As the revolutions in DJing slow down, in its place comes evolution, and a natural refinement of what already exists. And that’s exactly what the new Serato Flip is. Hot cues are awesome, but the buzz of sequencing is thick in the air, and while this isn’t quite sequencing, the Serato Flip expansion pack lets you record hot cue and censor actions live, and save them as metadata in the original audio file to recall later. That’s pretty cool in my book.
The teaser video is less tease and more giving the whole thing away, and here’s a bunch of words all about Serato Flip:
INTRODUCING SERATO FLIP
Serato is excited to announce Serato Flip. A new Expansion Pack for Serato DJ that allows you to create custom edits, extend and re-imagine your music.
Set for official release this September with Serato DJ 1.7 – Serato Flip allows you to record your Cue Point and Censor actions, which can be saved and looped, ready to re-trigger and start in an instant. Use Serato Flip to create and save up to 6 Flips per track, ready for playback in the studio or the club.
AJ Bertenshaw, CEO of Serato says: “We are very proud and excited to finally unveil Serato Flip, which we have been hard at work on for many months. We think our users will find the ability to flip tracks and save their edits to be an indispensable new way to work with Serato DJ.”
The original idea of being able to record and playback cue point information in a simple way was first pitched to us by NZ producer P Money, who was already using Serato to put beats together by manually triggering cue points.
Not only a great beat sketch pad, Serato Flip can also be used as a powerful DJ tool. The simple, yet effective control set designed with the DJ in mind allows you to use it in your set in a number of ways:
- Make clean edits of your tracks by recording censor actions.
- Extend intros, breakdowns or outros for better mixing.
- Create transition sections in your songs for changing tempo or beat structure.
- Advanced tone-play and performance.
- Auto-skipping verses or choruses in songs.
- Making beats.
Serato Flip will be available as a paid Expansion Pack with Serato DJ 1.7, coming this September. It will be available for purchase in-app and on the Serato Online Store for USD29.00.
Features of Serato Flip
Record Cue Point & Censor Automation
Click record once to arm recording. Once you hit the first cue or censor, recording begins. Hit record again to set the end point of your Flip.
Prepare & Edit Tracks In Offline Mode
Use Serato Flip without your hardware connected.
Flip Saving
Save 6 different Flips per track. Serato Flip information is saved to your tracks metadata and doesn’t edit the audio of the track. You can delete cue points and your Flip will still be remembered.
Hardware Controls, Keyboard Shortcut & Midi Mappable
Control Flip directly from your computer or your controller with a keyboard shortcut and hardware controls being mapped for supported current and future hardware. Flip controls are also MIDI mappable for use with the MIDI controller of your choice.
Looping / Loop Snap
Choose whether your recorded Flip plays through once or loops. Select whether your looped Flip will snap to an end-point that’s on beat with your track.
Recall and Replay
Turn Flips ON / OFF and start your Flip on track load or whenever you like.
Make perfect edits
Platter movements aren’t recorded so you can move the platter to an exact point and trigger a cue point to make the perfect Flip.
Name your Flips
Just like Serato DJs nameable Cue Points you can also name your Flips. The name of your Flip will appear in the deck info area when the track is loaded.
Watch a teaser video and get more information on Serato Flip here:
http://serato.com/latest/blog/17389/announcing-serato-flip
Download Serato DJ from serato.com/dj/downloads
Serato Flip – now hotter cues
Serato Flip an incredibly clever way of working. Instead of having to manually make the edit on the fly, or have to create your own edits in separate files, you can now create up to six (which like cue points feels like a very arbitrary limitation) different edits and save them in one track. Not only that, that complex cue point button bashing you did is now automated with reverses, and can be looped at will. And all of these have descriptive names as well.
Let’s take this a little further — let’s put two tracks into one, apply strategic cue points, and with Flip, you can create a mashup. Beyond this — drop a bunch of drum samples into a single track, flip it and boom you’re making beats. Hell, let’s even combine four flipped tracks on four decks to make the most amazing synced layered flips. Just imagine a single track, on four decks, all flipped, looped, filtered and effected — wow. I haven’t even touched Serato Flip yet, and already I can see the potential. Give it to some DJs considerably more gifted than myself, and all hell could be about to break loose.
