I got a gig and i want to get the OT to be my only weapon on stage. There is a hell lot of preparation to be done. So I was youtubing around to find any OT only live act but there are always other stuff involved in a setup. Only OT used in a setup with no additional synths or any other sweet stuff.
No luck so far, there are only lots of tests and tutorials. Which are all great.
What do you think about OT only live act? I think it can be quite fluid and colorful if prepared well. Of course there are limits with the OT on 7 tracks with the master on top. So it all depends on how well you prepare each track and how well you handle the beast. Its a sweet challenge for me and i will post my live act somewhere here when it comes to life.
If you know any OT only live acts please post some links.
Good luck with that. What style of set are you putting together?
I have an OT only gig soon so spending a lot of time in the studio preparing samples. I’m aiming it it being a house set but I often go off on a tangent with the OT.
I’m doing my second ever Live PA tonight in Bristol UK using an Octatrack as the main focus for the set. I tried using only the Octatrack but I found that I missed being able to mute and unmute drum elements so I’ve incoporated my Machinedrum MK1 for extra percussion duties and tweaking. The set didn’t sound bad on the OT only, but I prefer having extra performance options outside of messing with scenes
Im going for atmospheric jungle and drum’n’bass with melodic stuff and ambient feeling.
yea OT, as much as it restricts you it gives you very different perspective and if you get close to what your idea was in the beginning there’s some new vibe and than that’s it I love preparing the stuff but it’s a time killer…
nice man
I’m deciding between Virus + OT or only OT. But i think i will go only with the OT. The idea to make the whole Live act from one machine is quite a challenge for me. Challenge excepted
Cheers, same to you too! I’m also doing mainly jungle stuff tonight and the set is getting recorded so I’ll link it on here once its online :)[/quote]
Yo great! Link it man
Some things that have helped me in this situation:
[ul]
[li]Sample chains … slice grooves up so you can use different sections of the same static sample for different sections of a track. SB-SIX demonstrates this idea on his first OT tutorial video.[/li]
[li]Scenes as a structural tool … scenes are of course great for adding and switching up effects, but if you lock sample volume and start / end time to different scenes, you will need far fewer parts per song, and therefore you can fit more songs into a liveset. [/li]
[li]Sample prep … using samples with, for example, reverb tails included means you won’t have to choose between the OT track’s reverb and the delay you wanted to use as well. [/li]
[li]Organization … keep the same elements on each OT track from song to song (top rhythm on T3, bass on T4, etc.) and keep more or less the same scene layout from song to song (part to part, etc.). This way a switchover from scene 3 to 4 in any song will do basically the same thing. Less thinking needed at the gig = more relaxed performer. [/li]
[/ul]
Good luck! Post that link eh
I played my first live gig with just viola and Octatrack a couple of weeks ago. There was some glitches with a slave pickup machine, but otherwise the gig went ok. The only complaint I got from my bandmate upon reviewing the recording of our set was that the sound guy mixed me too low.
I used the Octatrack to loop and live remix my viola. We’re a free improv/drone type of group, so tight timing of looping/sampling events was not needed (and thus saved me the need to bring my Roland MIDI footpedal).
Seriously, I forgot that our set was recorded and put online. Queen Bee #1 on Korg mini Kaosses, Queen Bee #2 on theremin, and me on viola/Octatrack - soundguy turns me up around 12 min. into the set:
I performed a set this summer at a local art gallery playing only the Octatrack. I have numerous little tone poems I’ve improvised in a Reaktor patch and I just load little loops into the Octatrack and kind of play them live. No patterns, lots of the crossfader - kind of warbly Lithops/Microstoria/Oval sort of zone. I really enjoyed myself. I felt like it really allowed me to actually PLAY it more like an instrument which was fun!
Me and my bandmate experienced a 2 OT only live performance.
Our style is a mix of abstract electronica dub , minimalism and glitch.
We worked very hard on the set to make the thing more of a performance than a djset , using a lot of one shots and just few loops.
The really bad thing has been that if the live performance played in our studio on nearfield monitors sounded good (with a lot of work and processing samples to make the OT sound “good”) the real performance on the PA sounded quite bad…
It has been really hard to make the various elements mix together to sound with clarity , we’ve got some powerful kicks but the melodic stuff was really muddy and dull.
I take care to eq and compress the material I’ve prepared on my computer to make the machine work “light” , not to involve the internal mixer and efx to work over their possibility , but It won’t work on my material.
Maybe it’ìs a matter of taste , but I’ve performed live with Korg esx only or Akai MPC only and I never encountered these issues.
Everything was in different ways (in akai style or korg style) clear and powerful with a really good volume impact.
I think an “OT alone” live can turn from somenthing challengin’ to real madness on stage.
I think I won’t perform with it again after this experience.
A friend of mine uses the OT to perform avangarde “concrete music” and he is really happy with his OT.
Maybe if you use it for “lighter” styles of music it can work well.
I have a monomachine and it does the same “audio results” performing live…
I prefer to use them to compose in the studio and then record and process them with the computer than playin’ live.
This is only my 2 cents, I’m sorry but this is my experience.
I think it’s worth noting that the OT is “just” a playback device.
At least, that’s the way I see it. If you put samples that sound amazing into the OT, it will play them back sounding amazing. If you put dull flat sounds into it, it will “sound” dull and flat.
The OT doesn’t, to my ears, have a “sound”. However, I am not a big fan of its internal mixer, and I suspect that this is what you mean here. Stems sound good on their own, but when MIXED inside the OT, they become a bit blurry and flat. I think there is some kind of compression / limiting going on inside the OT’s mixer, I’ve always been very confused about how it reacts when you start pushing levels of tracks beyond anything reasonable.
Either it has a massive amount of headroom, or is has to limit the output in some way.
My advice would be to try turning your tracks down a bit, to give the mixer a bit more dynamics and headroom. Let us know how that works
Cheers!
Edit : I agree about the MPC usually “sounding” better. We use the 3000 and 4000, and the punch of drums is just incredible. The same drum sounds in the OT just don’t have the same impact.
