Are there Octatrack live performers around? How do you build your live set?

Need an advice on building live set. I have an Octatrack Mk1, A4mk1, Digitone, tempest and Tascam Model 24 mixer. Don’t want to bring all this gear to the club (especially mixer) so I want to limit it to two machines. Before I was thinking about using static samples on Octatrack to create a kind of hybrid dj set from parts of my tracks but I don’t like how time stretching affects the sound (maybe I am doing something wrong). It makes sense to me that Octatrack should be the center of my live setup. Will appreciate some recommendations from experienced users, thanks in advance!

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Probably better to use ableton to timestrech to correct bpm First to get cleaner results

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Won’t the venue provide a desk? OT, A4 and Tempest sounds like a great trio for live set. If it’s anything dance / beat-centric, at least kick and bass should have their own channels.

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Lots of advice already on the forum:
https://www.elektronauts.com/search?q=octatrack%20live%20set

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I am using OT as a mixer for my A4 and Rytm, and a sample player on the additional tracks.
and it works perfectly.
I can give you more info if you want :slight_smile:

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I do a hybrid of stems and sequences and live sampling. I don’t worry about time stretching, as I use the same BPM of whatever stems i’m loading in. I keep track of that per bank (for me, a bank=song).

My key advice - anything you’re not wanting to manipulate live, just bounce into a stem, loop, etc. Keep other tracks free for fun and thru tracks.

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Venue will probably have one free channel on a DJ mixer. Yeah, I agree with you about that combo but still want to limit live setup to just two machines for not getting confused too much, playing this kind of live show is new for me. Thank you for your comment.

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How do you build your show progression? More interested on what’s going on inside the Octatrack but kindly tell me about other gear as well.

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That’s great, what do you tweak inside the sequences? Do you make a lot of scenes/parts etc? What’s the core of your live set progression?

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I use a lot of scenes, and the crossfader gets a lot of love. I use a sequence instead of a stem if I want to:

  • Shorten the release
  • Do any drum reverse/rate changes (can be very subtle and “drumistic”)
  • Change any trigs on-the-fly.

I use parts for dramatic changes. Parts are usually assigned to a pattern. I save parts for bigger changes, and utilize patterns by slicing some stems. For example - a static bass part that has a chorus/verse. The chorus will be slice 1, triggered at the beginning of the phrase every cycle, and the verse will be slice 2, triggered with a p-lock in the verse patterns. Obviously, you can have several slices. This saves sample slots too!

The core of my live set progression…
I’m a weird one. I don’t do a typical dance/electro/DJ set. I’m more presenting a show like a concert. So, I make a set list like a typical band would, shaping the ride through my set. There’s lots of room to throw myself curveballs and improvise. I even have very loose improvised “templates” that let me sample in a way that creates some grounded grooves. I should mention that I’m playing and sampling saxophone while all this is happening. It’s a lot of back and forth from the horn to the OT. As far as what’s in the OT that’s not a live sax sample - I use a ton of bass lines i’ve created and sampled from a Moog Minitaur or OP1. I’m going to start using the Minitaur in my set, as I’ve found myself wanting to do more in-the-moment bass sculpting. I also have some spoken word stuff all chopped to hell. Lastly, there are pads, bells, and keys that I’ve sampled from Ableton.

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Both liveset I’ve made on the OT were only using one pattern to be able to use a LaunchControl XL and have the ability to change levels and parameters on more than one track at a time, without having every knobs becoming irrelevant when changing patterns.

In one case, the melodic parts were exported in one stem while the drums were played on a Model/Samples coming in a thru track, with a looper track and a CUE to a Delay Pedal. In the other, I had 5-6 stems for each track and changed them manually which is really tedious.

I’m struggling to find a way to play the Octatrack as a dub mixer, while having smooth transitions but without the hassle of changing every track manually every time. The transition trick is one solution, but I’m not very comfortable with the way it loops the main out, and I know I can use the CUE output to select what is recording, but then it also goes through my delay pedal.

Anyway, I would say keep things simple, timestrech stuff on Ableton at the tempo you intend to play them, timestretching on the OT is not suited for full tracks. Starting with the hybrid DJ set you talked about and having another machine for improv is a cool and simple idea to start things!

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This is exactly how I build my live performances. I have another one tomorrow in fact.


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I use my Octatrack as the center of (and mixer in) my live-setup too. I like to keep it as simple as possible, so I try not to bring too much machines when I play live. I only have two hands and having a guitar (plus pedals), OT and DN to perform at the same time is already a little too much. I play song-songs like a band would in a concert, only solo, so my set involves a bunch of live looping, switching patterns and some tweaking mostly, so it’s not like I do techno live sets with advanced mixing or something. My rule is a bank = a song and I build my songs using patterns. Have to remeber to set bpm manually before every song this way is a pain though… Wish OT would be like DN with bpm per pattern in this regard.

So my live-setup is OT + DN + guitar and pedalboard + 2 guitar amps. OT sends clock and bank / pattern changes to DN, but each uses their own sequener. Drums are mostly in OT, bass, arps and other synth stuff from DN. Longer, evolving synth samples that I can’t do live (either cause I’m playing guitar or because it’s from a synth I don’t have with me) I load into OT, slice and then assign the slices (setting precise loop points) to different patterns.
I also use OT to loop guitar stuff (guitar into OT, pickup machine to cue, into my pedalboard into my amps), but I might change that into using my Infinity looper again, simply sending clock to Infinity from OT. Might be better. I dunno, still figuring this stuff out as well. Always helps to write it down like this :smiley:

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I’m asking myself is someone tried to use banks/parts to just have different midi Scales-Transposition setting in midi ? Seem to be useful to switch modes/scales and note/chord progression…

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It’s a thing I wanted to try, both arp and LFOs, it won’t be an easy task!

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Can be not so complicated but then tweaking audio tracks it become pretty complicated, you cannot copy and paste part (per example if you use parts).
So you then have to modify settings withs scenes, or plock them.
But that is not too much : because you keep settings you like on some scenes. Can be interesting in some ways if parts + p locks + scenes are a bit too much to know where you are.
I’m trying to find an old user comment about this setup but cannot.

You can copy and paste parts.

Yes but if you assign each midi track to a scale/transpo/arps it’s better not to…

I’m trying to avoid part changing for now and use the arranger, but to change at least the arp scale I’ll have to do it.

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Off topic, but I nearly flagged your comment instead of “bookmarking” it. Thanks for these very detailed ideas for how to use Parts on the OT.

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