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Effects in Serato

Lesson 2 from: Serato: Advanced Techniques

DJ Hapa

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Lesson Info

2. Effects in Serato

Next Lesson: Midi Mapping

Lesson Info

Effects in Serato

The next thing I really want to talk about is effects the difference between software effects and hardware effects and we have both here today I've got an effects unit that's actually inside of this rain t m sixty two mixer and so if you can see my hands on the mixer, you'll notice that I have my affect panel here and now if you've got a different mixer like different mixers come with hardware effects that are built into the mix er so um, you know, in in this case I turn on the flex effect and then I've got aah these three effects right here so filter flander phaser echo robot reverb I've got that right there I've got my depth knob here. Um so I select let's say echo and let's say this plane turn echo on and it it will echo out um cool now there's a few things here like with this with hardware effects and so the you know, one of the biggest questions I normally get from even students like at the academy is, well, what is the difference between using the effects that are on a mixer vers...

us using the effects that air let's say in the software and I think it's important to understand like the way that things air routing and the order in which the sound is traveling so the effects that are gonna happen on the software goingto happen before it gets too then the hardware eso it'll be effects in the software and then effects in the hardware and then out to you so um if you were to like let's say set um an echo inside of your software on and have that effect burning and then you're going to set a phaser on top of that it's going to be setting the phaser to what the signal that's coming out of the software so it's just really important to understand that the other thing is that you know, I've got a lot of times people like hardware effects because they've got actual you know, physical like tactile button or knob that they can use as opposed to like trying to use the mouse let's say with a with an effect in the software so they bring up the effects but one of things that we're going to also talk about is how in surat o d j a lot of these effects if you're using let's say like a controller like I have the d d day sx two right next to me as well that we we've touched on and if using like a controller like that that's been mapped too cerrado deejay you'll have knobs and buttons and you actually have tactile hardware buttons that are controlling the effects that are in the software so it's kind of the best of best of both worlds there um let's see ok, so let's ah let's jump right in the cerrado deejay comes with built in effects already there's a there are effects that come inside of software as is however there are also expansion packs that you can purchase at a pretty pretty nominal rate in my mind that you can purchase and can add more effects to your library so I'm going to show you where all of that is and this this area is really important so for a lot of you who let's have um I've been using scratch live for years and obviously surat o d j looks a lot different is aa lot more powerful than like a lot of features that were inside of scratch live and things they're sort of put in different places and we cover a lot of this in in our earlier session, but one of the things that I want to note is this area on the bottom right that says my cerrado on my screen if I click on this this then brings up this little window um and obviously I can watch tutorials aiken get support and this right here though, is my expansion packs an activation, so if I go to my products, you'll see that these effects you packs these expansion packs I've activated and if you haven't purchased those, you'll notice that they're there for purchase so like one of the things that you'll see on and you'll see that here in this section um and it will say, um, you know, purchases now by now and I'll have a price that and you can buy it straight through from here um but I've activated these you can see that here the different effects that come with these different pax um and you should you can click on learn mohr and those tell you more about each one of those effects. I just want to talk about a few effects and some of the facts that I like, I'm gonna have matt talk about some of the effects that he likes his well, um, but let me let me go through this and just at least show you how this all routes so close it down. Um again up the top um, sort of top left in the centre ish area there's this button here effects that pulls that up and I've got two effects units have the effects one and effects to one of the other things I want to show you is theirs this right here that air the three dots versus the one notice that I've got three effects that are right here and I switched toe one and it just give me one effect, but give me a lot more parameters on the effect so I can actually do a little bit mohr with that and dive a little deeper so depending on how you want to use a certain effect and pain on how like intricate and detailed you want to be with how that effect performs, you may want to be in this more sort of advanced affect mode as opposed to this change mod um you'll also notice that there's an on button and this right here is there sort of knob that would give us like our dry wet for each effect so I'll have this andi here's the drop down so as you can see there's quite a few effects, especially since I've activated those expansion packs I've got a ton of effects that are right here so if you go and um keep going down the list you can kind of like choose exactly what twenty one on each deck um and then right here this is this is the the actual beat and how it's responding so let's say here for instance, this is one beat I can go down all the way down to sixteenth sixteenth notes and I could go up to eight beat so the paint on the effect you may want it tio behave differently now keep in mind that this is also controlling this controlling all three of those effects so all three of those effects are going tio then happen and occur on like a one b interval or a to be interval or a half beat intervals so depending on how you want to use each effect, just be mindful of that and then this area right here one, two and ox auxiliary so I can choose where this set of effects will be placed. So right now I'm going to select this to them beyond one which would be deck one. Or I can have it on debt to or I can have it on both. I can also have it on the oxen. So this is a really cool feature because