Hello,
I’ve played many shows in bands but never really performed with machines, just looking for any tips/advice on the setup.
All of the music is song based (with singer), wasn’t going to improvise song forms at all. Was planning on using 3 tracks on the Octatrack separated into drums, bass, chords+. Running the Rytm with additional drums, etc thru Octatrack and using track 8 as a master channel (hopefully 7 as well assuming I can get that cue output trick working).
Essentially from there I’ll just be manipulating parts here and there, maybe banging out some simple rhythms, playing with scenes, master effects occasionally. I’m singing a few background parts as well, the music is pretty vocal heavy as well so I probably don’t need to do too much just for the sake of doing something. At the same time I don’t want to just phone it in. I may add a small synth to the setup in the future. Still I’m sure these machines can keep me pretty busy.
Any suggestions on different approach, routing, etc?
Thanks all! 
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Two Elektrons can keep you busy for years 
Without having used this particular combo, a couple of general things I’d recommend: There are lots of possibilities on the OT, so learn as much as you can generally about the routing options that are available, including the DIRECT vs. THRU machine approaches that are in the manual’s tutorials.
Also, you might consider what kind of layout makes sense to you in terms of where given individual track elements will sit on which OT track – bassline on T2, etc. And potentially what certain numbered scenes will do FX-wise. Some consistency across patterns will mean less need to think on stage, meaning more brain left over to be creative.
Since you’re only using 3 OT tracks, it’s good that you will have a few left unused for now in case you find your initial decisions need some altering … so you won’t have to reassign tracks on a heap of patterns and parts down the road, and/or at least you’ll have room to expand. Having a couple of tracks together to create a thru + neighbor FX chain may be something you’d like to explore for example if you add that synth.
Hope that helps.
my tuppence, if you’re worried about phoning it in, just make sure you work some ways to sample the vocals live so you can play with that subtly, no one could accuse you of not turning up if it’s live sampling ! Certainly for me, if the OT isn’t sampling it’s not being an OT ! Maybe the material doesn’t lend itself to this, but maybe you could fade out between tracks with nice vignettes of what’s just been
leave yourself some work to do to keep it fresh !
