The good thing about the OT as a looper and mixer is it is pretty fun and immediate as well, once you learn how to make it do those things. For the live looping, I’ve made a guide. , and for the mixing, that is relatively easy to figure out on your own, perhaps the easiest component of the OT. It is made more fun and immediate via MIDI control though. A Twister, launchControl XL, or Faderfox goes a long way. Whatever you need to get all the mix controls on one surface, or Page, is best.
On this, I’ll first say thank you, but add that the grass is always greener on the other side of the YouTube camera.
I am currently wrecked with fixation about building a eurorack system, to be controlled by OT, all while knowing that what I have is more than capable of presenting my vision, and that I should just settle in with it for a while. I go through cycles of wanting a different setup, by imaging possibilities, and of course this gets exacerbated by seeing others use a tool to its fullest. It’s easy to imagine what I could do with that tool, get excited about that, release some dopamine, start planning. But I gotta remind myself that just getting to that different setup is only the beginning. Once you get there, like you said, it takes practice.
So choose whatever you’ll be most comfortable practicing with.
I did shows with just the Rytm MK1, along with the pigtronix infinity looper + a vestax Dj mixer for seamless transitions.
It was a lot of fun at the time, but eventually I grew to want more. More synthesis, more sample manipulation, more variety.
The great thing about the OT is I haven’t run out of ways to use it, and as mentioned in Learning to love Octatrack by making it wear all the hats at once , I’ve set it up in a way that allows me to perform with all those different schemes, without limitation. It’s so flexible that I keep a second power supply near my sofa just for exploration.
But I have to be mindful of that dopamine trap creeping in… the “what if”.
What if I got a 2nd OT? What if I moved all my MS material into that 2nd OT and gave it its own dedicated knobby controller? How much more powerful would THAT be? How much more work would it require? Is it worth it?
The grass is always greener. It never ends.