Given that a flip is essentially metadata, there should be no reason why flips can’t be shared freely across the community, but that is rather down to Serato. Perhaps Serato Whitelabel tracks will come preflipped so that one track contains all sorts of edits and mixes.
Theorising — beyond flipping hot cues
Having shown that recording of actions is achievable, my mind naturally wandered off into the potential of such a thing. The very nature of hot cues means that the moment you jump from cue to cue, one part of the tracks ends and the next begins abruptly. It has the potential to sound harsh, stuttery and staccato if misused, unless that is the aim of course. But sequencing the SP-6 samples in the same way will mean very smooth unclipped sounds can be used to create very smooth rolling beats. And what of effects? Applying an effect ‘f’ for ‘x’ amount of time with parameters ‘y’ and ‘z’ are just numbers right? To me, this feels like fledgling DAW features in the making.
What this feels like to me is a second stab at Serato’s not entirely successful dalliance with Ableton Live. But instead of using the whole package in a window, the automation is happening entirely within Serato DJ. I guess it’s possible that flips, being nothing more than numerical data, could be translated to Live compatible data, so that Serato action can then appear inside Live itself. It happened before, and it would make perfect sense to Bridge (geddit?) that gap.
It’s the new Hoover
There have been many brands in the past that have become generic. Hoover is a unique example of this, in that the brand name is not only used for all generic vacuum cleaner, but has also become the process. And I’m absolutely certain that this will happen with Serato Flips. Using it will become known as flipping, and clubbers will love how a DJ flipped a track, and probably even when flipping is being done by a different product. Flipping branding genius if you ask me.
Summing Up
Serato Flip is due on September to coincide with Serato DJ 1.7, and will cost just $29. Game changer? Game flipper for sure.
They seriously just made SPLICE for real. I’ve been requesting this feature since 2007. TODAY IS A GOOD DAY!
http://serato.com/forum/discussion/28236
Sweet. You called this 7 years ago. That’s a long ass time… Kudos JJ.
Thanks JJ. You’re spot on!!
“Splice” – That’s what Denon used to call it!!
nice. seems like something that could branch out into use by regular folks on their tablets, too, which makes it even cooler
Here’s something in their press release that stood out for me “Flip controls are also MIDI mappable for use with the MIDI controller of your choice.”
MIDI mapping in Serato DJ is already possible with a secondary controller. If you check the video at the end, Nick triggers the flip he’s just made.
The key part of that statement is “of YOUR choice”. I choose to map it to my natively supported controller. It’s my choice right??
That’s the way it should be. Freedom of choice.
At first I was thinking, Remix Decks, then I read the part about mashing up multiple tracks into one and was amazed.
There’s a lot of potential here, and I’m very interested to see how it works in practice. It reminds me of the sorely missed NML recorder from Traktor 3 (pour one out) that allowed you to effectively record every action you took and then replay and edit. It was great for recording mixes, but this takes it to a whole new performance level.
Some thoughts:
If I delete a cue point and reassign it, how does my Flip react? For example, I record a flip going to cue point 4 and move cue point 4 to a new location. Does the Flip continue using the new cue point or do I need to edit it directly?
Is 6 a hard limit or will more be available later?
Can I record a loop to record a specific amount of times, and then expand/contract on the fly?
I’m assuming you cannot record scratching?
Are there plans to add this to the sampler, as Mark eluded to?
I did wonder about the moving or deleting of cue points. I wonder if the saved data is independent of the defined cue and is just a numerical location as opposed to “cue 1”, which would mean that cues can be edited leaving the flip alone.
I’d like to think that six isn’t a fixed limitation as opposed to a number to get people started and it can be expanded upon. It could well be a limit because of how much overhead recording such data into metadata takes up inside the track.
“Flip Saving
Save 6 different Flips per track. Serato Flip information is saved to your tracks metadata and doesn’t edit the audio of the track. You can delete cue points and your Flip will still be remembered.”
alas the ‘read the article before posting comments’ applies to the team as well!
I read and understood, but I wonder how it’s recorded. If cue points can be moved and deleted, how exactly is a flip structured? Clearly a flip can’t explicitly relate to “cue 1” because that’s a fixed reference. Flips must store recorded actions in more of a “jump to this time in the track” way as opposed to “jump to cue 1”.
