[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

DJ ABDUCTED: Serato is some pretty cool stuff. Basically, what it allows me to do is take my entire library of music. WAVs, MP3s, everyting that I’ve collected, everything that I’ve made that I haven’t been able to put on vinyl or dubplayed or whatever, and take it out and perform it though as if I had it on record, which is pretty neat.

In addition to that, it allows me to do all kinds of things that I can’t do with just a record. For instance, before I even play my song, I can see exactly where the beginning of it is. I can see where my downbeat is. I can see my snare drums.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

And then you can also see it color coded for me so that I can separate those things apart from each other, which in really crummy mixing conditions which every DJ has played at least, you know, a couple of times, right? I can see right in front of my face, if I can’t hear it, if my songs aren’t lining up the way they’re supposed to.

In addition to that, the program allows me to set cue points inside of it, so actually five for each song. So right now, I have my first red cue point here set for the very beginning of the song. Now, Serato allows you to spin records using the control vinyl in two different ways. It allows you to use absolute mode, which I personally don’t use. Basically, what does for you is it transposes your song directly onto the piece of vinyl as if it were cut there. The beginning of the record indicates the beginning of your song, and 4 minutes and 22 seconds through the record in this song’s case would be the end of the song. As you can see, I start play, it cues up to the beginning eventually...,

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

...and then plays. Now, if I wanted to get back to the beginning of that song...,

[DJ ABDUCTED RETURNING TRACK BEING PLAYED TO THE BEGINNING USING THE CONTROL VINYL OF THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

...old-fashioned way, all the way back to the beginning. Okay, so the reason that I use what’s called relative mode is because in this mode, I can advance the needle anywhere throughout the record, and no matter where I put my record or wherever the needle is in the record...,

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

...using various different controls I can advance to any point in the song for instance, cue points, loop points, some of the things I’m about to show you. Okay. So now I can set. My first cue point is set to the downbeat.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

If I say I’d set a shortcut going off, and I’m going to mix it in, and I want to do it back, I don’t have to worry about the backspin because that first cue point is transposed to number 1 on my keyboard. I just hit that and, you know, say I go to the bar for my drink and I don’t make it back in time, [INDISCERNIBLE] I noticed that my arrow is right down here and I think I’m in some trouble, we start it back at the beginning again. Don’t tell anybody.

All right. So, next cool part about the program is the fact that you can give yourself multiple cue points at once. So, let’s set the second cue point here, and let’s scroll down. This looks like a little bit of a breakdown in the song.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

All right. The next thing I’m going to do...,

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

...that’s about to be the clean break right there. We’re having some USB problems. That’s no good. Right here, at the beginning of that beat, we’re going to set one more cue point, then in addition we’re going to set a four-bar loop. Okay. So, I just told the program that starting at that cue point, I want it to start looping that song every four measures.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

So, every four beats I’m sorry.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

So, now I can do my own remixes of the song...,

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

...and cue any points that I set via the number button without touching my needle whatsoever. So, if I’m just trying to cue up and say I want to mix that break that I got, that I separated out, and only play that one little break at this song and use it for backing behind the difference song, I can just skip straight to it. [INDISCERNIBLE]

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

Now we add the funky drummer with a little bit of a cue door behind it, and maybe just that particular clip of that song will be part of my DJ performance for the night, okay? And it’s so easy that I can hit all these buttons and real time, and, you know, every single performance becomes a different individual thing just because of all this new control that I have over my music. In addition, a couple of other cool things that it does. Working with the loops, you can set up auto-rolls and do all kinds of crazy stuff. For instance --

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

Another really cool feature about what relative mode here is, you know, a real common problem or question people ask is what happens in this mode when it gets to the end of the record, and Serato has this sorted out so that when it comes into the end of the Serato record, let’s try to find it here exactly.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

Watch the screen up here. You should zoom in on this screen for this part actually.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

Okay. So we just ran out of vinyl. Control program will automatically switch you into internal control, keeps playing the song, music doesn’t stop, complete pitch control here in the program. You can pick up my needle off the record, reset it back to the beginning, let go, and the program automatically switches back itself to relative mode. And now all my controls are back into pitch control again.

[DJ ABDUCTED PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION WITH THE RANE SERATO SCRATCH LIVE]

So yeah. I guess that’s Serato 101.