This week has been one of re-focusing my creative practice.
I am pairing down my modular set up (it’s always changing, so that’s nothing new) and at the same time I re-acquired the Elektron Octatrack MkII.
The OT MkI was kinda what got me back into making music after taking about 10 years or so off. The MkII actually feels quite different, which I like. It feels better, smoother. The MkI was a bit clunky. I noticed that the moment I unboxed it. It didn’t have a nice “feel” to the buttons and sliders. There was a certain… clicky nature to it that didn’t feel as “put together” as other equipment. I immediately compared it to the MPC 2000, which was the first “professional” piece of audio gear I got early on in my career. It was super put together and felt solid in comparison to the OT. The software and workflow, too, was vastly different from the MPC, which was also a sampler, but one that approached sampling and audio manipulation from a very different angle.
That said, I kept the Octatrack MkI for 5+ years and used it extensively. After moving to SF, I did have a period with the Maschine, but the fact that it used it’s own software that wasn’t quite a full-fledged DAW always put me off. It had weird limitations in terms of importing samples and using it to, say record guitar or outside instruments.
The Octatrack had an insane learning curve, and was also limited in different ways. That led me to Ableton, which is by far the most unlimited instrument out there. You can do anything and everything with it. But playing with hardware is a hell of a lot more fun.
Getting Modular
Starting off with modular was like a revelation. It forced me to think about music differently. I was finally collaborating with something outside myself.
I’ve now made 3 albums with the modular, in conjunction with Ableton, and I really am proud of them. But now I want to move on.
Coming back to the Octatrack, I’m seeing it as a different tool. Before, I was basically treating it like a DAW, where I was trying to do EVERYTHING in a track with those 8 tracks. Now that I have other synths to work with, and I want to try to use the Octatrack more like a tool for looping, sequencing, sampling and processing audio and midi. I’m excited to get into it, and especially to use it in conjunction with the OP-1, Cocoquantus, and modular.