The thing about more Hotcues...

Hi,
so the wish for more than 8 hot cues is especially in Traktor nothing new. I, myself, went through the process of desperatly searching for options to use more hot cues. I considered using other DJ programs but none of the commercially availably programs seem to support more than 8 hot cues. I thought about programming my own VSTi, completely MIDI-mappable, browser, 4 decks, tempo sync and of course (unlimited) hot cues. As I noticed that I even lack the most basic programming skills this won't be an option either. If I didn't miss any solution Ms. Pinky's VST should be the best option because it supports up to 16 hot cues. Idk if 16 hot cues are enough for me but the inconvenience of re-prepairing my whole collection let's me hesitate.

Besides asking what the current stand/opinion on this is, what could be possible difficulties or hindrances for the devs preventing them from expanding the hot cue system?

 

Doesn't Rekordbox support 16 hotcues with the new version 5...?
It does have its' fair share of other problems though too imo. But at least they do develop & update their software...
c.

 

Personally I think 8 hot cues is just enough. More would only make it difficult to remember where they point to. And I won't be able to access them from my Z2.

 

When looking for alternatives I of course overlooked Traktors direct competition ^^ I just downloaded the rekordbox 5 demo and it's quite great. It's obviously the more quality option over a VST but the price tag is pretty heavy. But if that's the best option to date for more hot cues I guess it's worth it...

To Scratch-E con:
My friend said that too! I think I can avoid the issue (of not remembering the places the hot cues point to) by grouping the midi-assignments.
For example the first cloumn of the F1 pads would contain hot cues pointing to every major drop in the track. The second column would contain hot cues pointing to the hooks before some drops. The third column would contain hot cues pointing to secondary melodies and the fourth column would contain hot cues pointing to structural parts (e.g. only drums & snares).
This is just an idea but 16 or (please) more hot cues should defnetly have their use.

 

Hi Obliveral the way you are describing it it sounds more like a remix set. Then you have 64 'hot cues'

 

Great idea! That would be kind of like Ableton's session view and it would not allow for samples bigger than 32 beats but there's enough space for that in a remix deck. Another thing is that there are 4 "channels" that could play together at the same time as opposed to only one hot cue at a time. Idk if I can use that to my advantage or if it will be bothering to me. And of course I would have to create a whole remix deck for every track of my collection which is a serious amount of time and effort.
I will try to organize a few tracks this way, mix them together and tell you afterwards how it worked out.

Dis gonna be gud

 

It's also possible to midi map your F1 pads so that when one is pressed the others are muted. I.e. If Pad 1 is pressed, mute 2, 3 and 4. If 2 is pressed, mute 1, 3 and 4 etc. Note you only have to do this for the horizontal pads (1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16) as for the vertical ones this is already done automatically. Good luck!

 

Well, I can say that the idea was great. Organizing a track I need around 16 slots/ hot cues which is perfect because I therefore don't have to scroll across multiple pages. However there is apparently a bug that doesn't allow me to save the remix sets with the samples included. This bug is existing for a while now and there is no sign of this changing soon. This is kind of a shame because layering multiple sections of the same song so easily over another opened up quite a few possibilities.
As 16 hot cues are seemingly enough maybe Rekordbox DJ really is the best option to remain...

 

This bug is actually fixed in the new Beta... Just sign up with Centercode & check it out

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

I signed up at Centercode but I don't see any available beta for Traktor?

 

Try https://native-instruments.centercode.com

 

That's the site where have been signing up. But apparently they first have to invite me to test their betas. For now I'm just an applicant.

 

Ok well I reckon the Beta will be Alpha before end of oktober.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

I'm not sure this addresses your exact problem, but here's the work-around I've found for making remix sets and then saving all of the samples used in that set to my traktor disk.

1) Go ahead and load samples from all over the place (not just traktor folders)
2) When done, Save the remix set
3) Then select the set from "All Remix Sets", right-click on the set, and "Export Remix Set" (e.g. to desktop)
4) Then unload the remix set, and delete it from your collection -- But JUST delete the collection, not the samples.
5) NOW delete the samples from the collection by going to “All Tracks” and listing by date. (Again, don’t delete from hard drive, otherwise you'll blow away your samples from their original location)
6) Then right-click on track collection and import the traktor pak you saved to your desktop

I've attached my notes on this process with screenshots.

 

Thanks for the great advice, canton! Following your steps I can not only save and reload the remix sets but also have all the clips and .trak's saved in my desired location/folders.
Now that that's working I need around 10 minutes to prepare each track which is considerably longer than I would need to prepare a track with regular hot cues. Especially the part where i have to make sure every clip is registered as such by Traktor is tedious but the first results seem to be worth it.
I'll prepare some tracks, make a short demo mix and link the results here, if anyone is interested.

 

I'm interested, especially if you can provide your example as a PAK file.

 

Despite botching the the recording, here it is:



Now I'm gonna try explaining the whole concept as it is for now: A track is used in the form of a Remix Set. To get this every sample first has to be cut out of the original track. Maximum loop length is 32 beats which is limiting at times, especially in longer breaks. I don't want to get confused while performing so I restricted myself to use only the first page of every remix set. In a remix set any of the cloumns can be played simultaneously so I assigned every sample to a certain column.
The first column contains structual parts of the track that can be easily layered upon other loops. The second column contains the major drops/ melodies. The third column contains risers and one-shots. The fourth column contains breaks. Of course the least tracks provide exactly 4 samples for every column so I placed the surplus samples in other columns. But this makes it harder during the performance because I can't be sure anymore the structural sample I want to layer has a lot of bass that will **** with the bass in my currently playing major sample. I think it would be better to really restrict each track to have maximal four of every type of sample.
The worst part really is not knowing what each sample will sound like. Even if the remix deck is displayed in "full/advanced" mode I can only see the currently played sample in every column. This can be counteracted by coloring associated samples in the same color and naming all samples descriptively. On the other hand this drives up the preparation time for each track again which is already quite high in comparison to regular hot cues.
To the practical part: In the video example I used two F1's with default mappings. The most used/important buttons are the mute/stop buttons. I'm not sure at the moment whether I would remap these buttons so that the mute function is reached by shift and the stop function without shift. This would make it harder to (instantly) mute the columns but the faster to reach stop buttons are quite nice when cueing up actions. This is another big advantage over regular hot cue tracks. The quantization of 4, 8 or even 16 beats makes it possible to cue up actions such as "stop playing these two samples and start this one instead".

So in short: Layering several samples and cuing up actions is great. Having knowledge of what you are doing and what to do next is pretty hard.

 

Here's the link for some remix sets used in the video. After writing my last reply I refined the "Mankind" track. It can be found in the "New" folder. I hope a .zip instead of a .pak is fine

https://www.dropbox.com/s/phpeo3xq7bna8k4/RemixHotCues.zip?dl=0