Octatrack + Roland Octapad challenges

Hey guys,

Hoping someone here has some ideas on this.

Our live setup currently entails me with an OT and A4, and then my drummer uses a Roland Octapad. He does a combination of loops on the Octapad that he fades in and out / manipulates plus some live playing.

Here’s the challenge:

As far as we can tell there’s no way to change “Phrase Loops” on the Octapad (their equivalent of patterns/songs) without stopping playback on the Octapad. But I’d like to be able to do a continuous set, chaining from one song to another without stopping.

My question:

  • If anyone knows the Octapad, can you confirm there’s no way to change without stopping?
  • On the Octatrack, is there a way to send a midi start signal in a sequence? Basically, if he has to stop I can just resample him and mute his input, then he can stop and change songs. But then we’d need to send a new start signal when the next song started.

Just do the transition trick while sampling the inputs of the Octapad.

Super simple

That’s what I’m doing, but the problem is how we get the Octapad to restart again after the transition.

I was hoping there’s a way to program in the midi start command.