I have just bought an OT for exactly this. I create live, all improvised music for hardware groove boxes, I begin with nothing programmed and drum, tap and play to my hearts content to build the songs.
I am hoping to use the OT to record in samples from my other dear, kind of using it as a over arching mangler, running all of the rest of my rig into it and then sampling and manipulating these samples.
With just 1 month of having used it, I tested it in front of over 3000 people… Played an hour set in 2010 (Ozora festival - Hungary) with OS version 0.98 lolol lots of scary momments and I have to admit a few unexpected glitches… But all in all went fantastic… And I was back in stage without laptop…
Ive been making live sets with hardware for over 12 years, never complitely happy and limited by hardware. Had many stressfull momments in airports while carring all this gear, synths, grooveboxes, DIY theremins and circuit bending toys… that now are all gone, as I can play gigs with just the OT.
When the OT came out, I knew It was the answer. It is the first time in my life I can play the music I produce at the studio, happy, stressless, LIVE… very very complex sets, with or without other external gear… and still come out with new ideas, have fun, no latency and the feeling that is much more capable, stable and elegant that any Laptop setup, or hardware combination I ever tryed.
Every person find different uses, workflows… This is what I love about this machine, the limit is in your mind, and features that might seem limited at first get more and more sense with time…
I use OT, MDUW, a4, and a hand full of other synths in an all improvisation project with another guy using a MDUW and a4. Elektrons in general are meant to be played live like instruments (IMO), but the OT takes it to a whole new level. We do 1hr long (or more) sets starting from nothing and progressing within 1 pattern. I’ve never had any unexpected issues, or problems with any of my elektrons live, whereas with my laptop and ableton project years ago, it was full of hiccups and problems.
The OT acts as a mixer, samplebank, sampler, sequencer, transitional tool, and life saver. Not to mention master clock for a table full of gear.
In all honesty, I traded my OT about 3 months ago for a near mint arp odyssey. After only 3 months (or a bit less) I was having such withdraws that I bought a new one. Should be here at the end of this week.
that’s a good story!! …
I have used the OT live a few times, I’m in a transitional phase with it in the live setup where it’s kind of still a bit ‘tacked on’ on my MD/MnM which is where the guts of the music still lives… was happy to replace the comp on the MnM with the OT one for my MD kick/bass processing… WAY less noisy and smoother sound… and it seems if you set up your scenes well with the crossfader there’s some serious live action to be had!
What I’ve really been buzzing off though is the OT as a DJ setup… it’s not the reason I got it but it turns out it’s the best DJ solution ever!! I previously only used vinyl for DJing so the OT led me (somewhat reluctantly at first) to start playing digital… however, happily, it doesn’t want to be exclusive to vinyl DJing, and I now have the OT setup to take a feed from the rec out of the DJ mixer allowing me to sample loops directly from the vinyl on the decks and then immediately play back the loops in pre-made fx sequences…
what I really want do now is be able to play back the sampled loop sliced and with the slices re-ordered on different patterns, but I’m not sure how to do this live, smoothly … yet.! … seems that when a new sample is made it has to be re-sliced every time. if there was a way to automap the sample to a slice grid more immediately it would mean you could: punch record, playback loop, remix! … instant remix!!!
anyone got any enlightening ideas or experience with this?
I previously worked out a kind of cheat-workaround where I have pre-loaded a loop from a track that’s playing and then have prepared re-ordering of slices in different patterns to playback… but if this prepared loop could be swapped out for a recorder track… well, that would be something else!
Check out the ‘cheat’ example in the Aphex track in this DJ set, from about 22.30 onwards (recorded in one take, OT only ) https://soundcloud.com/manifest-podcast/manifest-podcast-029-fran
Yes, I will be playing it live for the first time on Oct. 4. I use it as a live looper for my viola. I also slice the looped audio and play back slices with the sequencer.
I’m pretty sure you can create slices directly on a track’s recording buffer - so that when you record something new to the buffer it will replace the previous sample but the slice mappings for the buffer won’t be erased.
I use it live with another guy using a DS Tempest and MOFO and a Live drummer.
I currently have the OT slaved to the Tempest as the Tempest is a strange beast and prone to jitter. I mainly use the OT for sequencing, using chromatic mode to build patterns while jamming.
Just wish our drummer had a MIDI port
If you want to hear the results for ‘Motherbox’ on soundcloud.
It’s the best live box out there, though for live use its almost essential to have an external fader/knob controllor, i use zero novation mII, its great you can control each track via the faders; and mute/solo and will. Only pair up the octarack with one synth; this is best ; less can go wrong, more time to concentrate on volume and musting and using the scenes correctly.