Hi everybody,
I’m supposed to do a live show soon.
All my tracks are written in Ableton live and are really a mess to adapt for a live configuration - because of the amount of processing, effects…
I would like to play and tweak them live only using my Octatrack. What could I do more than play them like a dj ?
Thanks!
How good is your imagination?
More relevantly, when is the gig?
Also relevant, whats your fan base like? How big a crowd are we talking? Because realistically, the crowd dont care what you’re doing just so long as the music is banging and you’re having a good time.
Are you getting paid?
Short cheap and easy version: stem your tracks out, use a midi controller and use ableton for what its best at, clip launching.
I would bounce the tracks to some sort of grouped stems and spread them across the Octatrack’s tracks. e.g. Kick, Snare, Perc, Bass, Synth, Synth, Vox or something?
You could leave off some of the effects/transitions and do them live, or just add extra to the tracks as they are.
As @Microtribe said though, the world is your oyster.
Coming from a similar position for my first shows in late 2019 (so a few shows then had to stop for the obvious!), I approached this by using stems of my tracks, in combination with live elements (an analogue monosynth, some vocals and fx). I would suggest simplifying/removing much of the automation except for absolute essentials you describe and allowing yourself to emulate/tweak things in that vein using the crossfader/scenes or hardware fx via cue/send ‘trick’.
Can’t get in to too much detail at this very moment but work out how many stems you can break your tracks down to, standardise this across everything you export and across your Octatrack patterns. I removed elements of my produced tracks that I felt would be fun to play live, a bass part, lead whatever. Octatrack sent program changes so snapped to a preset of my choosing for each track. I ran this synth and my voice into thru tracks and use the ‘transition trick’ to move between tracks.
An incoherent scattering of advice on how I did this thing! Have fun!
my approach would be to bounce out short looped sections of the ableton tracks (eg percussion loops, bass loops etc etc) and basically create a ‘loop pack’ or whatever, and then use the OT to reinterpret the ableton tracks in new ways using those building blocks. the loops can be bounced out from Live with whatever bread and butter effects etc baked in (EQ, compression etc) and then use the OT to recreate the more complex/fun ones, while being able to manipulate those things live, which of course is one of the OT’s strengths. just bouncing out stems and playing them on the OT as they were in Live seems a bit pointless, almost like youre just using the OT for the sake of it, in which case id opt to use Live + midi controller (nothing wrong with that at all of course)
…u separate the kik…and bounce a little phrase of it…
…u separate the bass line…and bounce it’s various phrases involved…
…u stem out one or two additional rhythmgroup sections u got there…
and these could already be bounced in full length arrangement version…
…same with all futher harmonic content…might wanna separate those in rhythmical relevant ones…and those more chordish/pads like ones…
now u get a nice audio folder that contains one track/song/project with all it’s essential details ready to be setted up for ot playback and to become the sonic basecamp that let’s u PERFORM that song/track u made in ur daw…still with lot’s of space and options for ot’s special twiddle, plocking, scenes live action on the fly…
ready to be played LIVE again and again in truu live fashion…each time a little different…always free to take/interpretet that song/track in a sponataneous new version of the original…
keep in mind…those stems that contain the full fledged original arrangement, should be sliced up in individual arrangement parts…so u can split and spread out the song/track over several patterns…
6 months later, the question may have been solved. But it can be useful for other people.
The good question is “when is the show” ? So how much time do you have.
I’m in the same case : I had NI Maschine as the heart of my live setup and I’m replacing it by the Octatrack because I want to get rid of the computer for artistic reason.
I had planned to take months to do this, but I have to do all that stuff in an emergency because my laptop has began to mess around and can’t anymore play fluently projects it played dozens of time on stage.
And it’s a mess. It takes a lot of time just to think how organize samples and parts to almost keep the original sounding of the tunes AND to have fun with them on stage.
Creating, composing, improvizing and playing with Octatrack is great and fun. Adapting tunes made in computer to be played with Octatrack is painful and boring, maybe particularly if you have a lot of processing in you projects.
It also depends on how precisely you have to reproduce you projects. Mine are played with in a band with a lot of work with the other musicians to make the whole stuff sound good, the tunes have played dozens of time on stage and some of them has already been recorded and released, so I can’t do what I want and have to stay very close to what I played before.
I’m sure it will be much easier when I’ll do the same with my own tunes I play alone 'cause I can almost remix them to fit the Octatrack spirit and feeling.
If I had the choice, I would still play my next gigs with my computer and take time to move the tunes to Octatrack and rehearsal a lot with it before bringing it on stage.
Thanks everybody!
@Microtribe, the gig is in two months and, of course, I’ll be paid.
Like others said here, I’ll adapt my ableton sequences to fit the Octatrack. And maybe, add more elements with the Monomachine.
Another take on this, and what I’ve spent YEARS doing, is bouncing out all my tracks with processing (mostly recorded live jams) into a 48/64 bar, or whatever sliced grid file (this bit takes time, but worth doing well), and then using the crossfader on the OT to jump between the slices, and programming patterns to use those slices in different ways … ie. PTN1 intro slice, PTN2 main section 1 slice etc.
The tracks are quite minimal anyway, so leaves me room to layer on extra synths or drums, guitar, whatever.
I found this much easier to handle, as in a live situation, too much ‘stuff’ just fries my brain.
The way the OT can mash up simple loops is enough fun on its own, and you’ll always have pretty safe foundations to jump back to.
The only issue is all my tracks are in different projects, so I’ve had to use an A&H DB4 with looper to transition between tracks, but it all works a treat.
I also found that just playing the tracks out of the OT instead of ableton sounded better (punchier ??) to my ears.