Octatrack Live Setup Playback/Sync Questions

Hey dear Elektronauts,

I´m planning to finally play my first live Set this summer at a festival.
I have a few questions regarding the Setup.

So far, this is the Idea

  • I want to create a backing Track file for every Song I want to play in my set. Within this backing track there are all the elements included, i cant to reproduce live because of several reasons (shit ive done in ableton, instruments i cant carry with me etc)
  • The remaining elements (drums, some basslines) are gonna be jammed live over the backing tracks (Rytm,707,303)

Ideally I want to have a 1 hour Backing-Track File in the end, which is basically my whole Set pre-arranged without all the Instruments I´m playing live. So I can simply press play at the start and start Jamming over my Tracks, while mangling around with the OT Effects for the Playback.

To start and test all of this, i ve exported the playback file for one of my songs and loaded it up in the OT. My Rytm is the master clock and provides the Drums, while OT is the slave and just plays back the rest of the song one shot without the drums.

Here´s my first Problem
The Song has exactly 146Bpm and is 171Bars long in Ableton. Ive turned timestretch and loop mode off in the OT still the backing track is slightly out of sync to the Rytm.

  • Ive tried to set the Original tempo of the Sample to 146Bpm (Trim/Loop Length is shown as 185,03) doesnt work
  • Ive set the loop Length to 171 Bars (trim length is shown as 170.99, Bpm is 134,91) doesnt work
    So how do I manage this to work? I´m fairly new to the OT for live use as you can probably tell but i cant understand why it has to be so complicated if Im simply exporting a file with the exact bpm yet the OT cant manage to sync it properly with the rest

That´s it basically, happy if you could help me. Furthermore if I´ll be able to solve this sync problem another question to me would be the following:

Let´s say I have a 1 hr backing track file with all my songs included. They´re all warped to the same BPM in Ableton before i load it to the OT so I can later manipulate the BPM manually on my machines (does this makes sense at all?)
If this 1Hr file is just a one shot, am i able to loop a section in there (maybe with the recorder buffer) ? Would be nice to expand certain parts of my Songs with a loop or to simply give myself a bit time to change the patterns and banks on my other Instruments.

Sorry for the long post, and be patient with me… I finally want to be able to perform my own works on stage and it would mean a lot to me if some of you could guide me where and how to start with it :slight_smile:

All the best,
Michael

You’re asking a lot for a one hour audio backing track to stay in sync with external instruments without any actual sync method.

  • If you need to use the OT, then I would suggest cutting your backing track into sections that can be played back in patterns, and using MIDI sync with the rest of your instruments. That way the playback of any section can be looped and not allowed to drift out of time with the other instruments. You can use the OT’s Arranger to control your progress through the set.

  • If you made everything in Ableton Live, why not just use that?

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If you need to use the OT, then I would suggest cutting your backing track into sections that can be played back in patterns, and using MIDI sync with the rest of your instruments. That way the playback of any section can be looped and not allowed to drift out of time with the other instruments. You can use the OT’s Arranger to control your progress through the set.

Yes, I just realized that a simple 1hr wav file as a playback is probably not the best Idea…
I thought about using 2 static machines as 2 “Decks” with 1 slot for every song, so i can mix them. But still I have to warp them correctly somehow otherwise they all have a different Bpm right ?
Damn… ok so let ´s say I ´ll chop my Song into 8Bar Slices and load all those slices into my static machine. The Arranger of the OT takes over the part of changing the patterns right ? How do I sync/warp them then correctly. My whole Set ranges from 133 to 148 Bpm but I want to control the tempo by myself and maybe play some songs slower/faster in a DJ way. Yet they all should be warped properly…

If you made everything in Ableton Live, why not just use that?

Im working on a PC not a Laptop anymore. Also I´ve learned the hard way to not rely on a computer on stage :smiley:

You could timestretch your samples in Ableton before you load them in the OT or timestretch them in the OT.

Yes, and you can control the tempo on the OT, too.