it then allows me to then put in effect on even if I plugged in let's, say, like my phone and was playing something off of my phone, I could echo out something off my phone if he was coming into the ox. Right? Okay, um, let's see, um and then you have the same thing on the other side. All right, so to keep it simple, what I like to do in the way that I tend to use this and there's no right way or wrong way to use this, but the way that I like to think about it as I tend to use the effects one for ah deck one and then I used the effects too, for debt too but you know, depending on how you use it that's completely up to you so I just want to go through a couple of my um the effects that kind of stand out to me and that I think they're kind of fun um and then I also want to talk about how we're going to map those two committee and that'll kind of blend in tow how thing going and customize midi so here we go I'm gonna play a couple of jack's play the same track there's one right here's uh transform so so it just sort of acting as like a gate almost as if you would like actually be transforming on on the the cross fader so it's behaving like that cool um and another one would be break echo some to show you this one um theoretical one expression at the end of something kind of echoes itself out and it sounds as if you're hitting the brake right as if you're hitting the stop on like a on a turntable or something the way it slows down so a lot of these effects that I like happen to be things that like I guess you could do on like decks and how it would have been on a on a turntable there's also this really cool and called the pitch looper and this is one that's in the expansion pack I believe it's in the sea that I can remember things in the last one that I got ah pitch uber where's that one that I know I picked it up in one of these um well you'll find it um and that probably can tell us exactly where that one's at but this one is pretty cool so uh me so it's setting a lupin and it's changing its pitch and notice I had stopped but it's still going so you just have to really like with I think with effects what's really important is to find effects that you like and things that you like to use and and find how they can work for you there's also a couple of other like really cool ones that are like this ufo, which is a really cool sound so you've got like these of sounds space verb drop is pretty you'll give like river but like a space here reverb mike sort of I've got another regular reverb on their matt are you ah, what are some of your favorite effects that you have on in surat o d j well, a lot of my favorite affects affects that were also another suffers like it and scratch lives on dh uh the one that you're one of my favorites is actually the potentially for the one that used their yeah that's in the base pack that is a that is a paid expansion pack but there are free fix packs, a swell the base back is included already, and the wolfpack effects is a free pack that you can activate just by logging into the mice. Arata onda little might very ones aaron actually the wolf pack, which is everyone um the light my personal faves air probably combo fade echo I use that one all the time it works a cz a pre fade echo, so, like you were talking about earlier because the software that effects are pre fader, they come in to the to the mixer, so if you want to press combo fade echo, it'll fade the track out so you won't have to bring down your line. Fader so it's a great way to kind of get out of a song on don't have to worry about do anything with your mixer, I'll play that one for them really quickly, it's just it's just a great a great way to get out of the mix, and the great thing about that hani also is that has a really great wit dry function so that the more you crank it up, it works it's a high pass delay, so it feeds back so is it gives a really, really nice kind of reggae or really likes nice long tail that you can really adjust to your liking. Very nice on dh er anything else when it comes to effects that you wantto talk about before I go in and show him how to mini map yeah sure yeah I'm I think like the thing that you said specifically about the software tricks coming in before there is uncertain hard where you can actually enable a function called us be answered effects so on the sixty two mixer you've got there there's a way to actually use the software effects as a post fader effects as well but maybe maybe we can get into that in the later time you're you convey set us up at dot com right yeah. That dense via a little bit more of an advanced future but if you want to look at my if you want to look at my mixer right here I know a lot of people out there have this ah this tpm sixty two and there is this usb insert that is right here this is the button that matt is talking about so I select that on now now I can do what he was referring to and do post fader effects I'm cool awesome so I'm gonna I'm gonna go in and like let's talk about maybe a little bit actually before we do let me just take you to set up one more time and there's actually a effects tab in set up and this is this is important too because you remember how it let me go back out remember how when I came over here and I'm like looking for like down this huge laundry list of effects well what I can do is aiken slim that down a little bit by using favorite effects and adding effects that I want and here's where it will actually tell you which packets in um right here too so you'll notice it'll have either the three dots or the one so it'll allow you to then you know, put either one of those in there like let's take um ah it was the one you were talking about in your wolf pack here there you go so combo fade echo like let's say I want to add that to their let's use the transform and put it in there um let's use ah there's time stretch and pitch looper and put those there and then I'm going to say use favorite effects list so if I check that on now when I go back out and I dropped down I have been only have four options so it's a lot easier if you're you know them performing and you want to you know, change it up a little bit or for this particular track or this particular transition you want to switch up the effects and it's a lot ah it's a lot easier than to get around and navigate so um and then also, if you then decide that you don't want to do I just unchecked this, and then you go back out. Now, you have that entire list again. So it's. Not as if they go away. Or you have to choose right in that moment, like and that's it it's forever. Like, you know you can just pick when to turn that on and off.

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