Hello everybody,
I have this idea of a project on the Octatrack that would be designed to perform the last phase of making a track by performing it and doing the arrangement live. By that I mean that I exclude everything having to do with generating ideas, recording or even actually mixing the tracks from the equation. In this project I want to start from already produced, EQed and compressed loops or stems and play them with my Octatrack setup as a dub mixing station.
For this I plan on using the OT, a launchcontrol XL and an effect pedal as a send effect and record the output of the OT directly to the master. The effect pedal will almost certainly be my RE-201 but I’m still wondering how to setup the OT and Launchcontrol to get the best playability. At the moment, what I have in mind is:
- The eight tracks are actual tracks, no master track
- Two knobs on each track will be used for EQs with controls relevant to the track, so for the bass for example, I will control bass and mediumss, but for the hats I will control the mediums and highs, and pick the crossover frequency accordingly
- The third knob will be for a reverb send. I also think I will assign the crossfader to the reverb size on every channel as I want to simulate a send effect to a single pedal
- The two buttons per channel will be mute and delay send. I’m not sure I want to have a dedicated channel for the delay as I don’t want to go overboard with the feedback, so I don’t think I need to use a loop for that.
- Tracks will be devided in loops for repeating patterns and stems for evolving synths and such. But I think my loops will still be long ones to include some variations.
- It is likely that one track will be dedicated to ambient noise only such as field recordings and vinyl cracle as it is important to the sound.
- I also plan to use sample chains to chain more than one loop in a sample as I don’t want use multiple patterns in order to ensure continuity of my levels and effects settings throughout the performance
I think that’s all for the moment. All my effects slots and controls on the Launch Control XL are assigned but I’m still left with a few buttons I have to decide how to use. In the end I want to use this setup to finish tracks but also to perform live by going from loop to loop in a progressive manner with smooth transitions.
What do you think of the idea? What would be your integration of this concept? Did I forget something? Would you do something differently? Should i use filters instead of EQs? Am I missing something without the delay feedback loop?
Thanks for reading!