Djing with Octatrack compared to "normal" djing :P

Hi! Im interested in buying a Octatrack with the main purpose to use as my cdj/mixer (Im playing Suomisaundi/free-form psy). Anyone with some knowledge about mixing with it? Pick up machines and straight from Cf card.

How would you compare normal mixing and Octatrack mixing (Benifits/downsides) ?

At the moment im using usb stick on my Pioneer CDJ-2000 players and a Allen&Heath Xone DB4 to mix…but the shortcoming of it is that not all organisators have usb compatible cd player at gigs im getting and i will not bring my cd collection when im playing abroad or want to sit down and burn cds for gigs (bloody boring to burn cds!! ) :smiley:

Find it hard to find any real great info or a video with someone doing octatrack mixing so that why im asking here in the best forum on the web right now…so now hit me with all your collected knowledge on why or why not i should walk down the Octatrack path :slight_smile:

Adding a link to my some of my mixes so you can get an idea on what sort of music im mixing if that can help you guys out with answering my question.

https://soundcloud.com/fleuw/monday-mundane-green-theme

https://soundcloud.com/fleuw/fiddletwister

1 Like

I haven’t tried, but I have hard time figuring out how to DJ with an Octatrack, if you want to beatmatch. There’s no fine pitch control, there’s no way to nudge a track etc. It might be possible with some workarounds though, don’t know about those.

Laptop and a good controller is a far superior option. Or an iPad.

Well im allready done the controller/laptop thingy…wasnt my cup of tea…to much hardware that breaks down on me. And not to forget the setting up is a hassle when some one is playing…like “hi…sorry may i connect my stuff when ur mixing…i wont be long” and then pulling cables when they are trying to perform" and ive been in both sides of that story…not fun at all :slight_smile:

With an octatrack u still need to connect but no computer hassle or soundcards and that sort of shit :smiley:

So more opinions would be nice…maybe some one with ex from using it as stand alone dj thing ? :slight_smile:

This beatmatching thing…if you can timestretch music on it and if you prepare the set a bit more i think i could work around it. I have the benifits on getting booking mainly from the music im playing (they know what they are getting)…of course i need to read the dancefloor and sort out what music is before me to make it fit but not to the same extent that i need to play requests or play the top 40 clubhits when im playing.

I’m not a DJ by any stretch, but I sometimes incorporate fully mixed tracks into my live set to give myself a break during the set. I loaded the songs onto the CF card, then assigned them to slots in the static pool. I set the tempo for each song sample in the static slot, so the OT will automatically beat match it. One shot trigs in the patterns,scenes and cross fader for mixing transitions and effects.

So the beat matching is done up front. Tempo controlled with the tempo knob. Cross fade between tracks 1 and 5 for transitions. I also chopped out some loops for transitions as well. I guess that’s different from normal DJ ing?

7 Likes

Thanks…then it works as i would like it to do…and u get all the onboard effect tweaking of the tracks? And is it easy to live sample from that kind of workflow and playing around with just loops or is that something needed to prepare before?

Each track has 2 effects slots. You can also set up neighbor machines to have more. Also, you can set up track 8 as a master track, with two FX slots there. Resampling and chopping can be done, on the fly… Just set up some flex machines, use one shot record trigs, associate with the source (any track, inputs, or master track). I’m just getting into that myself… Loads of fun! It’s got a learning curve though, so be prepared for that.

The prep would be:
[ul]
[li]Samples, sample slots[/li]
[li]Track machine assignments, FX slots[/li]
[li]Flex machine slice setup[/li]
[li]Scenes[/li]
[li]Patterns and parts, one shot trigs[/li]
[/ul]

Once that’s done you can go nuts. For hours.

3 Likes

The closest I got to “playing dj” on my octatrack… does work.
but i had to pull allot of boring technical thinking to get it working:

what was key for me:
Really really really ultra bpm exact wavefiles!! which basicly meant, i had to chop loops in my daw… so full song mixing didnt work out for me… then again… I am sure you had cue-points and all that on your usb-stick. cutting your samples propperly and acurate so it always started at correct beat… and ended on an exact beat.

Every song, I put in its own pattern. sample-plocked to start the correct bit of audio.
Every pattern had “simular scene setup”… and every pattern had 2 types of transitioning-trick… 1 that grabbed a 4bar loop and played it as is… the other grabbed a bar… and replayed it using sample-start-offset-plocks… (NOT SLICES !!!) cause slices caused things to go wrong on realtime sampling when changing bpm…

All parts/scenes had scene16 to play the grabbed loop… scene 15 to play the cutup loop.

workflow:

Start pattern… hear a song… Sample the 4bar loop and the 1bar loop using manual triggers and quantized recording… go to scene 16… go to next pattern…
slowly go to that song by fading out of scene16 …

Plenty of tracks left to do other stuff with…

the other way I tried, was simular… but longer patterns… and the song-track was detached from sequencer… what meant… i could fire a pattern… but the new song still wasnt playing… it would repeat the last loop triggered… using this and the cutted up version and the 4 bar loop… gave me lots of difrent ways to play with it all…
but the downside of it was… i got lost soon in my own performances… as in… not able to see what track was playing and what not…

and dont forget the search function on the forum… I think I read many many nice bits of information on the matter…

3 Likes

Thanks for the reply :wink: I understood that it would be loads of work utilizing the octatrack for dj purposes but i gladly put down the time and effort to do it…little bit bored with the “usual” style of mixing :stuck_out_tongue:

I will get one for my self and start mashing up the tracks i think…and a nice new hobby to work with tracks to arrange and fix to make it work on the octatrack.

