The Bridge, the software resulting from collaboration between Ableton and Serato we first saw in January, is available today. The integration is free, provided you have the right software: you need both a copy of a full version of Ableton Live or Live Suite 8.2 or above and Serato Scratch Live 2.1.1. (Live LE, for instance, is not compatible.) You need the Serato Scratch Live hardware in order to run Scratch Live, for those of you unfamiliar with the Serato side.

Check out our past coverage for more details of what The Bridge is about:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/tag/the-bridge/

At top, Ableton has released a video that shows off what may be The Bridge’s most popular feature: for people who have Live and Serato, the software makes it ridiculously easy to use Live to fine-tune mixes you’ve made live in Serato. (Yeah, Percussion Lab should be all over this feature, as big Live and Serato fans who regularly make mixes with Serato that they stream live on the Internet and later release… you get the idea. Ditto anyone else in the same boat.)

Thanks, GearJunkies, for spotting the vid.

The basic features:

• Transport control syncs up Live and Scratch Live, so that a turntable or CDJ can pitch, nudge, and loop Live. (“It’s like having Ableton Live on one of your decks,” explains Ableton PR.) Beatgrid syncs beats, too.
• View your Ableton Session View from inside a window in Scratch Live, with control over clips, scenes, instruments, devices, and mixing.
• Record Serato performances as Live Sets, then tweak them, as in in the video above.

Ableton has high hopes; Gerhard Behles says in the press release, “The Bridge encourages DJs to become producers and producers to become DJs.” That may be, but my guess is that Live has already done that to some extent. What’s been missing is that the people who, um, “bridge” those two roles have wound up with somewhat split personalities, working in Serato and Live but without any workflow between them. Initially, I’d imagine it’s that crowd – the people who already own the two products – who will give this a try. If it works well for them, that means a still-larger army of Ableton advocates who tell their Serato-using friends to try the other tool, and visa versa, but that may be down the road. (Conclude arbitrary speculation; check back with me in about a year and see if I was right.) I’m not sure Live users will be rushing out to buy Scratch Live hardware, but eventually this could make Serato users more comfortable getting their feet wet on the production side.

Official site:
http://www.ableton.com/thebridge

Serato announced yesterday that they’ll be joining Ableton in a “creative partnership.” It’s not too hard to parse what this means from the announcement, which notes that Ableton Live’s strength is production and real-time remixing and beats, and Serato Scratch Live is about digital vinyl control, library management, and scratching. (Or, to say it even more simply: Serato is built around digital vinyl metaphors, and Live around remixable digital clips.)

Serato and Ableton announce a creative partnership [Serato News]
Ableton and Serato to work together [musicradar.com]

In fact, Ableton CEO Gerhard Behles spells out what this will mean fairly explicitly:

“Ableton and Serato take different approaches to modern musical performance”

Okay, so, Ableton fans worried that Live is going to just become a DJ tool, or Serato lovers who don’t want Scratch Live assimilated into Ableton, fear not.

Ableton has never had an answer for the DJ who wants vinyl control, and rather than try to emulate what Serato do so well, we simply make sure that our products work well together.

Got that? We hear DJs regularly complain about Ableton Live, that there’s not proper scratching control over waveforms, that you can’t see more than one audio waveform (“deck”) at one time, that it lacks vinyl control, and so on. But obviously, at least some of those metaphors don’t jive terribly well with Live’s clean, signature interface, which wasn’t built to do these things in a traditional way.

Sounds to me like the most likely result is some kind of Serato deck that runs inside Ableton. I feel safe in speculating about this because I haven’t heard anything from Ableton about this. And there’s cause for that, as well, as many Ableton Live users do Live PA, laptop sets with Live, and then turn elsewhere (often to Serato, if not to rival Traktor) for more conventional DJ sets. Regardless, those of you who could care less about conventional DJ features are likely to find this comforting news: Ableton probably isn’t going to muck around with your software to graft them in.

