Interesting article
Part of the speed was down to their recording process, where they took cues from their live shows, jamming with two Elektron Octatrack sequencers instead of painstakingly painting notes into a grid in Ableton. “T
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Thanks for posting, one of my fave bands
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"We were asked by Ina GRM to create a performance for their yearly festival Presence Electronique, exploring their archive of phenomenal avant garde releases using our own GRM records. In essence the material here features sections of releases by Pierre Henry, Bernard Parmegiani, Guy Reibel and many others interwoven with our own improvisations using two elektron octatracks, various effects units (Eventide h3000, Time factor, Space, Ekdahl Moisturiser, and Akai MFC42) and two technics 1210’s.
I was reading about the Cosmogony tape a week back. Is it going to be available anywhere in the states because it sounds like a fantastic release.
cassette only. Sold out.
I bought the cassette, haven’t had a chance to listen yet (I work a lot). I love demdike stare and read that interview when I was searching everything octatrack a month or two ago.
I’ve had an octatrack a few weeks now (I work a lot so still not that much time with it). I understand how to work it but am very unimpressed with it. I hate this I hate that and so on and so forth…
What I want to say is that I cannot imagine improv with these machines? The workflow is so slow because everything needs setting up maticulously. I cannot see it what am I missing?
Im guessing they use Pickup machines to sample off the technics 1210’s on the fly
I think pickup machines are sort of like the roll sampler in Pioneer DJM mixers if you DJ? Advanced users please correct me if I’m wrong!
I bought a pair of Octatrak Mk2s just for the pickup machine feature but have not learned how do this in practise yet as they are shipping to me.
If anyone can give me tips on pickup machines --great --please reply.
The other reason i bought them is because Demdike along with VHS Head (Really like these artists based on their sample and crate digging selection and downstream processing) all use the Octatrak live.
Pickup machines might not be slow
Honestly, I very rarely sequence on the OT and much prefer improv. I like triggering samples live and mangling. It still requires some setup, but it’s almost like you’re creating the environment/system within which you will work for a set of material.
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Takes a lot of practice. The key is to do all your time-consuming setup work ahead of time, then learn the structure of your set well. After that you’re free to improvise with scenes, mutes, trigs, pattern switching, fx etc.
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I’m guessing they use track resampling instead of pups tho? much more flexible and easier to sync IME. Never used pickups after I learned how to resample and use oneshot rec trigs etc
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Any pointers on where to read about track resampling-resample and use oneshot rec trigs in particular ?
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The merlins’ guide should have all the info wrt this as well.
I bet there are also alot of videos demonstarting this
this. I can comfortable use the OT with its standard sampling functions and it underwhelms me to the point of pissed-offness after all the money I paid for it. I can read the manual and understand how all the different extra functions work but I am not intelligent enough to visualise how I could use all of these functions to do crazy stuff with.
hi, is there any threads/videos/articles/interviews you can think of that might explain what youre doing, or one of the scenarios you might be talking about? I’m very interested to understand what you mean but struggling
The OT’s a very deep machine and it requires practice, patience, and determination to learn how to use it… Three weeks is nothing with an OT unless you’ve been obsessively learning it 8 hours a day…
Although it may seem slow and awkward at first, when you do learn how to operate it and set up a good project for yourself, it becomes quick, easy, and opens up lots of doors for creative improvisation…
Improv with OT for me and probably many others isn’t about starting from a blank project, it’s about having some defined structure set up, but also having all sorts of scenes, fx variations, sampler remix tricks, creative fader mix/fx combos, alternative breakdown patterns, etc. Within your project/set you can perform the same track a ton of different ways… I have a project tailored for improv with looping, it’s a very defined project that took awhile to set up, but the audio that comes out of it is different every time…
With an instrument of this depth here is no video that takes you from A to Z. The OT has so many ways to use it that even someone who has had one for years might not understand how someone else is using it, and would possibly have no idea how to operate their project correctly if you traded OT’s. You must learn most of it, before your even thinking of improvising with it. You eventually define it as your own instrument and come up with a unique way of operating it…
Not everybody might want to take the time and practice to learn how to use it, but if you do it ends up being an extremely powerful tool with a multitude of uses, and even a platform to create audio experiments that no one has ever done before. It’s one of the most powerful audio manipulation devices out there, and does some things nothing else can do…
I suggest starting slow learning its basic functions one at a time instead of trying to do to much too fast, and decide whether you want to devote yourself to dive in and take the time to learn it or perhaps decide it’s not the right thing for you…
In other words you jumped into a spaceship and it looks really cool, but it’s frustrating because your not off to Saturns rings yet. Well, it is a spaceship and can do all the things that makes it seem cool, including going well past Saturns rings, but nobody can fly a spaceship without learning it, and it takes well longer than three weeks…
The question is, do you want to take the time to learn how to fly a spaceship?
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