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You could timestretch your samples in Ableton before you load them in the OT or timestretch them in the OT.

Thats what im trying to do… I chopped now one of my songs into 21 chunks of 8 bar loops and set the arranger to play along. Altough the bpm of the track is 146 the OT shows me 134 and I cant manage to get it synced. And thats just one track. In the end I need this to work for about 10

So have you put the audio loops into separate patterns and:

  • set the tempo for each pattern to the correct value, or
  • set the tempo for each row in the “B” column in the Arranger?
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tried both. Doesnt work…
Right now I have on each slot (each 8Bars of the song):

  • Loop Mode off
  • Timestretch Off (ive tried beat and normal too)
  • original tempo set to 134,12
  • Loop length: 8

Ive also tried it the other way round and set the original tempo for each track to 146 so the Bar lenght gets longer.

What the hell am I missing here? : (

Have you imported 48 kHz samples instead of the 44.1 kHz samples that the OT requires? That would explain the BPM difference.

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…best in guessing bpm’s is still ableton…and if it’s longer files and not too obvious straight kik pulses, even there it gets messed up…

and i have to warn u…ur idea of how to get this all done is not really the elegant version to proceed…and it’s not future proofed looking ahead…u might wanna play another gig…
u might wanna play another setlist…someday…and then u start all ur effort from scratch again…

besides that, i hardly doubt all ur mixes will translate perfectly to various venues, locations, soundsystems…u’d be the first one…

i hardly recommend to think in seperate tracks…and each of ur tracks should at least have the kik and the base line as separated files…
in best case…u also have all harmony content and leads separate…

drop thise separate files in one folder, named like the “song” with confirmed bpm count as part of the naming…for further/later reference…

fill ur static slot list with those files…

depending on ur arrangement whishes and bounce sizes u can organize ur project like 2 or even 4 “songs” per bank…

u can include various transition versions in ur pre fab bounces of course…

sounds like a lot more work in presetting all that, i know…

but once u played a second or third gig and once u produced another two or three new “songs” u’d like to add, u know what it’s worth for…

apart from the fact, that u don’t die on stage in shame, once u realize in realtime, u can’t adjust ur kiks to make ur songs work on a bigger pa…

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Have you imported 48 kHz samples instead of the 44.1 kHz samples that the OT requires? That would explain the BPM difference.

Wow Actually yes, this made a huge difference. Sync problems seem to be solved now. Still some are wrong but if I edit the actual tempo it works flawless

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Thanks for your Feedback. Indeed you´re right its not really future proofed. I rethought about it and dumped the idea about working with the arranger.

For now I´m sticking to the playback file though. I seperated my bounced files now depending on the song structure (ie. Intro, Verse, etc) but since they all have a different length i thought it might be easier to bounce all my songs in chunks of 32 Bars (OT sequencer on 1/4 time). So I dont have to rush all the time about changing the patterns and I have more time to play around with the Rytm

What I´m still trying to get my head around is how to structure it in the OT for making transistions.
For example, now I have on pattern 7 the Outro of Song 1 and the Intro of Song 2 but this way I´m kinda forcing myself to always mix Song 1 into Song 2. What could be the best approach to be able to play every Song in the tracklist whenever you want/with whatever other Song you want?
If I seperate it, lets say Song 1 Outro: Pattern 7 and Song 2 Intro Pattern 8 am I still able to mix them ? because the second Song will start right at the point where Song 1 Ends, right?

Sorr if my questions might sound stupid, spend the last night nonstop on my OT and I´m kinda done :smiley:

The natural Octatrack way is to resample what’s playing at the end of song 1, play it, load the intro pattern for song 2 and then cross fade from the sampled outro to the new intro.

It’s known as the transition trick and you can find two very useful video explanations posted by Tarekith on their YouTube channel.

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Oohhh no you don’t wanna do that. Ever.

There are a few ways to do it, personally I’d cut the backing file into segments, load them into statics and use multiple patterns in the OT with statics locked to the patterns, this way you can freely improvise a bit more.

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