DJ Waveforms
Stacked moving waveforms for Ableton Live
DJ Waveforms turns the audio tracks of your Live set into DJ decks: scrolling beat-aligned waveforms, beat-exact transport, hot cues, loops, a track library, a mixer, and full MIDI and keyboard control. Live stays the audio engine.
The Ableton forum starts asking for Serato-style scrolling waveforms. The thread is still open.
The Bridge, the official Serato and Ableton answer, is discontinued. Free Max for Live experiments come and go.
DJ Waveforms ships. Built by a DJ who got tired of waiting.
Live stays the audio engine. Your set, your warping, your racks and effects - DJ Waveforms is the performance surface on top.
Every warped clip follows the one project tempo, so decks are in sync by construction. The classic hard problems of DJ software simply do not exist here.
And it never alters your project. Anything it touches during playback is restored the moment you stop. Your .als stays exactly yours.
See it move
Up to sixteen decks, four built-in waveform styles, and a style editor to make your own. Swipe, drag, or use the arrows.
More than waveforms
The full working surface of a DJ booth: cues, loops, sections, library, mixer. All of it drives Live directly, and all of it maps to your hardware.
Hands on the waveform
Grab a wave and carry it - it lands back on the grid. Nudge a playing deck off the grid to beat-match by ear, or fly through the whole track on the overview strip. Up to sixteen decks side by side, each aligned to its clip's warp grid and coloured by frequency band.
Hot cues that survive everything
Eight per track with names, colours and section tints. Saved by audio fingerprint, so they survive file moves, renames and re-warps. Your existing Serato cues are read straight from the file tags.
Colour-map your track
Flag any hot cue as a section fill and the track becomes a map: intro, build, drop, outro, each painted in its cue's colour on the lane and on every deck's overview strip. You can read the whole arrangement from across the booth.
A library with DJ brains
Every clip in your set, searchable and sortable: Camelot keys, BPM and energy, played marks, your own set order. One press on Match narrows the list to tracks that mix with the playing deck - compatible key, tempo in range. Drag a row onto a deck to load it.
Loops, jumps and rolls
Grid-aligned loops from 1/4 to 32 bars with halve and double. Beat jumps slide an active loop along with you, and a momentary loop roll always lands back in phase.
The mixer you already built
Faders that match Live's own curve, stereo VU meters, and knobs that map themselves to your racks' macros - and every knob is remappable to any parameter you choose. It controls Live's mixer and adds no processing of its own.
One pad, every knob
Snapshots capture every knob on a deck - EQ, filter, sends, macros - into a pad. Fire one instantly, on the launch grid, or as a tempo-synced glide over 1 to 32 beats; hold pads spring back when you let go. The MORPH knob blends the whole deck toward a snapshot by hand. Touch any knob mid-move and it is yours again.
Map anything
Full MIDI learn with an on-screen mapping mode: click a control, touch your hardware. Shift layers, soft takeover, LED feedback - and Serato-style keyboard shortcuts out of the box.
Playing in three steps
Install DJ Waveforms
Download, open, done. macOS builds are signed and notarized. No account to create.
Add the bridge to Live
One click in the app installs the AbletonJS Control Surface - the same standard mechanism every hardware controller uses. Enable it once in Live's Link/Tempo/MIDI preferences and restart Live.
Open your set
The app connects by itself. Your audio tracks appear as decks, warped clips and all, and the mixer's knobs find your rack macros on their own. From here it is play, cue, loop, mix - the manual covers every gesture.
Try it as long as you like
The trial is the complete app - every deck, the mixer, the library, MIDI, all styles. Playback pauses once after 15 minutes of continuous play; the timer resets whenever your decks stop.
The full app, unlicensed. Decide on your own schedule.
- Every feature included, MIDI too
- No account, no signup, no watermarks
- Playback pauses briefly after 15 minutes of continuous play
- Timer resets when all decks stop
The Windows build is unsigned at launch - SmartScreen will ask once: choose More info, then Run anyway.
For the first two weeks after launch, then $79. No subscription, ever.
- Perpetual license - pay once, keep it
- Free updates through 1.x
- Use on up to 3 computers - deactivate to move
- Activate once online, then works offline forever
- 14-day no-questions refund
Secure checkout by Lemon Squeezy - VAT handled at checkout. Your key arrives by email within minutes. License terms.
Student, broke, or between gigs? Email me - we will sort something out.
Asked and answered
+Is this a standalone DJ app?
No, and that is the point. DJ Waveforms needs Ableton Live running with your tracks as warped clips - it is the DJ head for the set you already have. Live keeps doing the audio: your warps, your racks, your routing, your recording.
+Does it modify my Live set or my audio files?
Never. It reads clips and warp data. For beat-exact launches it moves clip markers during playback and restores them on stop, swap and quit, so the .als on disk stays exactly yours. Hot cues live in the app's own data folder - not in your tags, not in your set.
+Which Live versions and editions work?
Ableton Live 11 and 12. The app connects through a standard MIDI Remote Script - the same mechanism every control surface uses.
+Will it work with my MIDI controller?
Any class-compliant MIDI device. There is an on-screen mapping mode (click a control, touch your hardware), per-control button modes, soft takeover, and state-driven LED feedback. No controller is required at all - keyboard shortcuts ship by default and the mouse drives everything.
+Do I need internet at a gig?
No. The license activates once online and is cached forever after. Dead venue wifi, a dropped connection, or the license server being down never locks you out and never interrupts a set.
+What exactly does the trial limit?
One thing: after 15 minutes of continuous playback, playback pauses once - with a warning a minute before. Press play to carry on. Stop all decks and the timer resets. Every feature is included, MIDI and all styles too, for as long as you want to evaluate.
+Windows says it "protected my PC". Is that normal?
Yes. The Windows build is unsigned at launch (a code-signing certificate is planned), so SmartScreen asks once per version: click More info, then Run anyway. The macOS build is signed and notarized by Apple.
+Can it import my rekordbox or Serato library?
It does not sync libraries into Live - it works with the clips in your set. It does read your existing Serato hot cues and key tags straight from the files, so tracks you prepped elsewhere arrive with their cues in place.
+Refunds, and moving between machines?
14-day no-questions refunds. A license activates on up to 3 computers; deactivating one in Settings frees the slot. Ran out of slots after a few OS reinstalls? Email support and it gets fixed.
Mix from the set you already have.
Download the trial, open your Live set, and watch your waveforms move. If it clicks, it is $59.
MACOS + WINDOWS - ABLETON LIVE 11 + 12