Octatrack Jungle
Vickiana Sconyers
Not as intricate as a tracker, but a lot of jungle/d &b was made on MPCs by mashing buttons with note roll on. You could assign pad pressure to filter cutoff, mash some pads, set the roll rate to a different value and then mash some more on top of what you just later down.
Not as intricate as a tracker, but a lot of jungle/d &b was made on MPCs by mashing buttons with note roll on. You could assign pad pressure to filter cutoff, mash some pads, set the roll rate to a different value and then mash some more on top of what you just later down. With tasteful editing you could get great results
Quoting this again 4 years later because I recently put together a really breaks-heavy EP and this is exactly how I did all of it. Ntot so much using roll, though, mostly quantized finger drumming for the actual chopped breaks and unquantized finger drumming for everything else.
I definitely think it is very usable for those genres. Part of it is just finding a workflow that works for you. Years ago I was using the octatrack with pickup + flex machines as an asynchronous looper/mixer/signal distributor all while never pressing play on the sequencer. You have the ability to manually trigger sounds, slices and midi notes which makes it easily fit into the role of another instrument. With the four in + outs it is easy to set it up to route signals for processing inputs and sending those signals out for external processing.
In this video from 2016 I was using a mk.1 in the way described above. Octatrack cue channels were used like an effects send out to the eurorack models for granular + delay processing while the main (dry) outs went straight to the mixer.
So the solution I finally found yesterday was to create outro patterns that only use 4 tracks on the 6 I use, silence the other 2, but keep looping when I change pattern. Once I go to the intro pattern of the next track, I get to introduce some elements of it through the 2 tracks that were silenced in the outro pattern, while I can bring down elements from the old one that were still looping, I can also cut the kick and bass from the old track and then launch the new ones. Now I just have to introduce elements from the new tracks and off I go.
Just a little heads up for Octachainer users around here, when you click & slide a group of files from your explorer into the main window, the order they will be set to will depends on which file you clicked on.
One part per song, so four songs per bank. Each song only has one audio file per track, so six in total. Audio tracks are stitchings of loops and stems exported from Ableton and glued together using Octachainer, then imported and used as sliced in the OT. That way, if I want the first loop of percs, I launch the corresponding slice on the percs track, and if I want to launch the stem of the full track, I just need to change slice.
So the longest part of the preparation is exporting loops and stems and stitching them together using Ableton and Octachainer. I do a first export of the six groups of tracks from the original Ableton projects, taking out fades, that way I get six nice stems at the correct tempo and overall volume. Then I import those stems in another Ableton project that I use to extract loops for my intros and outros and to prepare the main stems for each channel. I start all them at the same point of my track so the song plays well when moving to the main pattern. And then I loop the end a few times so I get a bit of security and time to move to the outro pattern when playing the main pattern.
Once I have all my loops and stems, I glue them together using Octachainer, ususally a few intro loops first, the main stem and then an outro loop. This way I know when I build my patterns on the OT that the intro pattern should launch the first slice, the main pattern while launch the next to last slice and the outro pattern while launch the last one. The chains are glued at the correct OT BPM, are all in loop mode and timestretch is either beats for drum parts or normal for melodic ones.
I then import everything into the OT and build my patterns as explained for every song.
This way of working allows me to only use six audio tracks per song, while still giving a lot of freedom by allowing to effect and mix each one of them individually. The only drawback is the samples list limit that only allows me a maximum of around 21 tracks (128/6 = 21,3333) which allows me to play a little more than two hours.
Some Examples
Here are two recording of rehearsals I did recently for an upcoming gig. You will hear that it is still a bit wonky because I have to get used to this way of playing (it is mostly theory for the moment) but still I think it can work really well and allow me to play my tracks with a lot of freedom and smoothness
Anyway, in your case I think you could absolutely use another part to change the sample or record bouffer played by your tracks. You could even copy paste your first part to the second one and only make the changes you want. However, whatever you change in one part afterwards will not impact the other one.
What are you looking to accomplish with this? How would you set up a patch in order to get what you want? Physically, what would you connect in this rack to produce your drum and bass? From my prospective it's severely lacking. Will it produce sound? Yes. Will its functionality beat a stand alone beat box from Akai or Elektron? No. But you'll be paying A LOT more for this.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. My idea was the following: not to compete with an Elektron box, I do not have one but I like them. The Nerdseq tracker interface is like an Amiga Protracker plus it can hold samples itself, The Squid Sample is in a certain way in this rack like an Akai sampler without the weight. The Array is a simple no fuss step secuencer if I dont want to go with the nerdseq. Plaits would be a synth line that is not sampled. The Mum8 as it is based on the s950, so its a must, then the mixer and pamelas for clocked modulation. It is like a portable "classic" jungle setup where you would have the tracker, the samplers, some synth for bass maybe and the filter as it is an importat sound.
I'd also look at the 1010 Music "BitBox" instead of the Salmple. I'm not saying it's better or worse for your set-up, just different. Some major differences is the ability to record and playback in stereo, visual editing, and more sample time (longer loops than 11 seconds). The Bitbox also has a MIDI IN on a 3.5mm jack. So you can go from a 5-pin MIDI cable to a dongle, then straight into the Bitbox. So if you are using your DAW or hardware unit with a MIDI OUT, you can skip the Nerd Sequencer and just fire it off via MIDI (as an alternate set-up). It may or may not be your cup of tea.
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