Breaks and death jam with Elektron Octatrack MkII, Novation AFX Station

video upload by Jay Hosking

"A live, semi-improvised performance of Edvard Grieg's "The Death of Åse" (from Peer Gynt) performed entirely on synths and sampler hardware.

I love this song in all its incarnations, on strings, on piano. So while on the island, I thought I'd try it on synths and samplers. I sequenced the main lines in the box, using Native Instruments' Noire (piano) and Arturia's Prophet V (synth) doubled up. Then I chopped that into segments and imported into the Octatrack.

Once in the Octatrack, I took the Amen break and did some mangling, adding some glitch, pan, and randomization. I also added a second break I created, and a line of weird percussion (from a Patreon community member), both from a community sample pack in my Patreon.

Finally, I wanted some real-time hardware synth, and was smart enough to bring the Novation AFX Station with me to the island. This thing has so much versatility going for it, sounds phenomenal, and has an absolutely stellar layout for creating. It's wild to me that the Bass Station II / AFX Station is both one of the best mono synths out there, while also being so widely available and so affordable.

Once it was all together, it was just a matter of tweaking some scenes for effects and transition, and then capturing the performance. Really happy with this one.

Thanks for listening.

Native Instruments Noire and Arturia Prophet V - piano/synth main line, sampled into the
Elektron Octatrack Mk2 - sample mangling, mixing, performance effects, scenes
Novation AFX Station - synth arpeggio thing"