I’ve been playing around with the new Pioneer CDJ-2000s and Rekordbox for a week and have some first impressions. By long not enough for a thorough review but hey, first impressions count!

It has been quiet for a few weeks while I’ve been busy with all kinds of stuff. I’ve worked hard on the migration of my server to Windows 2008 that I use for my music workflow and lots of other stuff. I’m playing around with my new set of Pioneer CDJ-2000 players which you can expect to hear more about soon, as well as the accompanying Rekordbox software.

So stay tuned for site updates…

Here is a short photo impression o Carnaval 2010 at the TienerTenT Nuenen. Pictures are from the last evening when I helped Mike out with his busy schedule. In my previous blog posing you can find the mashup of that evening.

Since the last Traktor beta I blogged about there have been a couple of updates making 1.2.4 the most current version. The updates include support for new controllers, among of them Native Instruments’ own Kontrol X1. What also has been updated is the Time Code signal for CDs with version 0.0.2.

When you live in the south of the Netherlands there is no escape to Carnaval 2010. Just a few more days and the festivities will start. Streets and bars filled with people dressed up and ready to party hardy. Oh and not to forget, DJs working there ass off from way to early in the morning till… well almost the next morning.

While working on my big Acapella session in Ableton Live I accidently pressed the key combination CTRL + F instead of something else I was trying to press. It seems that CTRL + F activates a nice feature I wasn’t aware of, called Follow play timeline.

In this tutorial I will describe how to make the Perfect MIDI Sync between two Ableton Live computers. I will use two Windows XP systems, but it is also possible to do this between a Windows XP and Mac OS X system. For more background information regarding MIDI Sync options and MIDI Time Code you can read my previous blog posting about this. And best of all, the MIDI Sync will be free.

While I’ve been trying to fuse Traktor Scratch Pro and Ableton Live using MIDI sync I knew that Ableton and Serato had a partnetship going on. Today the result has been announced in the form of Bridge.

MIDI Syncing Ableton Live or any other software application with another MIDI source has always been a challenge. For some time OverSoft and I have been tying to sync two Ableton Live systems. But also Native Instruments Traktor Scratch Pro is on the sync list. After a number of tests and different configuration settings in both hardware and software, I think I’ve found all the ingredients to get the perfect MIDI sync.

After the success of the APC 40, AKAI has a new MIDI controller ready for Ableton Live: The AKAI APC 20. Smaller than the APC 40, but still looking very functional.