OT as a jam device

Hi!

I know there’s a lot of threads that focus on getting the most out of the OT in different live situations, but I actually think my question is pretty simple and somebody will probably be able to tackle it easily. Sorry if this has been covered before, I’d be thankful for any links pointing me to the right thread.

So: I’m going to try jamming with a drummer friend with me on the Octatrack.

The idea will probably be to use some prepared loops, one-shot melodic samples and sampling guitar (played by me) on the go.

The idea is to build a coherent, non-stop jam out of these elements.

The thing that makes my mind boggle is transitioning from a musical theme to another. I mean, let’s say we start with playing a melody that gets looped. We build that theme up on the OT, track by track, with my friend on the drums. Then we want to break it down to a different theme.

I’d like to be able to retain some elements, maybe a single element of the previous part, but still be able to have a pattern that’s mostly empty, to start building it again from nearly scratch.

One solution that comes to mind is that I’ll choose a single sampled loop track and I’ll set it up so that it loops, even after I change patterns. That’ll be the element that carries over from what we built, over to what we’re going to build next. Then I’ll just start making new stuff up, over that melody.

Tarekith’s transition videos are another thing that seems useful in this context.

Another thing I thought of is bringing my OP-1 with me. Then I could immediately transition to a completely different melody by playing it on the OP when I change patterns to an empty one. This melody would be sampled as soon as I play it. Then it would automatically start to play back after I’ve played the sixteen steps, or whatever length. This would mean I would have to set the pattern up with a track with a one-shot record trig and a playback trig beforehand.

Any other nice ideas for this? Has someone done this before? The thing that’s completely new to me is that there’s somebody else jamming too, which means that having to stop the sequencer or having to have 16 steps of silence is very much a killjoy. This is where the limitations of my brain capacity show - I know there’s probably many ways to do this, but I can’t just think of them :slight_smile:

EDIT: once more I find myself hoping it would be possible to duplicate patterns on the fly…

You’re right, there are several approaches to doing this, depending in part on whether you want to go the Flex machine route, the Pickup machine route, etc.

If you’re going to be working with short loops and want to keep them distinct from one another so that you can create transitions as you describe, it might be better to go the Flex machine route and keep something like 2-5 OT tracks as dedicated track recorders. That way you could sample his drums to one or two of them, a bassline you created to another, a melodic loop to yet another, etc. then bring the individual loops in and out as you jam.