Hi there. I’ve been using the Ocatrack to trigger loops of songs for live performances lately but I"m now wondering if it can be used to DJ live without using decks in the audio ins. Tracks seem to go a bit weird when you’re not in the same tempo as them. I was wondering if anyone uses the Ocatrack this way and what experiences they’ve had. Thanks!
many before you had this question on this forum and on elektron-users…
saw many opinions before my eyes… and well… i might be a sucky dj (really) but i got curious… on what would be best fun.
Well… first of all… you have to know the bpm of every song you want to dj. AND TELL THE OCTATRACK WHAT IT IS.
there where allot of complaints that it they had to alter bpm… even if they had bpm included in the filename.
and here is the kicker. the less exact the bpm you told the octatrack, the more it goes wrong… So they ended up
beatmapping their songs into ableton, to force an exact bpm… and a good starting-point to mix in…
the other thing people talked about, was lack of cue-points… so people started thinking about adding slices to their files.
not slice grids, but just slices they manually added to their files, which is allot of work…
The triggering, of songs… u can use oneshot triggers… and re-arm them when necesarry…
place triggers in pattern. and remove trigger when things are set… (this way, you could use microtiming, to get better beatsync… or trigger from a difrent step then 1)
or manual triggers… yes/no quantized to clock… I would say… try them all… its your show 
Some people used techniques with neighboor-tracks… to get EQ and more fx to some tracks…
the use of an external controller for the eq and fx, was discussed allot… Never played with it. cause i dont have external controller like that…
and well… every realtime sample-mangling trick you can think of, and you figure out to incoorporate in your octatrack-dj-skills can be used… cause well… its an octatrack… its designed for this typo stuff but i would suggest you sample loops, from your “song-track” cause if, for example you reverse the song with the rate-knob… your long songfile will get out of sync when you turn it back… which sucks. you can however… like i said… sample a loop from your track containing the song… and realtime mangle those samples with various techniques your read about allover the forum… A good tip i could tell you for this one… dont use slices on realtime sample-mangling… keep that for samples on your compact-flash… cause, while you octa-dj your likely to change bpm… and slices, although they stay in your recorder, which is in your case, not a good thing…
I do think that creating the right scenes will help out allot, and is your friend on this one… use it to mute/unmute tracks…
songA or SongB , or ReSamplingA or ReSampling B …
So, i kinda think… if you want to put in the work, the research and allot of creativity you can…
but its not really my cup of tea… i would hate to beatsync 300+ songs in a very exact way… but then again
thats what dj’s do these days… I see no big difrence between importing and sorting all your stuff in rekord-box or however that cdj software is called… and beatmapping all your songs and chopping a good mixable start in it…
Enjoy your quest… its not my way… but it should be very much fun…
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Hey, thanks very much for your detailed reply! I’m going to give it a go and see how it goes. I’ll post the results sometime.
have fun buddy…
I know you wanna play without decks like dj’s these days…
As soon as I will have my pre amp for my decks I am thinking to replace my mixer for a while with an OT, immagine record your 2 hrs set sampling, mixing and mangling in real time without thinking about music production…
Once you are tired you can dig in your set that you previously record and I am sure you will find some interesting unexpected samples for your production 
I made an account just so i could like this. Thanks for the thorough analysis!
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Your welcome buddy…
Unless there’s a way to make small nudge adjustments (and headphone cue) on a single audio file, to find the sweet-spot when mixing 2 tracks together, I wouldn’t use 1 OT for this.
You could make sure that 2 specific tracks (songs) work together, but if you want to select tracks on-the-fly in any way, without adjustment, there will likely be clashes or phasing issues etc.
Best way to use an Octatrack to dj is with an external mixer and using one track(channel) on the cue outs and another on the mains, with all cuing and eq’ing done from the mixer. Sure you can resample and add fx and scenes in the OT, but its a bit painful as the_dreammer mentioned setting up songs so they are correctly hot cued and accurately analysed. Can be done though and practise would speed things up.
For creative jamming with up to 4 stems per song, fx and cue points, would recommend the Traktor S8 (or S5 which I have). Computer required but can close the lid as they have screens built in. Still have to prep the music for Traktor though (if original) so its similar workload prior to performance.
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Technically possible, the question remains: Why? Basically 99% of the clubs today will have CDJ’s or XDJ’s installed, all you need to bring is a memory stick with your favorite songs on it. I’ve DJ’d a lot in my lifetime and also had the OT for a long time, I see like exactly zero benefits (but tons of hassle, as you need to prepare songs in advance) from using an OT instead of CDJ/XDJ.
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There’s also timestretch and the rate knob. And with timestretch disabled the pitch knob works like slowing or speeding up a record…
Thanks, but it’s not a tempo nudge I’d need. Once tempo is locked, i’d be looking at positional nudging.
Not that I’d consider OT for DJing anyhow. I’m fully Pioneer’d out.
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That would be interesting for sure, and very creative fx with lfos on several sample instances.
I plan to make dj sets, with Octatrack for sure !
Used Tracktor, simply, without syncing songs.
I’d prefer to prepare samples for Ot now.
Ok here is my take, the OT is a great sampler/sequencer and FX tool for experimental music type jamming but quite difficult to use as DJ tool. My recommendation is to use something like the Pioneer or Tracktor S8 for that duty and have the OT as a tool for layer FX and what not.
Atch DJ set, playing long samples prepared in Live.
At lot of work, but technically possible to prepare a DJ set.
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I use it as a dj setup and it works a treat. Downside is a lot of prep for any new music.
Forget about beat matching manually. Yes, it can be done, but put in any material that is not on grid and the nightmare begins. And remember that you can use chains for song sections, not necessarily from one song. Plus the crossfader and scenes… Lots of fun to be had with the OT as a dj device.
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Even if it’s on-grid, when selecting tracks ad-hoc (which many of we DJs do a lot of the time, depending on what the crowd are responding to), the positioning for sweet-spot on bringing 2 tracks together is almost certainly going to need some active adjustment.
Why, if samples are well prepared ?
hei, good to see you around these parts sir!
Hope you been well. I been stalking u on GS, seems like you got into some newschool hardcore things a few months back?
Cheers man!