OT only live set with only 1 Pattern?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hey everyone

I do have a question for live sets on the ot in regards to workflows and hope people with experiance might help out.

I’ve been thinking about this idea several times but havent realy found to much infos about it so i wonder what i miss :slight_smile:

Basically i wonder if there is anyone out there using the ot as a stem player only using 1 pattern mixed with the transition trick (have seen the other transition trick without a track rec too). My idea is that loops are placed into the sample slot lists as preparation for the set or having folders that contain drums, basses etc and then switch the samples per slot. First question: agree that a sample slot list might be more flexible? (Static most probably because of ram limits).

So then i would use either plays free for certain tracks and trigger others normally. No real magic involved there. The idea behind this in comparison to patterns/banks for songs would be that the selection of what you actually play would be more improvised, since selecting beats and other elements for the next “song” would happen spontanically.

Here’s what i think:

  • more spontaneous combinations
  • if fitting loops are around a set selection is prepared quickly
  • quick fun ?!?
  • not as in deeply controllable then patterns / banks with locks, slices and stuff that is pre prepared
  • hard to have an overview what has already been played (ideas or inputs anyone?) … but i guess with pattern its the same unless arranger is used

Now i wonder if anyone works like this or someone has tried this and knows some downsides to this. Modulation wise it might be not as flexible.

Also i think about long static machine samples with slices to have for example 64 slices each containing a whole drum break.

I came across the idea when i had the ot just new and basically used the left 4 tracks like a deck playing 4 loops and then crossfading to the right “deck” containing the right 4 ot tracks. Each was holding a musicall element. This way i could relativey quickly get a set going for a while and it was quite fun like a 8 deck dj player :slight_smile: and ever since i wanted to know what the community here thinks about this approach.

Or might it be, that the whole selecting of elements just takes to much time ? Then having patterns makes sense again. Also having folders on the card where elements would be named accordingly (ex beat-1, rhode-1) wouldnt have an advantage because again then using banks/patterns offer more in depth ways.

Oh and i forgot: thought about having the option to play backing tracks too, bit timestretch preparation might be annoying so maybe a 2nd part and have ts off or something.

Also generally how would you handle long stems (longer then the 4 bars) as one shots but if meeded retrogger them manually? So far the only thing i found was checking the playback marker in the audio editor, which could get easily forgotten

Looking forward to discussions and ideas and to know what you think about the idea of an spontanous stem player and backing track machine. For me so far when not habing to much melodicall content it seema like quote some fun, i tried it with electronic / technoish loops and then with hip hop/instrumental things. The techno felt a bit easier to combine noises :slight_smile:

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#2

Makes sense / sounds like a good approach to me. You can also use say 4 of the tracks for live jamming. Slower scale setups for longer loops, or Quantized Play setting on 4.

Very useful for such an approach: shift - left/right in the samples slot list.

I used a one-pattern approach on the MPC 2500 in the past, prepared drum kits, live improvized patterns, worked like a charm. Should also work well with loops.

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#3

Wow, I love this idea!

I’ve only been using OT for 3-4 months now mostly for composition rather than performance, and my poor understanding of the hierarchy of project storage makes it pretty tough to get at all the tunes I want to play without stopping playback. This sounds like a nice way of making all that work usable now!

My one worry is how the memory limitations will fare with having a bunch of tracks running for several measures stacked up in the sample pool, but I don’t think it’s as limiting as I think it is.

This is actually pretty simple if you adjust the length of the scale for each track and subdivide the sequencer to 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 and raise the master length as high as necessary. The lower resolution of triggers at the level of 1/16 will be more difficult to deal with but it’s not a huge concern if you’re playing around with infrequent triggers, one-shot trigs, or conditional trigs of long samples. You’ll still be playing within the same pattern too!

