Hello! I am aiming for a live performance setup with my Digitakt-Digitone and soon an Octatrack. I have heard that building up dancefloor tracks and release the drop might be less powerful than with let’s say a classic DJ mixer setup. Is there anyone who regularly doing parties with the aforementioned trio? I see Dave Mech doing double Digis plus a mixer, some using the Pioneer RMX-1000 and of course there are setupa with a bunch or other gear. But how effective is the DT-DN-OT tho? Thanks!
Have not been using double digits for over 2 years now haha (as in 2xDT and 2xDN). Last full elektron setup was Octa, DN, DT and ST for a moment. Currently a completely different setup though.
Anyway, it is indeed very hard to pull off if we’re are talking about climaxes and drops that are produced in the tracks that DJs play. Because a lot of the time that is simply what you’re hearing. A fully produced track and climax. It depends a bit on how epic you want the drop to be. The huge climax and drop type of stuff is produced in great detail. Something you can’t do in a live situation unless it’s all preprogrammed.
Letting go of the feeling to need to do big drops is liberating though. It’s not needed and you can create similar energy flows. Creating drops is of course possible but it’s always going to be a bit different.
Using things like control-all into FUNC+NO or setting the reverb to the max and then FUNC+NO. Having a filter on a mixer helps a great deal to create energetic drops. Using scenes to the max on octatrack to create drops can also work.
It’s just very dependent on how you plan to play live. How much of it is really improvised and how much of it is pre programmed etc. But in general it’s not a bad idea to let go of the idea that creating a highly detailed produced to the max drop is possible live. Better to learn and practice ways to accomplish a similar energy boost for a crowd within the possibilities of the tools at hand.
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Basically, buildups and drops using Elektron gear use the same techniques/approaches one would use with a DJ setup. The UI isn’t as dedicated as a DJ deck/mixer setup, but one can achieve similar effects with some care and planning (read: more work).
The Octa does have some more DJ-like controls and capabilities on hand, but even a DT/DN pair can do this kind of thing IF you work at it. Filter sweeps, dynamic loop shortening, pitch increases, sudden mutes of silence to a hard drop pattern switch … also, consider treating two different Elektrons as “decks” to get the kinds of transitions possible with two independent sources like DJ decks. There are also ways to get echo transitions, but you need do some fiddling to get delay settings to properly carry over the previous echoed-out pattern without messing up the next “dropped” pattern.
Also, with a good arranger as part of the latest Digi OS upgrades, you can set up song structure in advance and free yourself up for more “creative” live play, including more interesting builds and drops, since your hands can be freed from constant mutes and pattern switching duties. Some build/drop elements can also be pre-baked into the arrangement/patterns so you can take your time “offline” to get it right for when it’s time to perform.
Finally, in this “DJ” like context, since you don’t yet have the OT, it’s worth looking at the Digitakt as a valid loop/stems player, since there is a great technique for tempo dependent time stretching that quadruples the resolution of the basic method, giving the Digitakt a smooth, professional sound when applied to time stretched loops. I’m currently experimenting with this, including creating l/r mono loops from a stereo sample, then assigning them to separate tracks, each hard panned left or right. It chews up two tracks, and I have to always mute/unmute them in pairs, but I like having the stereo option when I want it.
To Dave’s point, I agree that it isn’t likely you’re going to achieve (at least easily) polished festival-ready builds and drops on these instruments, although I don’t own an OT and can’t speak with any authority there. So like Dave said, alternative ways of building energy with these live instruments is a desirable goal. That said, no reason you can’t incorporate some appropriate build/drop elements that will work on these machines as part of your bag of tricks.
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I use the MPC One as clip player, it essentially allows to launch quantised loops, and stop them quantised aswell. Buildups i.e. swells could be run as one shot from the mpc - you only need to time the drop then - i.e. remove elements when the swell ends - it needs some practice. I think the DJS 1000 can be used in a similar context. (1 shot drum loops.) I feed the MPC currently in parallel to Abelton live, and use it as plugin with OT as external instrument, which has the other Elektrons on A/C/D.
The video below explains the idea -he triggers clips for transitions in Abelton live, but that is also possible with the gear i explained above. Digitakt can possibly do the same, or Octatrack - i personally find it more convenient with the visual feedback of the mpc.
I run out of tracks with the Octatrack also, and i control 3 live inputs with OT. (DN, ST, 303)
With a midi controller - i setup a DJ FX rack in Abelton live to blend between OT and MPC.
The energy from the digitakt comes from the envelope on the amp page. Close it down then slowly open it up while turning up the delay and or reverb then bam! Func+no.
But that’s can get tiresome. Song mode is the answer to more intricate arrangements in a live setting.
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Even you are doing an improv set, and not an arranged one. Always set up a pattern to do a pre-made buildup. You can layer on top of a premade buildup with something you might want to perform with, for example crossfade in a whoosh, turn a knob for LFO. Do a stutter repeat, bring in a phaser or whatnot.
Easiest way to to do this is to just grab builds or risers from a sample pack. or you can pre make your own. Or if you’re wanting to get more in depth about it you can sequence trigs into the pattern to make your own buildup.
OT is going to be key if you want more commercial sounding live tracks. Because you can pre record and premix your key sounds ( Kicks, Bass, Vocals etc ). Digitakt can work too but you are limited to smaller samples, on the OT you can dump for example, a four minute pad texture. Or a ginormous multi sample for a dubstep breakdown. Build up your live stuff around a basic OT track skeleton and your drops will hit hard, you wont need to waste money on outboard gear to beef up your synths.
I own analog heat and I don’t even bother to bring it with me to events. The way I’ve sampled and programmed my tracks is already sufficient and on par with my studio tracks in terms of impact.
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I don’t own the OT, but I’m exploring using some of my DAW produced stems and loops to deploy to the DT, especially since there is a viable good sounding hires time/pitch stretch method using ratchet triggers. Since I’m using the Syntakt and Digitone for my synthesized drums, basses, melodies, chords, etc, the DT is now freed up a bit to handle more pure sample playback and mangling.
I’m sure someday I’ll start eyeing the OT, but I need to rinse the gear I own first.
Yeah Digitakt will work too. You just have work in a different way to accommodate the reduced sample storage. More one shots and less big loops.
Takt verb is so much better too.
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Unless I’m off in my calculations, I figure I can have plenty of 1, 2 and 4 bar loops within 64MB of RAM. Setting aside some dual track stereo trickery, most loops would be in mono at 44k, averaging around 2 bars each (some 1, some 4) at an average of maybe 120bpm. That works out to about 176k per 2 bar mono loop, or nearly 380 2 bar loops per project. Less to or accommodate any one shots and other short samples.
I feel like I have a lot of room to play, especially with the Syntakt and Digitone holding down live drum and synth duties.
But with a viable looping sampler, will I get lazy again like I did with the MPC Live? 
I used to own Digitakt, and I was super stingy and efficient with my samples. I’d manually sample things to mono, 16 bit. Truncate file tails. I also always use and host a big sample library of my own samples that I’ve created specifically for samplers and groove boxes so that always takes up a chunk of permanent space.
It took a awhile of moving primarily to OT to get out of that habit and realize instead of say, sampling a super optimized one hit piano key and pitching it with chromatic tuning I could just multi-sample the whole damn keyboard with full reverb tails and decay into big slice files to preserve repitching quality. BUT I still do efficiency optimization & one shots for my flex slots, because I always set them to 24 bit and I want to have room for my buffers and large setlists.
The takt’ drive is more than ample though.
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