The Bridge

Ableton and Serato present The Bridge—the first result of the partnership announced in October 2008.

The Bridge spans the gap between music production and DJing, creating a natural link between Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live or ITCH. The Bridge provides a powerful fusion of DJ and production tools, opening a world of opportunities for DJing, remixing and live performance.

You can cross the Bridge in either direction:

Ableton to Serato
The Bridge provides Ableton Transport Control (ATC), giving you turntable-style control of your own multitrack productions. Simply drag an Ableton Live Set to a deck in Scratch Live or ITCH and use your turntables, CDJ or ITCH controller to control the transport.

Serato to Ableton
The Bridge provides the ultimate mixtape creation tool. DJs can perform mixes in Serato Scratch Live or ITCH and save them as an Ableton Live Set. This way, the DJ can still perform the mix—better than cut and pasting it together in a DAW—but also has detailed editing options. 

Reactions to The Bridge
Here's what Ableton and Serato artists had to say about the Bridge after seeing it for the first time.

DJ Jazzy Jeff
"For DJs who don't make beats yet, that turns into 'Hey, I can make beats in here, too.' For the guys who are beatmakers already as well as DJs, it's great because it's almost like you're DJing with multitracks. And the mixtape feature was probably the best thing I've ever seen. People are going to get really creative, I know my brain is working already, there's stuff that I'm going to do that I choose not to disclose right now because it's top secret."

?uestlove
"My initial reaction? I was absolutely elated. As with most DJs that are Ableton friendly, a lot of us have been utilizing Ableton's warping to quantize and straighten out records that otherwise fluctuate. Now that we have the opportunity to play with the actual files... and use them in DJ gigs and live shows, the possibilities are absolutely 100% endless. Being as I just saw [The Bridge], my mind is racing with endless ideas..."

Kenny Dope
"Seeing where Ableton is at, this state of technology, and all the stuff that's in there, and thinking about Ableton and Serato together is mind boggling. I know there's a lot of stuff that can happen... we're all producers, we're all DJs, your mind starts to wonder what's coming. Everybody's gonna get excited."