They say it’s not recording the physical audio, it’s recording the metadata. Once the hot cue is deleted or moved, the Flip is still saved as it was. You can then go on to create a new flip with your new hot cues. It appears that they are not recording actions or audio at all. I think this is step 1 on a road to full on live remixing in Serato.
It’s based on Time, not cue points. Even if your flip is set at exactly the same position as hotcue 1. Your flip#1 is set at that specific time, therefore adding / deleting hotcues has zero effect on the “flips”
Or my questions weren’t answered.
I didn’t ask if 6 was the limit NOW, I meant a hard limit that will never be expanded. So, the future, like, when they update it, would it be possible to have 8 flips, so it can fit into the general scheme of controllers. Or, as Mark mentioned, does the limit of 6 have something to do with a metadata limitation? Generally Serato does things in 6s, or at least stranger numbers than NI (almost always 8s), so I am curious if 6 was a conscious choice or a hard limitation.
And their note about Flips and hotcues doesn’t answer my question. It says the Flip will be remembered, but if there’s no Hotcue anymore how does it respond? And, at that, if I re-add a new hotcue does that Flip tie to the new Hotcue, or do I need to re-record the new flip since the Hotcue is different?
You can assign your saved Flips to any pad. Sounds like it should be an easy mapping. If it’s only saving metadata and not recorded actions then i would think they can expand to 8. But it’s possible they left 2 pads empty for record and assign buttons or something like that. That being said it would be nice to be able to add more, have banks of them. This might just be the start of something bigger for Serato.
That is kind of my expectation as well. I never liked the SP-6 integration on 8 pads, and I’d want the record buttons to be independent of the banks, since the Flip pads are probably going to be the same pads used for hotcues, y’know?
I concur!
FLIP is really cool!!!
The Bridge could be back, drops jaw gets popcorn…. AND WAITS……..
Still on SSL for this very reason. Bring back the bridge!
is it me or Serato is charging extra time sometime like this comes up I remember back when scratch live the use of some basic updates it didnt cost us crap but now extra?? pitch n time now this Im not complaining buttt serato figure how to get their money loll… (aka new CEO)
Free upgrades for life is an unsustainable business model, and equally an unrealistic expectation from the user too.
You probably will never have to pay for upgrades to the core Serato DJ, but for cool new stuff that takes a lot of development time, $29 is absolute peanuts for what it can bring to your DJ experience. You want Serato to continue to develop new product right?
Yep. I do. So 29 bucks is do-able. Will also be interesting to see what fixes and other features come with v1.7.
Yet another cool feature that Serato has over Traktor. I wonder what Berlin is doing? I’m already thinking about dropping Traktor in favour of Serato.
Well, you can do “something like this” via loop recorder and remix decks in Traktor, without 6 flips limitations etc. but it would be audio files not metadata so there’s that.
An step closer to The Bridge and Mixtape FROM the right pov: metadata.
Export it to live could be possible but not complete due Ableton live can’t scratch audio back and forward (yet).
Maybe live should implement a new instrument called Deck. Scratch track could do the job, and now we have a new tool…
http://youtu.be/ROxSsOq-5oA
Meanwhile Traktor should revamp NML and let us use the metadata to do creative things like mixtaping and video mashups (or generative things with qc, pd or max)
It could seem the dead of djing (once again) if anyone could redraw its performance and automate them but no, it could be the start of new era with e-learning community and worldwide djing/scratching database (aka skillpedia)
http://Www.skrat.ch
Do you really want it to though? I’m all for automation, but scratching translated to metadata is like a robot playing guitar. I want to watch a DJ scratch, not hear a DAW soullessly replicate it perfectly.
I don’t think he’s talking about the DAW faking it, but rather about the ability to scratch Live clips from a controller/DVS like yer average DJ software. This is what most DJs were expecting from The Bridge I think (one reason why it didn’t catch on). The nearest is the Ms Pinky plugin which is a bodge/workaround.
Scratch track plugin is even on step further with automation and agnostic compatibility (vst) but not so integrated in the liveApi like the others.
If anyone wants to use it in these way, not my cup but I didn’t see drummers dissapear from drumboxes coming and so on… The only use for “robot routines” I consider is for learning purposes or mistake mistape correction (but played live of course because is far fun than draw a mixtape with mouse)
Think in djhero approarch but with Qbert, Craze and C2C routines to play “horse” against them. Rtype game controlled by your turntable (y axis) and your crossfader (x axis) to teach kids to scratching… Think the same realtime p2p as xbox live. I could see more benefits than losses.
