Studio diary: April 24, 2023

A love letter to glitch music and the Elektron Octatrack

Today’s note focuses on the inspiration and methods behind a recent experiment from my studio, which eventually made its way into my studio diary on April 24, 2023.

Here it is in audio-only format. Further down, after my text description of what’s going on here, I’ve included a video of this performance so you can see all of the different techniques in action.

Inspiration

My listening habits of late have been heavily centered around IDM, dub techno, glitch music, and perhaps most especially, that early 2000s brand of “clicks and cuts.” Something about the contrasting nature of a liquid, spacious atmosphere pressed up against choppy, digital percussion just makes my brain happy. I was born a few years too late to hear the beginnings of this sound, but several years ago I fell down the rabbit hole after hearing the 20th anniversary remasters of shuttle358’s “Frame” on 12k. That record really does something to me every time I put it on. Certified classic stuff, in my mind at least.

I’ve now been exploring ways to incorporate this type of sound into what I do. Not to reproduce it, but to inject some drive and pulse into my music. Rhythmic forces interest me very much these days, especially after spending so many years in a pool of blissful drone and hall reverb. I’m also quite inspired by the restraint and minimalism that most of these artists show - it’s something I can really learn from.

The Elektron Octatrack is key to helping me with both of these things. Honestly, it’s probably my favorite instrument that I’ve ever owned. Because of all it can do and how I like to work these days - mostly in the box, in an uncluttered space - it’s now one of the few hardware instruments I own.

Don’t fear the Octatrack

Like a lot of people who are introduced to the Octatrack online, I was told by many usernames and YouTube personalities that this is a machine to be feared and approached with caution. It has a reputation of being malleable and powerful, but also difficult and overwhelming. You’d think there would be a warning label on the box. I don’t think this is an entirely fair reputation, and my guess is that there’s some human psychology and impatience going on: do you want it to be a sampler? A looper? A mixer? An effects chain for live audio? It can do all of this, but that’s also the problem. New users are bound to jump too many steps ahead with an overloaded brain, thinking of the possibilities instead of their own desires and applications.

The description on the front panel is our first clue to how I approach it: Elektron labels it an “8 Track Dynamic Performance Sampler.” When viewed this way, it immediately focuses our attention on the 8-track budget. It’s a Sampler with 8 Dynamic (or; “configurable”) Tracks to play with…that’s it. Everything that comes after this is a matter of personal taste: how dynamic do we want this sampler to be? Are these 8 tracks just playing back audio, or are they to be evolving, heavily effected sounds, modulated by things like the crossfader, sequencer, and LFOs?

How I use this machine

Here’s how I approach the device and allocate the 8-track budget most of the time. My April 24th studio diary entry is actually a good way of showcasing my Octatrack starting point.

I find it easy on my brain if I view the left half of the box a “playback” zone, and the right side a “live processing” zone. This is my standard project setup. It’s a default project I’ve named “Ideas" on my Octatrack, and it’s exactly what’s shown in the video for April 24’s studio diary entry:

• Tracks 1-4: Static Machines (Drums, Percussion, and Sample Chains)

• Tracks 5-6: Flex Machines (Resampling Internal Audio, Sampling External Inputs)

• Track 7: Thru Machine (Processing Live Audio)

• Track 8: Master (Compression, DJ Filter/EQ)

• Inputs AB are receiving audio from Ableton Live. I set up a send out of my audio interface, so that I can dial in exactly how much of any one Ableton Live channel I want to send to the Octatrack for sampling.

• Main Out on the Octatrack sends the master audio back to my laptop. Sometimes I decide to send certain tracks (like drums, for instance) through the Cue Outputs instead. This can be useful when I want to mix any sounds separately in the DAW.

How this setup looks from above.

It’s important to note that in this recording, there are many different effects and processing paths happening in Live, too. My setup there is an entirely separate topic of conversation, perhaps for another time. But in short: Live is my DAW, and all audio to/from the Octatrack starts and finishes there.

My Ableton Live session for the April 24th, 2023 jam I’ve shared here. Send C routes any audio I choose to Octatrack on outputs 3/4 of my audio interface.

Track settings, in detail

Static Machines on tracks 1-4 are what I use for my drum samples and for playing backing tracks with Sample Chains (a great way to play back a large number of tracks, but it’s not at all necessary for basic use of the OT - others have done a good job explaining it).

• In this video, I’ve got my kicks, clicks, and claps sequenced on tracks 1-4 to create the drum beat.

• The Octatrack’s parameter locking features are what make this sequence come alive. When you hold a trig key on the sequencer, just turn any parameter knob you want to change for that step only, and it will be locked in to that step of the sequence. Amazing! This is a standard feature of Elektron machines and sets them apart from other sequencers, in my opinion.