#4

In that video, IIRC, Atch is loading stems in tracks, choosing them in the slot list, and then he plays them with trigs 9-16 (or track + play?).
Probably Statics, Play quantized to a 1 bar pattern.
I’d probably use the crossfader, tracks 1-4 vs tracks 5-8. Maybe less stem tracks, additional drum tracks…

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#5

You should check out DL Live YouTube channel. Most of the time he’s jamming on two octatracks but he should give you a good idea of workflow as he mainly uses one for most tracks. I’ve asked him how he gets both prepped and if I remember correctly both octatracks have the same tracks and patterns and they vary as he plays.

#6

I did a live show on Saturday, completely improvised.
All I had done as a preparation was slicing sample chains and preload a few of them.

In never changed the pattern, I used Parts to build progressions and plocked the hell out of the sample chains in slice mode. I used the cross fader only a few times, there was enough happening already.

Then I would clear a track and/or load a new sample and/or reload or change part.

It really felt natural.
One thing though : I had a MD at OT’s side. But I could have dedicate an OT track or two to beats and I wouldn’t have that much need of the MD. It’s just that I love it :wink:

Secret weapon was the Cue out to Polymoon and Empress Reverb. Quite a few times I basically played with the Polymoon and created some relaxed mood before hitting again.

I am a bit sorry I have forgotten to plug the H4n. This set was so “hit and forget” :smiley:

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#7

Video tut would be great! :wink:

#8

I’m right now in the middle of the process of moving home, but in my new place I intend to try to shoot videos. I’ll keep this in mind :wink:

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#9

Most likely, that’s probably how I’d approach it too, I’d also probably be inclined to have all my static files at the same BPM If creating a set from scratch.

Worth remembering too that tracks can be individually started or stopped independently from the sequencer, and you can of course use a mix of sequenced and plays free, for example to do fills or whatnot and give a bit of hands free relief when you need to be tweaking etc.

I think that with some pre-planning of your source samples, use of slots and slice trig modes, and perhaps a few pre-programmed sequences, using parts and even the arranger it is entirely possible to use the OT in such a manner as you describe, I love that open ended aspect of it.

Possibly a fair bit of work to set it all up, but once done it becomes your own, and is then easily adapted for subsequent sets.

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#10

I use this approach in my live sets as I Always thought the pattern changing approach made too brutal transitions for my tastes. I’ve enhanced it with a Digitone and an M:S though.

At the moment I use two tracks as DJ decks which I load with full stems of the melodic parts of my songs from a folder. Then I have an input for my M:S loaded with patterns and drum samples from my tracks, and another input with the Digitone with melodic pattern prepared so I can jam between songs. The other tracks are used as loopers, loop players and a master EQ.

But like you, I’ve been tempted to record loops and stems from these two machines to provide material to the octatrack and be able to only play with it. Actually I’m really interested in building a “dub” setup with an octatrack whose eight tracks are loops and stems, a send to my Space Echo pedal (maybe back to an OT track for the full feedback effect) and a Launch Control to control the OT like a mixer. Each track would have it’s own folder and I would be changing stems and loops manual and building transitions myself with levels and filters.

Anyway, in my opinion, this way of playing is awesome for smoother transitions, when you don’t need your set to be full of brutal changes and “drops”.

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#11

Usefull fonction :
In the sample slot list, Func + right arrow loads the next sample in the folder (alphabetical order).

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#12

Oh wow, you’re gonna make me rethink my whole sample management system!

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#13

First off thank you guys for that much imput really appreciated.

@faest: I didn’t get the part with the about using longer loops one shot loops and keep track of the length. I assume i would need to have individual track length active. But then you mention subdivide to 1/2, 1/4 and so on. So for example:
Let’s say i do have a track that should play an 8bar loop and then replay it. To achive that i would set individual track lengths and then set the track with the 8bar loop to 1/2 since the master normally would be set to 4 bars. correct ? Haven’t really worked with that.

@LyingDalai: So you did have long wav files that you sliced and then live placing triggers that select the corresponding slice ? (guess you previewed it on a cued & muted track). Also since i currently want to realy only use the ot (even if i would have some other gear) i want to get realy fit with the device therefore i’m forcing myself to only work with the ot. But i agree that specially for beats it’s a lot of fun for me (used to work with breaks slicing / layering a lot in the past so slicing to me is so valuable). Did you use transitions at all or did you stop between individual tracks ?

