It’s no secret that Ableton and Serato have been bed partners for some time now. Conceptually this has been a fairly mind numbing proposition. Two of the most inventive and successful brands in modern music technology secreted away, developing a magical concoction designed to reinvent dance music performance (...again). Imaginations have run wild with what this covert process may result in, with everything from VST Serato instances in Ableton to Ableton FX Modules dropped into Serato being thrown up for pure wish fulfillment salivation.

After leaving our overactive imaginations to develop to a fever pitch on their own, Serato and Ableton have finally come down from the mountain with a demonstration of ‘The Bridge’ at NAMM 2010 (the National Association of Music Merchants trade show). ‘The Bridge’ crystallizes this collaboration into a form whose application can now be discerned with a measure of reality. What we are being given is not something fundamentally new. Rather ‘The Bridge’ is a consolidation of two – thus far – unique and irreconcilable styles of electronic performance into one time-code propelled juggernaut. ‘The Bridge’ will be applied to Ableton and Serato for FREE (if you own full registered copies of both), with the download of patch updates (Serato 2.0 and Ableton 8.1.2 {?}).

‘The Bridge’ adds three types of communication into the Serato interface that allow it to control Ableton in some fairly unique ways:

> The first allows you to broadcast your time-code signal directly into the transport control section of Ableton (using be a three-way marriage between wave-stretching, rewire type sync and Timecode applied to MTC signal dubbed Ableton Transport Control). Effectively you can load your Ableton set (or a specific control file) ‘into’ a deck in Serato and control its tempo and nudge adjustment using the Serato Platter.

> The second allows you to load and control your session views directly in Serato within an Ableton session view tab. Used together these two features of ‘The Bridge’ allow Serato and Ableton users something they’ve never really seen before; the ability to ‘mix’ the Ableton Session view. This means that a DJ can be freely remixing their own Ableton Session view compositions within Ableton (using a controller like the APC40 or Launchpad), and then mix the entire session – in a meta-sense – with full audio tracks using the time-code and Serato. Take some time to really think about this idea, because if it hasn’t sent a shiver up your spine, then the penny hasn’t quite dropped yet.

> The third feature is the ability to broadcast your Serato sets as a ‘mixtape’. A mixtape saves your set directly as an .als file for further tweaking and refinement in Ableton. It is a much discussed reality that the tempo ‘perfection’ in Ableton results in a very sterile mix. ‘The Bridge’ allows DJs to perform their mixes using turntables and conventional DJing nouse first, then import the entire set with automation information into an Ableton once completed ‘naturally’ and use Ableton’s arrangement view to add the final polish. The result should represent an easy marriage between traditional DJing’s groove and the modern standard of production perfection.

Some new features set drop with Serato 2.0 were also announced at NAMM which should also have some pretty serious ramifications when used in conjunction with ‘The Bridge’. Serato 2.0 is set to feature four decks of time-code control, and the implementation of the software effects section currently featured with Itch. These features really bring Serato 2.0 up to the grade of competing platforms, who have offered these features for some time now. It may make the switch from Serato to Ableton for some users a pretty tempting proposition indeed.

The NAMM demonstration video of ‘The Bridge’ can be viewed below:

This article was originally posted on the Spank Records blog, which you can check out here. Spank Records currently have the Serato SL-3 package, Ableton Live 8 and Ableton Live 8 Suite in stock. You can buy it in store (Sydney) or online at www.spankrecords.com.au.