last week I played a live set during the Amsterdam Dance Event. Here’s the full recording. 138bpm, uptempo, dark techno with a few dub elements.
The setup I used was: Digitakt, Dighitone, Octatrack, Xone DB4 and Analog Heat on the main out. This was the first time I used a new way of setting up my gear of which I’ll upload a video where I go into it in detail within the next few weeks. Routing I used here is pretty straight forward:
Digitakt midi out to Digitone midi in. DN midi out to Octatrack midi in (clock). Digitakt modulates a few things on the Digitone sometimes. Normally I use Octatrack as a creative real time looper/slicer, but because of the short length of this set I used it mostly to add rhythmic elements from grooves I created in it. The Xone Db4 has an input matrix so I’m able to loop things, and select the same input on another channel to mix that into the loop. This is how I morph from groove to groove.
Enjoy and let me know in the comments if you have any questions
Thanks yeah I’ve been increasing the tempo of my live set. I used to really love this high energy techno at the beginning of 2000 and still do. So I’ll stick with it
Certainly not too much! I’ve been using this setup for 1.5 year now or so. It’s mostly the case and how I’ve mounted the setup that is new. The octatrack is playing a supporting role in this set because I only had 40 minutes. When I get to play 1.5 hour I use it a lot more to live loop and slice, mangle those loops etc.
Great set! Question about the reverb/rumble kick; how do you achieve this in hardware? I love that sound but the only way I could think to cheese it would be to record loops of pumped reverb in Ableton and stem it out to the OT. Would love to know how you’re pulling it off
So I never use reverb for that. Not even by sampling from daw. All the kicks you hear in this set are coming from the digitakt btw.
There’s not one way really but it’s a combination of a kick and rumbling bass created with the same or another kick, or a sine wave, or various sampling material (could be anything from real world samples to low passed arpeggio synth lines. So it’s really a matter of dialing the bass and kick in a way that they really play well with each other. This can include some volume modulation or plocking of amp volume but not even that is always the case
But the easiest way to start experimenting to try and achieve this is to get a great punchy kick and a sine wave that provides the “reverb”.
Personally not a big fan of using reverb for this kind of thing because a lot of the time it becomes undefined. And you have to make sure the reverb is no o below about 100hz or so. Plus in a club there’s already going to be some reverb so sometimes it then just sounds like a mess in the sub range.
Recently in a YouTube conversation (I’ll try to find the link), someone shared the tip to put a low pass on your master, super low (I don’t know, 100 or 200hz), to listen to the groove of your low end. Whatever tricks you use to achieve what you hope to achieve, this for me turned out a great referencing trick. It’s kinda like the “how does my techno sound from the cloak room before entering” trick.
