Want to start performing with some stems on my Octatrack....I'd really like some advice!

Here’s a song I’d like to start with!

I get it, I only have eight tracks to work with. Let me try and lay this out for you guys:

I want the beginnings and endings of songs to ebb and flow more. So that tom part that’s happening? I maybe want to hear that tom part looping over and over again for the beginning, and I play with sounds and whatever while that’s going on. Maybe the guitar, too. So does this mean I should take a, say, two-bar chunk of the tom/guitar and tell it to loop? Or should I bounce down the whole tom part as a stem, but then just tell the first two bars to loop that way via the Octatrack?

Since I have no intention of elongating any verses or choruses, do you think it’s in my best interest to just stem out the tracks from front to finish? Not even bother with arranger/song mode or anything like that?

As for stemming out things, should I just group things into buses that make sense to me (I’m using Studio One) and then bounce out the buses? I’m thinking this:

Guitar
Tom
Backing vocals
Strings
Bass stuff (low piano, bass clarinet)
Flutes/String Synth
Cymbal/Clap
Birds

Okay…So now here’s my big issue: Other than the beginning/end of songs that I want to extend, I basically want everything to just play all the way through all at once without me having to turn them on/off–but I still want some sort of control over these individual elements I’ve laid out (i.e. mix, effects, general sound design via octatrack). Maybe this is where song mode comes in? I tell song mode to play and it just does a one shot trig of all of these samples at once? So let’s say hypothetically I have a stem of a string part that doesn’t come in until bar 9, I would still want it 100% synced up so that it does in fact come in on bar 9 with the rest of the song, and then goes away, and then comes back in on bar 17 or whatever. Makes sense?

I’m worried about things staying in time, but I assume I should just put the BPM of the project into every file name, right?

I have a feeling this is one of things I can only figure out by myself from experimenting a bit but I’d like your guys opinions. Thanks dudes!

Prediction:
You will get dozens of replies all with different ways doing things.
In the end, after you have tried a few suggestions, you will work out your own way.
This way will continue to evolve over time. Your work will change.

Enjoy the ride. RIP Bill.

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Exactly what I thought haha. I’m gonna bus some things and stem them out right now…Looking forward to ideas I haven’t thought of, though.

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When I bought my OT I had the intention of using stems blah blaj blah. Since them, I have decided stems are a total waste of octapower. I still use those old samples, but not as stems, more as quasi synth waves that I manipulate into new forms. I basically use OT to write music, rather than writing music and then using OT to play it back. Anyway. Those are my thoughts. Not that they will be any use to you! Hahaha!

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When I got my Octa I got it for sound design and exploration–I had no intention of using it to play back stems. I have written a couple compositions via the Octatrack, but the workflow is just not how I typically write music, and it’s definitely not how I write “songs”.

One of my favorite artists, Panda Bear, has been playing live with two Octatracks for a while now, and freely admits he’s just playing back stems that were recorded in Ableton.

I’ve tried to get a band together to play my music but haven’t been successful. I’ve resigned to the fact I may have to play totally solo, and now my unused Octa is staring me in the face. The idea of treating these familiar sounds with new FX and colors from the Octa excites me too.

I want it to sit somewhere between a glorified MP3 playback machine (yuck!) and a flexible tool.

Not trying to like justify myself or lash back at you or anything haha. These are just my thoughts :slight_smile: There is no one Octa-way.

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Exactly. You will figure it out. Half the fun of octatracking is figuring it out. :slight_smile:
With regard long samples that you want to play all the way through just once, one shot trigs are key. If timestretch is on and all your samples are the same tempo then everything should play in sync.
You probably want to look into parts, also having master sequencer set to something really long like 64 bars or maybe even infinite?
Having a few loopable elements sounds fun, maybe make some scenes that modulate the loops or apply effects?
Explore and have fun! Sounds interesting what you are doing with the OT anyway, ive checked some of your music before, cool stuff!

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Cool well I’m well on my way! I have it set up in the arranger so that the guitar part loops for a bit, and I played with scenes and FX settings and all that fun stuff. Then I just select the next part in the arranger and the whole song starts!

As I hoped would happen, playing around with these recordings has injected some new life into them and even gave me some ideas of sounds to play with before/after the songs. So that’s cool.