• In this video, I have certain steps of the sequence parameter-locked to make sudden and extreme changes like filter cutoff, bit crushing, pitch shifts, and even the samples assigned on a given step. When you also do this to radically change things like the ADSR envelope, for example, it creates a very glitchy, erratic type of pattern that’s perfect for this music. You can imagine how this makes a huge amount of variation possible on just 1 track, let alone 4 simultaneous ones.

• One more note: I’ve set up two different patterns, which are just variations of the sequence. Occasionally, I switch between the two to adjust the beat you hear.

Here are the static tracks that form the beat:

Moving to Flex Machines on tracks 5-6, I use these to sample and slice live audio from internal and external sources. Most often, I use this to sample the audio from Inputs AB that arrive from Ableton Live.

• In this video, I’ve sampled audio from synths in Ableton Live onto tracks 5 and 6.

• I’ve sliced those samples on both tracks into 16 slices using the Slice Grid feature. When you do this, it allows you a few options for assigning them to trigs, and in this video I assigned randomized slices to each step in the sequence.

After some extreme filtering and bit crushing on FX1 and FX2, you can hear how those sounds add aliased, choppy, rhythmic noises on top of the drums. I do this a lot with pads and sustained sounds in order to create additional layers of rhythm:

My Thru Machine on track 7 receives audio from either of the input sources, AB or CD, depending on the situation. I route that audio through the built in effects on FX1 and FX2. I mostly use this an immediate way to filter, bit crush, and add delay/reverb to sounds coming from tape machines or other samplers I’ve connected to the Octatrack. It helps me use fewer outboard devices like pedals.

Finally, the Master channel on track 8 contains a compressor and a DJ Filter/EQ so that I can tame peaks and tone. Pretty straightforward, and a nice way to control the end-of-chain sound before it hits Ableton Live.

Scene changes on the crossfader

One final note I’d like to mention is about the Crossfader: to me, this is truly the secret weapon of the Octatrack when using it for live performance. On either side of the slider’s range, you can assign a “scene” to take effect. A scene describes the settings of every parameter on all of the tracks. So, by sliding the crossfader to the other side, you are moving it toward that scene - and thereby gradually shifting the parameters between their two settings. You can imagine how this allows very drastic changes in effects settings, in pitch, in volume levels of certain tracks, etc…all at the flick of a fader. An incredibly powerful tool that, as usual, others have explained more effectively already. This is a particularly fun thing to do with the master channel: you can drastically alter the entire sound of the main output by assigning different master channel effect settings to different scenes.

In my video above, I’ve assigned scene 1 (side A) and scene 9 (side B) to have 2 different volume levels on Tracks 5 and 6. This way, I can move the crossfader back and forth to allow Track 5 to be louder to the left, and Track 6 to be louder to the right.

The left side of the crossfader moves to scene 1, which lowers the volume of Track 6 from 64 to 24. The right side moves to scene 9, which lowers the volume of Track 5 in a similar way. Sliding between the two allows for fine control of the level of these flex machines.

My setup in action

Now that I’ve described my thought process and techniques, maybe the performance video will make a little more sense. Hopefully I was descriptive enough to give you a sense of what you’re seeing here:

In closing

Now of course, some of what I’ve just described will require some time spent reading in the Octatrack’s manual to understand how to navigate to these menus and how to set up your sampling sources. One area in which I agree with the online crowd warning about the OT’s complexity is in how long it takes to get used to the Elektron terminology. There are a couple of menu settings you need to get familiar with in order to get going (just like any machine).

I’ve personally found the manual to be one of the best-written documents for a machine this chock-full of possibility. It’s extremely detailed with lots of graphical guides (in fact, I have it bookmarked in my browser tab). Take your time with it. Some generous users of the Octatrack have also published amazing help files elsewhere, and a popular one is the Merlin’s Guide to the OT. This is an excellent way to understand the structure of the device, and it paints a more practical picture of what the Elektron nomenclature refers to.

One final thing I want to emphasize is that even if you never explore its advanced options, and just treat the 8 tracks like they’re separate lanes of audio to sample and play back, the Octatrack is a fantastic live performance tool. With just the built-in FX and mixing tools, it’s an imminently useable 8-track looper, a live re-sampler, a mixer for external audio, a master effects bus, and more.

At the risk of overcomplicating this, I think I’ll leave it there. One of my hopes for this Substack is that it will be a way to explore things like detailed text/audio/video tutorials, as well as “lessons” in 1:1 settings. I’d be happy to talk about this with you if it is of interest. Leave a comment or shoot me an email if that’s something you’d like to see. I’d also love to hear from you if there are specific “clicks and cuts” albums you are fond of and would like to share with me.

Thanks again for reading. It takes a lot of time to write and record these things, but I enjoy it quite a bit. Looking forward to sharing more here. I appreciate you!

-Andrew