Elektron Octatrack and Roland SH-4D - Live energetic performance

video upload by Jay Hosking

"A live synthesizer jam performed entirely on hardware.

This is a remix/reimagining of "Suantrai" by Jan Steiner, which is on his new EP. Jan is a friend, and a member of my Patreon community, and he reached out about the idea of a remix. The song itself is quite sparse, but beautiful and melodic, and the whole EP is a little hard to predict; I tried to take the beauty and melody, and add my own type chaos into the mix.

I started with altered versions of four of Jan's instruments (string thing, bass drone, Rhodes, light percussion) and went wild with my own additions (my own orchestra sound, off the top; mangled drum breaks; glitched percussion). This left me with some audio files I could work with in the Octatrack.

Once in the Octatrack, I realized I wanted additional melodies and sounds, so I hooked up the Roland SH-4D. The SH-4D is a four-part multi-timbral synth with a fifth layer for drums, very useful for making songs. The melody, arpeggio, extra bass, and midrange distorted drums all come from the SH-4D.

Altogether this left a pretty full arrangement, and the scenes/fader—the magic of the Octatrack—helped to bring out the performance. Most scenes were to alter the drum breaks, by reordering, repitching, and/or retriggering the drum slices, plus with additional effects like phaser, sample- and bit- reduction, distortion, etc.

The end result captures what I loved about Jan's track, and his EP in general: beautiful and melodic, sprawling but intentional, but with a little chaos thrown into the mix. I hope you enjoy.

Thanks for listening.

Elektron Octatrack MkII - Six audio sample tracks playing eight or nine audio sample parts across the song, plus effects, plus sequencing of everything (including MIDI), plus mixing of the audio from SH-4D, plus scenes

Roland SH-4D - Three synths (melody, arpeggio, bass) plus minimal drums in the finale

Performed and recorded live to a stereo output, with EQ, compression, and limiting on the master.

https://jayhosking.bandcamp.com"