1 Like

Yw buddy…

I had a topic on elektronauts, where i took a long long time explaining all these techniques… even had a video… but silly me… I just cant find it at the moment…
else i would have shared a link of it… happy googling…

Is there any audio or video of anyone using the OT as a DJ tool? I’m not an OT expert, but it seems like something that’s extremely difficult to pull off and I personally don’t see how it could be done, unless you’re just playing some short loops and prepare everything beforehand. Which doesn’t sound like fun, more like hard work with very little to gain, compared to playing with records or a laptop/iPad, where preparation for a gig takes very little time.

I’d like to see/hear it in action!

…you can dj with an ot pretty amazing, IF you’re a recording artist…

only if you know for sure what you gonna play…!!!

than go for the ot experience and never look back…

if you’re really just a dj, playing tracks from elsewhere, needing some kind of real or digital record pocket with loads of tracks in it, just to see where it might take you that night…

than you’re doomed with an ot…simple as that…

ot can do so much but i t can’t catch up with the simplicity of some usb sticks in your pocket, full with gigs of mp3 or even wav and the usual pioneer set up…

but if you want to play your own stuff in a breathtaking performance…or at least, can live with a maxed out playlist of 128 tracks befor you have to stop and load the next heap…there you go…

2 Likes

no offense, but this is plain wrong. press track and nudge to nudge a specific track.
see my comment in the other thread:
Absolute beginner in a hurry for quick&dirty instructions.

2 Likes

no offense, but this is plain wrong. press track and nudge to nudge a specific track.
see my comment in the other thread:
Absolute beginner in a hurry for quick&dirty instructions.

[/quote]
Agreed.

The OT can DJ with no prep. Load a song on track 1, play it. While that happens, load up track 2. Cue and beatmatch. Create a transition scene. Repeat with subsequent tracks until the first track is getting near its blend point. Bring in the next track. Repeat with the other six tracks.

From here it is just a matter of knowing your material and how creative you want to get. Sequencer patterns, different play modes, resampling, slicing, fx, master track, looping from the edit screen, and so on. You could even prepare the machine ahead of time if you wanted to. Super fun stuff that you can play for hours.

1 Like

no offense, but this is plain wrong. press track and nudge to nudge a specific track.
see my comment in the other thread:
Absolute beginner in a hurry for quick&dirty instructions.

[/quote]
Agreed.

The OT can DJ with no prep. Load a song on track 1, play it. While that happens, load up track 2. Cue and beatmatch. Create a transition scene. Repeat with subsequent tracks until the first track is getting near its blend point. Bring in the next track. Repeat with the other six tracks.

From here it is just a matter of knowing your material and how creative you want to get. Sequencer patterns, different play modes, resampling, slicing, fx, master track, looping from the edit screen, and so on. You could even prepare the machine ahead of time if you wanted to. Super fun stuff that you can play for hours.[/quote]
This is just so… T R U E ! ! !
OT is a real fun also when it’s time to djing

1 Like

So with all this input and from a friend who i borrowed my Pioneer CDJ 2000 ive come to the conclusion that i will buy myself an Octatrack and use it as my “mixer” and for other duties…thanks a lot for making me wanna spend my hard earned cash :wink: No seriuosly…big thanks for all the input…been a great help for me. Tack så mycket :slight_smile:

1 Like

Old thread but I am loving this aspect of the OT. Following some threads where you add the bpm to the file name, then fine tune your start point of each sample, voila, perfect beat matching just like in Live. I haven’t gotten around to scenes, but simply cross fading and tweaking the filter in each track has me well entertained :slight_smile: And nice call above about the Cue outputs, I guess a lot of this stuff could be done on the fly with the proper output setup. So glad this is possible, I’m sure it doesn’t contain all the usual bells and whistles of proper decks but this works great for my needs :slight_smile:

I’ve tried dabbling with this but find two issues:

  1. The timestretch cannot be disabled, so even slight BPM differences alter the sound (lot more than my media player decks with keylock on fwiw)

  2. If you like post-fade fx, using an external DJ mixer is almost mandatory for sane gainstaging of the playing decks

Would appreciate any videos & details on spontaneous DJing with the OT. Personally I’m struggling with it tbh. Would love to find a usable workflow (for my needs) because when you could do that, you could take things quite far from the OG 1s-&-2s paradigm. Hell you could add all sorts of live PA sounds and beats on top of your records, all synced etc, do resampling tricks and other madness…!

You can disable timestretch by double tapping playback and then turning TSTR to OFF

Yes you can but how do you then line up the BPMs in a sane way? No fine pitch control AFAIK, even though we have track nudge…?

As someone said you can apply pitch with an lfo design or the crossfader with smaller values.
Maybe it is insane.
I would prepare the songs on a computer before, with accurate tempo, with the ability to slices them if I want.