Learn Serato in 4hrs?

Finally my order is arriving, Friday afternoon. I have a gig Friday night starting 10pm. I finish work at 5pm. That leaves me 4hrs to learn Serato, get ready and head off.

- Is it possible?
- Is there anything I can read before then (online manual).
- I'm a Final Scratch switcher...does that help?
- Any advice in advance?

Thanks

Learning the application shouldn't be a problem...

But I can't stress enough, you should really put the program through it's paces, on your system before you step foot in the club. I'm thinking from a system stability point of view, make sure you don't throw your CPU any curve balls on the night, like dragging a whole CD's worth of mp3's over to your hard disk in the background while trying to mix 2 tracks.

Buy a power supply, and make sure you take it, and some real records on the night.

And don't don't don't forget to callibrate!

Hope it goes well, be sure to let us know.

I would go through this forum and take some notes. You may run into some problems with some of your mp3's so hopefully you can improvise when mixing. Good luck!

I'll be sure to bring plenty of records as I would any way since I still enjoy buying some of the best records.

I know the callibrate drill from FS.

Also would never plan on dragging mp3s onto my harddisk during a mix let alone on the night. I'll have it all sitting there ready for tomorrow.

I've been hanging around these forums like a rat on cheese for the last week, and have picked up alot of tips.

Will let you know how I go... maybe get some pics.

Cheers

Definitely install the latest version. You can download it and install the software right now, import your MP3s and organize your library. You will just need the CD to install the driver when you have the full package.

I would suggest playing 1 more gig with your regular records. I know it's tempting to start using your new gear straight away, but you have to be fully confident with the system you're using before you take it to a club. I know I would be nervous as hell if I'd have to take SSL out live after using it for only a couple of hours.

Really, what's one more gig with your regular records? You can take SSL out at next week's gig, after you've fully become aquainted with it.

As a mac user, do we need a driver also? I usually just delete the program and install the updates...

The mac installer includes the mac "pseudo driver". The Windows installer can't install a driver directly into the system, but we may provide it as a separate download.

Here's my report of the gig:

Man seriously you got some good stuff going on at Serato... It took me a little under one hour to have everything connected and running smoothly and playing all my tunes.

Within three hours I had all the basics down pat for the gig.

The gig itself went very very good. I played for about 2hrs using half regular vinyl and half Serato. I had no issues at all. During the whole set it only skipped once and was because the needle was getting a bit dusty.

I find this program fairly easy to use mainly because it's free of alot of gunk and is very responsive... oh and I didn't have time to get a power pack, but didn't need it anyway in the end.

Overall very very impressed and happy with my purchase.

Thanks!

Excellent!

I tried to do the same thing but it didn't work out because I didn't have a power supply and when I hooked everything up I didn't have my computer on so I had absolutely no audio. I immediately disconnected the interface and just used vinyl. The software is really easy to use, but it took me several hours of using it before I became really comfortable with it.

Having the FS experience does help (in my opinion), but you never know how well you laptop will take to the software so I would suggest getting some practice time at home with SSL before you hit the gigs with it.

it's all about the tab key and shift-left arrow and shift-right arrow. if you can master those shortcuts you can be really quick.