This is my first live set using the Digitakt 2, and at the last minute I paired it with the Ableton Move to give me a little more realtime playing options. I initially thought it was going to take me pretty much all winter to get this done (this is only one hour of the two hours I’ve written for this set), but the DT2 ended up sucking me in a lot more than I was expecting. Didn’t take me long to feel right at home on this little box.
The Octatrack has been the backbone of my live sets since it was first released, but I’m starting to think that the DT2 is going to take over that role for the foreseeable future. I’m pretty impressed with what Elektron has done, in a lot of ways it really is the best of so many of their boxes. I’ll have a full review of the DT2 and why I like it for my live sets coming in the near future too.
Thanks for the great video and of course the music, which fits perfectly to the environment. This is a wonderful location, especially with the hill in the background. Sparsely overgrown hills, that’s exactly the kind of nature I love.
I would like to take this as an opportunity to say thank you for the decades in which you have supported the Groovebox community with your knowledge, your opinions and your music.
I miss your blog and always enjoy reading your timeless PDF documents, which contain so much inspiration and practical knowledge. From time to time I even take a look at your MC-505 FAQ. Purely for nostalgic reasons, because this device triggered my addiction to grooveboxes back then
That’s really great. This is my goal to prepare a set with DT II as the brain and a few sequenced synths. I find it quite complex to stay consistent for a long period of time
Wow, thank you so much for the kind words. It’s hard to believe that I’m turning 50 in a couple months and I’ve been doing this groovebox thing for almost 30 years now! I’m just happy there’s such a strong community around making music with these all in one wonder boxes. Never in a million years did I think this sort of music making would get as popular as it did, heck I was convinced we’d never see anything as good as the MC505 back in the day!
I do miss the blog writing now and then too, but managing all the ignorant comments and spam just sucked the fun out of it. These days I just try and bring some positivity and fun to the gear reviews and tips videos I make, thankfully YouTube makes it a little bit easier to manage all the asshat comments there
I have some ideas on this front for my Digitakt 2 video I’ll make soon, so stay tuned!
Central Oregon has some amazing high desert views, I never considered myself a desert person but it’s grown on me more than I expected!
Funny story (well sorta). This is actually the second time I had to record this set in this location. I did it a couple weeks back after a big snowfall we had, everything was white and just gorgeous looking so I figured it would be a good backdrop for the video. I braved shitty icy roads, 20 degree (F) temps, 30 mph winds, and the whole time I was playing the set I could see this ominous dark storm quickly headed my way.
Managed to get the set done just before the storm hit, and I was thrilled with how it turned out too (though I like this one better luckily). Got home and sat down to edit the video and realized my SD card in the recorder was corrupted and I didn’t capture any audio at all
Devastating at the time, but like I said I ended up preferring this version so it worked out in the end.
I think the key to being consistent over a long period of time when you’re performing is to just be brutally honest with yourself as you’re preparing the material. Doesn’t matter how long it takes you to write a song for a live set, if you’re not 100% thrilled with it either do your best to fix it until you are or delete it and start a new one.
If I’m going to be playing a live set multiple times, I want to be really happy with ALL the material in the set so I don’t get frustrated every time I get to a certain section of the set. None of my songs are precious to me these days, if they don’t grab me instantly every time I hear them they get deleted. Like I mentioned this is only 1 hour of a 2 hour set I plan to play a lot in my local town in 2025. For those 2 hours I have 16 patterns on the DT2 ready to go, with two more as back up in case I need more to fill the time (honestly this always happens to me playing in front of people).
So 18 completed patterns I’m happy with, but there’s probably 20-24 more patterns and weeks worth of work that got deleted along the way to get to this point.
That i can imagine, i saw Oregon more from the sea / forrest side of things, when i travelled the west coast. I love deserts, maybe my favourite landscape. Went from salt lake city up to mount olympus, had some city stops in redmond and SF, but the nature really caught me. Your deserts are not like the sahara, they are still living. Wish i could do another trip in the future.
The Oregon coast is beautiful too, I’m headed there next month for a few days to start work on an Op-XY live set. Assuming the XY is actually stable by then.
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