New record that I did entirely with live takes off of an Octatrack and AR hit the Juno records best seller list for 2026

Elektron Gear Octatrack
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https://www.juno.co.uk/products/special-characters-subsurface-incantations-vinyl/1129918-01/

You guys are just amazing. You helped me through so many problems and answered so many questions and I can’t believe that this record even got made. I’ve been working on doing full arrangements without the computer for a few years and this is the record that I put out with that process. Recorded live through a mastering chain I assembled. Def no computer involved at all, recorded to zoom, sampling all done from my own instruments from live jams.

Octatrack is a massive device and I’m still a student. It’s so deep.

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amazing

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Nice stuff!!! :sunglasses:

What do you have as a mastering chain? All hardware?

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Yeah the Elysia stuff in the small 500.

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You did octa main outs through the Elysia gear or recorded and processed each track independently?

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Great stuff, right up my alley. Might pick this one up if I place an vinyl order somewhere and they have it in stock.

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Nice EP! Ordering a copy :+1:

So what’s your arrangement strategy, live takes or do you use the arranger on the OT?

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Solid!

@BassesAndPads check this out

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Such a beautiful little community!

Very nice work :slight_smile:

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Ooo. Very cool sound! Makes me sad that my OT is packed up. I am missing it. Such a great machine for this style of music.

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I had the OT and AR going into stereo inputs on a mixer with an insert sending the mix through the chain.

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Thank you I’m really glad you’re feeling it.

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Couldn’t have learned what I learned without the helpful people here.

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You’ll get back to it when it calls on you :slight_smile:

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I was trying to use the arranger but after painstakingly arranging tracks in sequence and counting and doing all the math in the end the best results were just straight live performances using muting and changing patterns. The arranger eventually was just too much for the music to still be fun for me. It was so much work. I’m glad I learned but it was a grind.

I’m back in the daw now but I use the same workflow of live jamming on the OT, except NOW I’m using thru’s and a way more flexible use case because I can just record stems into Ableton. Still all live though. Then everything gets resampled and jammed on.

I really feel like the secret to these machines is sampling resampling resampling the deeper you go the more interesting the results.

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This is really so awesome. And the record sounds ACE! I hope one day you’ll return to the “no computer” workflow again :wink:.

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Oh it’s calling now. I just am selling a house and moving so I can’t answer the call right now. Did get a syntakt and that’s my portable setup for now.

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Just read the blurb and realised I have few of your records on my shelves already. :heart:

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I am doing this! I have a live act I’m working on with a good friend using modular, an s-4, Octatrack and AR. And various iterations of this.

But I will say that one of the biggest downsides to not having the daw is equeuing. I tried a lot of hardware eqs and because for the most part, I need them for surgical duties, I find a software EQ to be basically identical in function. Not being able to EQ my tracks even things just like the kick was really difficult. Things sound better now that I’m doing that.

What I’m doing now is when I finish a song in the daw I go through all my stems and samples and I reformat them and drop them on the Octa track so everything that gets recorded automatically goes back on that drive.

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Oh shit! That made my day :slight_smile: thank you this really touches my heart.