Check the link I have posted in the first comment to understand the potential. Also check this video:
http://youtu.be/S8izg3jHIfI
It could seem the dead of djing (once again) if anyone could redraw its performance and automate them but no, it could be the start of new era with e-learning community and worldwide djing/scratching database (aka skillpedia)
Preempting the next wave of irrational DJ hate… ;)
I lol’d. I did.
Whilst I don’t doubt this is awesome, it’s all a bit too much for me. It’s amazing the possibilities keep on growing and I’m sure some talented individuals will do something great with this… at the same time, I’m sure lots of people will buy this and other serato add-ons and never really use them. Not particularly relevant to the story, but I thought I’d share moany old opinion anyway :)
I think it is very relevant to the story, and a good point. At this point, everything that happens is hailed as “TEH FUTURE” but it has a tendency to feel like it’s just more fluff surrounding what people actually do.
But who knows? You may try it out and it may blow your mind.
I agree with the sentiment. While this and lots of other things like it are really cool, it doesn’t appeal to everyone. People can get blown away with shiny nextlevelness, but barely touch a traction of the features. I bet there’s a world of NS7II/DDJ-SX users who have yet to use decks three and four. I haven’t.
Thankfully, the advantage with the expansion pack architecture is that you have a choice of buying it or not. You’re not paying for extraneous crap you’ll never use.
And that’s the key as to why I think Serato’s business model is going to be great. You’ll have collectors like me that want every little piece, and you’ll have a LOT more DJs that will only get what they need and not be bogged down with content that’s just wasted.
I’m kinda split on the whole digital DJ arms race. One half of me has a nice record collection and yearns the days when you just turned up to a pair of 1200s and a mixer and played your records – success hanging on the records in your box and your ability to string them together coherently. At the same time I’ve got a Z2 and A6, and I’m a huge Maschine fan. Basically, I’m glad of all this new technology and wouldnt want to be without some of it now, but I do find the eternal chase for the new newness quite wearing. Like as soon as you saved up and bought something and learnt how to use it, it’s replaced by the new “wheel”. A lot of the technological advancements seem to be primarily about getting manufacturers units off the shelves asap, with advancing the craft of DJing coming in second place. In the experience of myself and my peers, new features usually seem to be more important to the manufacturers than making the existing ones stable too.
Furthermore, for all the technological advancements we’ve seen over the last few years, the quantity of deeply talented people who can really do something great with them hasn’t really changed since the pre-digital era IMHO. On the other hand, the mediocre masses now have many more cue buttons and inappropriate effects to annoy me with.
I really don’t miss the days of showing up with hundreds of pounds of crap to spin. I just don’t. I have no desire to ever carry books of CDs with me, and I got into this as vinyl was disappearing, and the music I spin isn’t ever really released on vinyl anymore (and when it is it’s a limited color picture disc or something and I’d never spin those outside of my apartment), so it never mattered to me.
But I’m with you 100% on the digital arms race. In fact, the technological advancements, by and large, have been so incremental yet people are so excited about them, even though they are all pretty silly. The jog wheel argument is a good one, as is the number of colors in LED buttons. You buy a $500 controller and two years later that same controller is released, but with MORE COLORS! Be excited. I could adequately DJ on my VCI-100, original edition, if I wanted to. And I learned how to hack gear using Bome’s MT to balance out needing to buy new stuff.
The lifecycle of equipment has changed drastically as well, but I think the industry is more guilty of that than the consumer base.
As far as the mediocre masses, I don’t think this has ever really changed. There have always been shitty DJs, and there have always been good DJs, through the long length of history of DJs. Now, though, the shitty DJs are louder, a lot louder, and have more bad effects, like you mentioned.
Good points Jared.
I totally concede that I’m looking back at the vinyl era with rose tinted glasses – I have no desire to drag everything I own around bars and clubs anymore either. But I do have a half decent record collection built up over many years and perhaps I’m a tiny bit salty that it doesn’t have quite the clout it used to in the DJ world.
Agree that the ratio of good to bad DJs has never really changed throughout it’s history and technological advancements. I think when the digital stuff first kicked off I did think it might make it easier for more average DJs to be great, but that didn’t really happen of course.