The whole independently started of the sequencer is a thing which i’m still not sure on how to use. I guess plays free with one2 mode should help here correct ? Somehow i still have to check later on, because on my last test with one2 the track could be started but not stopped again.

@sezare56: yeah that func+right is very usefull indeed, but i thought the last time i tried, that sometimes it might take a while to find the loop you like and it. therefore i thought about having at least already some loops i like in a static slot list, because then preview and changing can be done a small tic faster.

Also i was wondering if the slot list would help at all for this. let’s say having 1-16 for beats 17-32 for melodic and so one would make previewing tracks very quick.But i’m not sure if that would persist.

I would like to mention here, that i’m not after playing very long stems or rather entire songs mostly shorter loops would be the idea.

I still have to figure out if organized folder or a great static slot list is better and then if plays free would be the way to go (with qpl i guess) or if slot list mode would work. Also i wonder if id’s better to have a master track and a track recorder on for transitions. but then leaves me with 6 tracks or like @sezare56 mentioned the 1-4 vs 5-8 method.

And one of my concerns or big questions would still be, how to keep track of what has been used. for example let’s say i do have 16 breaks i could after playing one delete it from the sample slot list (would be an advantage to the folder method) but i think that just takes up to much time. ideas ?

Or is there any advantage with patterns / banks ? I really used a looot of time to get to know the device and now i’m at the point of creating a basic template and then work out a first set. So currently i’m thinking about should i start with parts and banks and create a set like that. or the way i descirbe here and just have one part for loop creations where i could sample & resample stuff and then save those created loops to be later performed.

Looking forward for more inputs.

And since some of the pro’s had a look here already a slightly different (but somehow still relevant) question. What is like the file size limit where you change from flex to static maschine ? because for example having 2-4bar wav loop can quickly grow to 2 -5 MB per loop. so first i thought i’d do breaks with flex machines but adding 10 short loops and some other things would already fill the ram. Track records abviously or short one-shot samples to be played chromatically are a great use for the flex machines. but even sliced drum kits. i’ve made some smaller once and bigger once. let’s say a 16 slice drum kit is 4 MB would you stil use that as a flex machine ?

Thank you so much for the great inputs so far.

#14

Oh, my sliced sample chains were not tracks of mine, or any continuous sounds/beats: they were more like e.g. morphagene chains from freesound I had carefully sliced (and am starting to know a bit). I played them live in slice mode, then went crazy on FX and retrig, and build on top of this, muting/unmuting tracks.
One kind of transition was upping Cue level, lowering Main level, then getting crazy on the Polymoon plugged on Cue Out :wink:
Another was to filter down a track or remove some trigs until only a few ones are left.
Basically building and destructing while playing.

Style was kind of hard techno, with some distorted sounds.

I agree with using OT standalone to learn it :slight_smile:

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#15

I’ve done a set 45 mins with this very approach. Basically using static samples in short loops 4bars max. I’ll assign the samples to the sample slot but keep every 16th sample slot open. Then I’ll go into sample slot mode on the OT and trigger the loops quantized usually to quarter notes, the 16th slot on every page is left empty so I can use as a quick stop bottom as a performance feature. From there you can go in a lot direction you can crossfade between tracks and use track 8 as a master track to do delay repeats. Here’s a example of this

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#16

Master set to 8 bar maybe ?
Master set to 1/2 without scale per track seems possible.

I’d rather use Static with Slices, or 128 start positions…

Memory, sheet of paper, play it again? :content:

That is to say? A pattern change in another Bank implies part change. A pattern with a different part in the same bank is almost the same.

Flex RAM, for all tracks : 85.5 MB
16 bits > 8m28s, 24 bits 5m39s.

Static, for 1 track : 2Go, more that 3h30m!