Decided to make T8 a master.

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Replying mainly because I want to see all of the comments that come back and try them out for myself. I’m in a similar position being the only one in my 2-person band responsible for everything aside from vocals and some synths. And when we write songs in Ableton, we often have extremely long filter movements and stuff like that that would be impossible to reproduce using the 64 steps of OT. So it really comes down to, in how I imagine it will play out, what just needs to play as recorded and what needs some ability to be manipulated live. So, I plan (but haven’t tried yet) to have tracks 1-4 handling everything that just plays and is never touched. Tracks 5-7 are manipulatable elements such as pickups for my guitar or odd bits that can be triggered manually. Scenes for controlling FX where needed on any of the tracks and track 8 as a master for light compression and filtering during transitions if required. But this will probably change once I get into the nitty gritty. Interesting post for sure! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh I’m sure there are ways around having a filter sweep only last 64 steps if that’s what you want…But if you’re okay with your long filter sweep being the exact same every time then yeah just bringing a stem over sounds cool.

Those first four tracks that are never touched? I recommend making them 1st trig conditions. Saw that in a post around here somewhere. If you use the arranger and have them set to one shots, you’ll have to remember to re-arm all of them…which requires you to be out of arranger mode :grimacing: Very big headache. 1st trig condition solves all that.

My problem with the arranger right now is when the arranger is over and it says END, I can’t seem to go to the next pattern without stopping playback. Anyone know?

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No no, I meant a gradual filter sweep of more than 64 steps. One track goes from full at the start to only the highs in middle and back to full at the end, for example. So one shot stems on card playback seems to be ideal for that. But yes, nice ideas. We have all the time in the world to perfect these things now at least. I’m going to try tomorrow

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What about a loop row with an empty pattern at the end?

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Master sequencer length =INF
Track length 64 Track scale 1/8 LFO free. Rate 1. Multiplier 1.
Works for me (depends on tempo, length of sample etc)

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I’ll try that. I assume if I’m in the middle of looping a pattern I can get out of arranger mode and go to whatever pattern I want?

I’m also now realizing with the way I have things set up that the arranger mode is totally unnecessary. I’m essentially using it to go from A01 to A02 (which has the 1st trig conditions) anyway regardless. But this is why we do this stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes.

So I thought I’d forego the arranger then I remembered I still want the tempo for each of the songs to be correct without me having to remember.

Once again though I have gotten some very cool sounds, transitions, intros and outros by playing with octatrack sound design and that makes me happy. My 2.5 minute songs are turning into 2.5 minute songs with 2.5 minutes of ambience…

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This is perfect for gigs. You can really stretch things out on stage in ways that just doesnt work in recording.

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It’s also going to be a nice blend.

I’ve made lots of cool soundscapes and ambiences and loops on my Octatrack that I just haven’t had a use for–I’ve actually never played the thing live. But to have these sounds happening in the context of transitions between songs makes a lot more sense. Plus I never wanted to go out and play a live set of just 2 minute ambient jams on my Octatrack (though I guess I could).

Yeah cool. Also it makes your live show different to your recordings. Which is always a good thing. I cant stand it when I go to a gig and it sounds exactly like the record I have at home!

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Haha everyone’s different! Depends how different it sounds…Sometimes a live version of a song can be so different you just want them to play something similar to the recording. Or maybe the live version isn’t as impactful or cool.

But I agree there should be some experimentation with the live stuff–regardless of what your role is. Hopefully me having the exact stems from the recording session and playing them back (with subtle tweaks to FX and mixing of course) will be different enough :grimacing:

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I’m in a similar situation. I went solo around 6 years ago and am very happy with that move. I’ve done a lot of live looping as well as stems played back with Ableton/Push. I’m in the process of designing an Octatrack centered show involving stems and live looping/singing. I did break my stems into 4, 8 and 16 bar sections so I could vamp on any section or even change the arrangement. I want every show to be slightly different. I’m keeping the stems as bare bones as I can and playing the other parts live. I did end up using the arranger because like you I want to store the bpm per song. I have the rows that I might want to vamp on set to 64. Some rows I have set to change automatically because I know my hands/brain will be preoccupied. I’m still in the process of setting up transitions and scene effects to add something fluid and possibly unexpected to each performance.

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