I played a live set with quadraphonic sound. Just saxophone and Octatrack! I used the Octatrack to continually sample me and make harmonies, drums, basses, and other stuff from the immediate samples. Nothing is pre-recorded, and there is no traditional synthesis. Everything you hear is immediately derived from the saxophone in the room, live, in-the-moment.
Movement 1 is delay and harmonies
Movement 2 is drum and bass
Movement 3 is circular breathing with constant sampling and modulated start position playback X4
I love this, really cool concept and the live set keeps good intensity and coherence for the whole duration!
This technique reminds me of what my good friend Connor Shafran does with Ableton. He calls it ”scripted looping”. I’ve been doing similar experiments with Octatrack but never took time to create a full performance with it.
After hearing your set I’m inspired to bring this idea back on the table.
This collage is made of pics from another show I played in the same space. Stage was setup the same for the quadraphonic show. You can see the main speakers in the middle shot. They have two more identical speakers that were placed in back of the room.
My setup was pretty minimal. Octatrack on a tripod stand to my left, a Morningstar MC6 Pro midi foot pedal with two expression pedals, all controlling OT, and a pedalboard for saxophone, which was just mic preamp, volume pedal, and a Plus pedal (sustainer that I used subtly to keep a drone of the sax going a few times). The sax mic is an Intramic, which goes inside the mouthpiece via a flat cable on the cork.
Recording - I took the thru ports of the 4 DI boxes to my Zoom H6, then mixed the 4 tracks along with the zoom’s xy mic for a little room sound with Envelop’s Max4Live devices to create a binaural mix in Ableton.
Octatrack was configured in studio mode, which made it easier for assigning tracks to cue or main outputs, along with panning for the speaker I wanted for each track. Lots and lots of P-Locks for panning, and a few duplicated tracks so that different elements come through each speaker at different times. The drum movement had a lot of movement in the quadraphonic field. A ton of pre-programming p-locks went into the set.
Finally, a short video of the “drums.” All of this is created from the in-the-moment sampling of the sax, which you can really feel in the dynamics.
I don’t think the concept is really that different, only the tool is different. Octatrack records to buffers and plays back audio in new formations, just like in the Ableton + ClyphX case. OT has plocks, Ableton has automations. Every sound originates from the performance, nothing is prerecorded. Or am I misunderstanding something about the OT performance?
There’s a fundamental difference between what Connor is doing and what I’m doing in the recording. None of my samples exist for more than a few seconds (not even seconds, usually just for one trig hit). I’m using the record buffer with frequent rec trigs (almost one rec trig per playback trig) in the OT, with filters, envelopes, comb filters, and effects to create immediate sample shaping as my accompaniment. There are no loops that come back later. If I stop putting live saxophone into the system, the OT records silence, and there’s no sample to manipulate into another sound.
Ah ok, thanks for the explanation, I think I understand it now. Maybe I didn’t consider that as big difference, because Connor’s technique could be used to create similar effect what you’re doing. Your technique is using a narrower sample playback window while he is sometimes referring to material he recorded minutes ago. His compositions also don’t allow for much improvisation or live tweaking of the electronic side. That’s also why I’ve been really inspired by the OT for this kind of experimental realtime sampling based performances.
This is actually what keeps me coming back to Octatrack. The whole concept of eight simultaneous recording buffers is special even by today’s standards.
I love the new 2nd gen Digis but Octatrack makes me think in fourth dimension. It’s probably the closest thing to a time machine that has been invented!
While we’re on it, full disclosure, I depart from the key concept once in the set: While the drum stuff is happening, I trigger a 2 bar recording on an unused buffer for that moment. In the next pattern, I slice that buffer and apply random trig locks to create a flipped drum sample moment. This is the build up before the last phrases of the drum movement. It was the only way I could get reversed record moments per drum hit, as well as do re-trigger stuttering sounds. The record buffers do not like re-triggers while recording.
