a try