How to transition when OT is sequencer + looper at the same time (MM2, ND2)

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi there! This is my very first post here, I hope I’m doing it the right way.

Being a little bored by numerous recent live sets I played using Ableton, basically triggering audio clips of productions I did in the studio in a linear fashion, I felt inspired by @mpiecora’s take on performance templates to enable people to perform live with their hardware.

Octatrack Performance FX Template by EZBOT

This was the starting point (around 1.5 years ago) for me to buy a secondhand OT MK2 on the used market which I by now kind of learned inside out as much as I could. My goal was to construct a similiar sort of performance template to be able to perform live with the OT, a MM2 and the ND2 to fully make use of the OT as a sequencer additionally.

I kind of adapted his ideas wherever it made sense, here’s the configuration the OT is currently running.

AUDIO:
T1 T - In A B (MM2)
T2 N - FX
T3 N - FX
T4 F - Looper A B
T5 T - In C D (ND2)
T6 N - FX
T7 N - FX
T8 F - Looper C D

MIDI:
T1 - MM2 A
T2 - MM2 B
T3 - ND2 CH1
T4 - ND2 CH2
T5 - ND2 CH3
T6 - ND2 CH4
T7 - ND2 CH5
T8 - ND2 CH6

Each bank is composed out of 4 ‘songs’ where each song is using one of 4 parts and consists of 4 patterns which I mainly use as variations. Regarding scenes I went a different route and decided to always use the same 16 scenes on all parts throughout all banks for consistency. Similiar to EZBOTs template I’m using scene 14 as the looper for input A/B, scene 15 for C/D and scene 16 as the MST. Program changes to both the MM2 and ND2 are send when changing parts, not patterns.

So here’s where all this kind of ends… when trying to make a transition like this, imagine the following scenario: I’m in bank 1, pattern 4 which represents the fourth variation of the very first song. I’d like to transition now to pattern 5 which represents the default ‘state’ of the second song. To do so, I now really only have 3 options:

  1. Loop input A/B (MM2) to take the melody with me
  2. Loop input C/D (ND2) to take the drums with me
  3. Loop both of them (MST) to take everything with me

I’m going with the option to capture the melody, start an 8 bar recording and move the crossfader to the right. I now switch to pattern 5 which immediately changes the whole drum sequence being played by the ND2 while the melody of pattern 4 (MM2) keeps repeating. After moving the crossfader to the left the melody slowly fades into the melody of the second song, pattern 5.

By now you might ask yourself: ok, but what’s wrong with that? It works exactly as expected, I just realized that this type of transition is far too abrupt for my taste in live sets. I’m so used to exchanging single elements one by one coming from Ableton (which was working great in this specific context) that I don’t really get used to this limitation.

I researched a few other techniques on the OT to do transition and stumbled across @biologik’s wonderful ‘logic transition trick’. However, this one is purely focused on dealing with audio clips/loops which would kind of kill my initial goal to use the hardware that I produced the music on live on stage as well.

Ableton live like transition trick by biologik

Anyone here maybe having some thoughts on this? I’d love to hear a different perspective or maybe even a totally different suggestion. Thanks already for reading up!

Cheers

#2

Could you perhaps make some inbetween ‘transition’ patterns that you could either use in a chain or switch to/from manually?

#3

Sure, but pattern 4 in the example above can already be seen as some sort of ‘break’ variation of pattern 1 (which both use the same part). So in that sense it already is kind of suited for doing a transition.

I guess the drastic when switching between pattern 4 and pattern 5 mainly comes from the switch in parts resulting in a program change on both devices which loads totally different sets of sounds.

I just realized that the MM2 does allow you to change it’s synths independently (it’s bi-timbral) which could be benificial in this scenario (instead of changing them all at once). However, the ND2 doesn’t allow for exchanging certain channels, you can only changle one of them or none.

Now I’m wondering if there’s any drum machine capable of doing that haha…

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#4

…it’s no techincal solution ur looking for, it’s more a conceptional one…

sure u wanna avoid all samples and sonic elemements involved in a track change all at once…
as u already u mentioned, that’s what tears u apart from beeing able to transition in classic dj style ways…but keep in mind, ur not a dj, ur a live act…act like one…
that crossfader is capable of soooo many more ways beyond traditional transitions…
and if u wanna avoid that total overall change of all elements, make compositional choices to stick with one or two prominent elements that persist over to a transition…or get a first glimpse of strory telling of what’s next to come already showing up before the actual transition…
and think all in all in way more different transitions beyond what dj’s might do…u can do way more intriguing and intresting stuff with ur ballpark…and never forget the first trick of all ot transitions…the freeze delay moments for that inbetween pause, giving u that cliffhanger dip in time to cause tension and attention while dropping in new with total next sonic contrast…don’t be afraid to “shock” ur audience from time to time…ur not a dj, tryin’ to smooth out variou tracks of choice that came from all over the place, ur the live act that performs their very own handcrafted material…totally different things, really…

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