With the relevance of technology growing within the DJ world, I fear the rise of what I think of as “The Camera Club DJ”. To explain – I did a Fine Art Photography degree and in that world there are two types of practitioners, those who’ve just got that ability to take a great picture whatever they are using and those that definitely can’t so they buy all the latest gear and bury themselves in the technical aspect to compensate (often found in camera clubs, hence the moniker). The tech and knowledge of it is an important aspect, but I don’t want it to become the most important thing.
My outlook on DJing is that it’s first and foremost about the music. Your job as a DJ is have the best music and present it to the audience in the best possible way (anything from simple tune selection to twisting it into something new and unique applies if it sounds good). But sometimes I see some very competent DJs doing all kinds of stuff with hot cues, loops and FX… but when you step back and listen to it, it doesn’t really sound good and certainly isn’t enhancing the content they started with. Like the reason for doing it is “because they can” rather than “because it sounds good”.
I think it actually goes farther than “because they can.” I think it’s “because they think they have to.”
There’s this perception that the audience is there to see us “perform” or whatever, and if you go to certain places that is definitely what is happening. I’m very fortunate that the scene I run in is focused mainly on dancing, so the DJ is generally hidden in a booth and as long as what we play is good and flows people will dance.
The photography analogy is really good, but I don’t think the people becoming DJs are necessarily compensating by having the latest gear, they just think they are, right? The tech will never be the most important thing to a DJ since it can never, ever compensate for not knowing how to move from one song to the next. Sync does not mix for you.
This even just for making “clean” edits is very usable & certainly not “too much”. Denon actually implemented similar waaaaay back, i think it was called beat jump (I stand under correction with the name). I used it on my DNS-5000’s. They left it out on their newer decks, I missed it like crazy!
I’m sooooo glad to have this back again.
And 6 PER TRACK!!!!
SPLICE. I remember a ACE from the dn-s5000.com forums.
http://serato.com/forum/discussion/28236
I recall creating Splice for the S5000, fun times, 10-years ahead of the curve. Flip is excellent !
I remember users being scared of the D9000 and S5000 because it had to many buttons and features. For the life of me I could never understand that.
J.J.: Well just use Cue and Play then.
User: Nope. It looks to complicated.
HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED. Denon was well ahead of times.
This was actually a feature request on the Serato forum called “clean edit mode”: http://serato.com/forum/discussion/1296013#new
Meanwhile they had already begun to implement it – Brill!!
I can think of a bunch of stuff that would take Flip to next level. Can a looping Flip be dragged from a deck into the sampler? Can a Flip record sample triggering? How about quantize? If you notice even on the demo video the guys timing is a little off at places. What about using velocity sensitive pads with cue points and samples? How will Flip work with Slicer, Flux, and the Serato Remote?
With the remix decks, loop recorder, and flexible decks, Traktor can really do everything that Flip does (and more), but for me the workflow (making everything audio) is so convoluted that I never use it. As a producer/engineer keeping everything as automation is a no-brainer. I posted years ago when DJ software first opened to generic midi controllers that someone could easily use virtual midi routing to set a DAW in between the the controller and DJ software to sequence the button presses. The sticking point (and the reason I never did it) was that sync would be tricky and there was no way to attach the data automatically to the song file so that they load together. I’m glad Serato figured it out. I guess it’s about time to invest in a SL4.
That must be the true mixtape feature but the fear (or the lack of knowledge maybe?) about how to manage metadata in the right way plus corporativity (serato sharing info with ableton who shares info with serato infinite loop to no way) made the bridge an unfinished product in no man land…
If you check scratch track (early posted here at cdm) you could see all you described more or less. Also check the new “deckadance solo plugin” for Flstudio (beta at this moment but video avariable on the net) to see features like you described. The One and vdj8 also have promising features…
Remix decks and loop recorder in this own way are the missed points from Serato (and others like Ms. pinky) due to the flexibility in buffer scratching on these (that’s the point for audio because there is not automation) and NI dropped sometime ago NML (but I don’t know if it has the cappability to record turntable vector movements) and maybe now is the time to bring it back with full cappabilities throught maschine integration or new features to remix decks (timeline? Sequencing like digitalwarrior?)