#17

Yes, this is it. Turn on individual track length, then adjust the tempo modifier and master length to whatever you need (an 8 bar loop is 128 steps, 16 is 256, 32 is 512). You’ll notice that the glowing LED will move at half the normal speed for whatever BPM you’re using, then a quarter speed, an eighth speed…

Also useful to keep in mind that the master length will be the duration before changes between patterns occurs. Not that you’d be using more than one pattern, of course!

#18

For the most straight-forward approach, I would just prepare one file folder per OT track, one sample per OT track in the sample list (pre-sliced samples), and continuously skip samples to the right via shift + right when you need something new.

The folders ensure that you always play different samples on different OT tracks.

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#19

Thanks everyone for their Input and Feedbacks. I wanted to share how i finally setup the OT to be able to life just within a Pattern. Maybe someone can use this or you have additional suggestions:

General:
T1, T5 & T6 are set to Plays Free and i’ve set Scale per Track.

T1: Static Machine / Slices / Scale 16/16 / Plays Free /
FX Note: Using DJ-EQ to quickly remove the low end if custom kicks are used from T2.

This Track has loads of Drum Loops, so each loop is one slice. The
Idea here is to either play backbeats or entire drum-breaks. The Plays free and short
scale helps to turn off a Beat after one Bar (and then easily change the slice, for the next beat)

T2: Static Machine / Slices / Scale 16/16

Here i’ve loaded Drum Kits or Percussion Kits (living in the same folder on the cf card) that i can use to improvise over the Beats on T1 and live add more stuff to grooves from T1. Having this Track only playing for 1 Bar helps so things are not getting overcomplicated. And having all the sample-chains in the same folder makes swapping them fast (Func + Left or right to switch and bang you do have 64 new drum hits to improvise).

T3 & T4: Flex Machines / Scale 32/32
Those Tracks are used to play additional instruments (basses & one-shots) live via midi keyboard. There is however a problem with the Hold Setting in the AMP Page which doesn’t make those Tracks as flexible as i imagined.

For a problem description & solution see:

If i would have a Midi Processor i would change those tracks to have sample-chains of one-shots.

T5 & T6: Static Machines / Scale 64/64 / Plays Free
Using those Tracks to trigger long samples and loops. If it’s longer then 64 steps change the multiplier on the Scale page.

Could also be used for Backing Tracks.

T7: Flex Machine / Track Recorder (Cue) & Transition / Slices / Scale 32/32
For now i mostly had T5 & T6 cued all the time so i can easily record a short part of the longer stems (T3 & T4 if needed) and rearrange
the slices (set it to 8 slices) with random locks. Also this Track helps for Transitions with a scene so i can mute or stop t5 & t6 fade
to this track and choose new sounds and melodies on T5 and T6 and then switch back.
The Beat Tracks are not added here, because i prefer do just stop them (hence plays free on T1) and then retriger them when a “new song” would start.

T8: Master

Impressions with those settings:
It’s a lot of fun and you can quite easily jam away for along time. It requires some preparation in advance (for example selecting drum grooves you like and make a sample chain & obviously adding Sounds to the Sound Pool for T5 & T6). But then i really liked the freedom to just randomly choosing Beats and Melodies i wanted to play. T2 is a lot of fun to quickly extend grooves from T1 playing the slice mode. T7 helps to either layer sounds or to replace samples on T5 & T6 without beeing to abrubt. Using Tracks 3 & 4 would have been another way to live-improvise basses and add melodies to things you already play on T5 & 6, because otherwise i found it takes up to much time to find a bass where the harmonics match the melodies playing.

But because of me not having a midi processor i couldn’t really use those tracks to their full extend.

I might personally however build a set with the “traditional” Banks & Patterns approach for now. That’s because i do use the OT for new music genres, which i haven’t produced before. Therefore i don’t have music ready from the computer which i could incorporate into this setup. And it offers more modulation and creation options then the setup here. For performing existing stuff however i think this setup is quite fun and uses only the OT with one Part & one Pattern. But it still leaves Room to live improvise some parts and not just trigger samples. All you have to do is to choose 64 Drum Loops you like, add some long melodic parts to the Sample Slot List and have some one-shots ready and off you go :wink:

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