I think this could amp up the NI – Ableton rivalry; Native’s DJ division has been further beefing up their Traktor Scratch options. This comes right on the heels of NI’s own Traktor Scratch Pro offerings, but since I’ll be in Berlin by this time tomorrow and that’s a released product, I expect to talk to NI directly about that. (Of course, I’m horribly biased in that I’d personally rather hear sets with people doing strange things with Live and Reaktor, but that’s me.)

That said, clearly only Serato and not Native could partnership with Ableton, because Serato had “Live” in the name of their product. (Perhaps that was an early sign of Ableton envy?)

All of this probably reminds some of you of another strategic Ableton partnership, with Cycling ’74, makers of Max/MSP. When announced some time ago, the expectation was that some product would come of that. We haven’t seen that product yet, but sometimes these relationships take time to bear fruit. I wonder.

Incidentally, what gets us most excited about Serato round these parts? Visual vinyl. See the Create Digital Motion hands-on review.

Updated: I should add, it is possible to add DJ capabilities to Live now by using a DJ host that functions in plug-in mode, as a couple of commenters note. Pinko’s Max/MSP-based “Pinky Pluggo” is one option; another is Image Line’s Deckadance. Both allow you to do vinyl control, too; Deckadance will work with any controller. I’m particularly fond of Deckadance’s absurd-sounding effects, which I think could add the sort of digital grunge to a DJ set or loop that will appeal to a lot of the Ableton-using crowd. And these sorts of tools are shipping now.

But of course, we really have no idea what it is exactly that Ableton and Serato are planning, whether it’ll be a new Live instrument or some other form of integration.

Stanton has released the details of its new DaScratch touch controller, and I have to admit, it looks pretty terrific. About as far as anyone has gotten with a smart touch controller is an X/Y pad; this controller, by contrast, defines different areas of the touch surface for different functions and provides LED feedback so you can see what you’re doing. “Scratching” alone doesn’t really make sense in the computer world, even with DJ software, so you get lots of different functions for live performance. I think this may be as big a hit with Ableton Live users and laptop musicians as DJs.

Updated: Richard Devine video above now restored.

The specs:

• 5 touch sliders, 3 of which are switchable via preset
• 1 rotary touch controller (switchable)
• Loads of buttons: 4 hardware backlit switches + 10 + 9 switchable buttons
• USB bus powered
• Windows, Mac compatibility (Linux should work, too; it’s class compliant — you just miss out on the included software app)

What can you do with those touch areas? Stanton suggests scratching, scrubbing, navigation, cueing, looping, sampling, pitch shifting, effects, and the like, but of course, you can hook it up to whatever you like, and for our friends building crazy Pd and Reaktor soundmakers, this could be even more fun.

By switching modes, you can shift the kind of gestures you’re using on the center touch area, selecting three vertical faders, or one vertical fader and a circular touch area, or one fader and buttons. That’s in addition to the buttons and fader areas elsewhere. I’m impressed that in a small space, there’s a significant set of controls. If you want more, you can even snap together multiple units.

The clever addition is that, on top of the hardware, you get a software app called DaRouter. Dumb name, but functional stuff: built on Bome’s MIDI Translator, the software makes it easy to swap between presets for Traktor and Serato or select a generic/Ableton preset. You can’t edit the software presets directly, but you can make your own in MIDI Translator. See the DaRouter page for more.

The best part? Our friend Richard Devine demoing the unit in the video at top. I’m sure Richard can do something a lot more out there with this as the controller, though.

Lots more at the product page:

SCS.3D: DaScratch

Pricing: US$299 list
Availability: Unknown

Stanton wants this to be part of some giant “system,” by which they mean they want you to buy more things from Stanton. I’ll leave that up for you. On its own, this looks like a potentially wonderful controller; I’m eager to try it and see if the hardware build and touch quality delivers.

Previously: Stanton to Release Touch DJ Controller; Surface One, Thunder, Reborn?