How hard is it to use an Octatrack?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#8

The Octatrack is very easy to make beats on and use as a drum machine, etc. It gets complicated in two primary ways. The first is that it can do a lot of advanced functions so sometimes it takes a bit of time to properly memorize the workflow. Many people could use the Octatrack for years and never mess with these advanced functions. Sampling for me is easy now but it was very frustrating for a long time. Even now if I don’t use the Octa for a month I come back and am initially confused on how to quickly sample.

The other way the Octatrack feels complicated is harder to ignore. There are times that you can find yourself a bit … lost - no sound, weird sound, etc. It is all explainable and logical but at the time it can be frustrating. Even with many years of Octatrack usage there are times it takes me a moment to figure out what I’ve done “wrong”. As an example, yesterday I had a sampled beat that sounded very choppy - as if extreme time stretching was being done. However I checked and I had no time stretching enabled, no slices, nothing. It made no sense. Eventually a realized that I had the lofi effect AMD on. This was the cause. I had used the lofi effect on the pattern I wrote last (and had since “morphed” into my current pattern). In the process of making a new pattern out of the old I had forgot that AMD was turned up.

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#9

Early on it wasn’t uncommon for the media to say the OT was Ableton in a box. Forget that nonsense and you’ll likely be better off.

I think the OT is actually very simple if you are new to hardware sampling or are able to completely forget the paradigms used in hardware samplers over the last 30+ years. You might get pissed (US English or proper British English colloquial definitions are equally relevant here :joy:) if you’re an old school sampler user that is comfortable with keymaps, multi patches and velocity cross fades, etc and you happen to be someone that isn’t open to an entirely new approach.

I came from this old hardware background myself and was annoyed and confounded for a bit. I would recommend this: forget loops, buy this magic box and load up some single hit drum samples into the audio pool. Run track 8 as the master track and get busy. Add loops once you get your head around how to make it work as a simple XOX machine. Doing exactly this is what made all the difference for me. It has some bizarre limitations but is damn brilliant as is and I appreciate it for what it can do.

It isn’t often that we are blessed by something as powerful and unique as the Octatrack. I think Elektron made an instrument for the history books.

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#10

I must concur with konputa - treat the Octatrack as an xox drum machine and you’ll love it. The Octatrack is actually very underpowered as a traditional sampler. Elektron way over-hypes things and is basically anti-customer. Their silly tagline about “sampling as an artform” has little truth to it. Any old school sampler is way more powerful than the Octa for most things. The modern things the Octa is better at a computer is better still at. I still do like the Octatrack very much but not for the sampling.

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#11

That’s part of what attracted me to it.
I like to say it’s like Live Lite in a box.
Only 8 Audio tracks, 2 effects each
8 Midi Tracks
Macros for UI controls
And some other tasty tricks Live doesn’t even do that well, like automation, plocks, cool crossfade/scenes function.
It reminded me of an APC40 with a sequencer instead of a clip matrix.

For me the number one thing the OT is better at than any computer, is offering limitations in a well designed way.
It gives you a little bit of everything you need in a flexible way.

“Any old school sampler?” “Way more powerful?”
Sounds a little over-hyped

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#12

Feels more like Audiomulch sequenced by a tracker to me.

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#13
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#14

The OT is complex, but not complicated. The complexity is that it can do so many different tasks from being a XOX box like drum machine, an audio mixer and FX device, a looper, a MIDI sequencer, and a sample mangling machine.

Best way to get into it might be, to take one step after one step and have the manual ready, if you get lost longer then 15 minutes :wink:

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#15

I don’t know if it’s comparable in its obstacle as you said. I see on the blofeld what I don’t like and weird things I don’t want from it and sold it for that, even if at this price I do think it’s unbeatable.

On the other side the OT is like a Swiss army knife, it can do so much ! that the OT talks to a wider audience of different people… Musician who want to loop theirs guitars, DJ who want to introduce it in their live, producer who want to integrate it on their setup, performer who want to perform with it… (maybe there’s other scenario to add here I don’t have in mind now)

And OT can be their tool. Also, we all talking here about the OT in our own way to use it. That’s make thing complicate for the readers from the ground up. And learning the OT without to have in mind how you want to use it make things worst because you learn things you will even never ever use - maybe -. (but it’s interesting and can give ideas also…)

OCTATRACK is not complex, as @JuanSOLO said it does a lot. The Challenge here for learning is to be able to organize the learning. If you know nothing like zero knowledge in Music making well it can be overwhelming. But it’s up to you to start with easy things and keeping for later the more difficult parts.

I would like to speak about the TORAIZ SP-16 here, you can buy it, a CHILD can learn it in a afternoon, but well after you learn the basics you don’t have anything to cover, or other areas to experiment … it is up to everyone to know next, if the money invested is worth the purchase price. (of course I’m not speaking for Finger drummers with that… of course the SP16 is more appropriate to them)

To me in that regards the OT is the best investment globally regarding price and learning curve, but I write learning curve the positive way :wink:

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#16

He is easy to use, you can have fun, even if you are a noob, the fact is that as at school you will learn for a long time with him, you will find personnality in this machine and she will become a kind of exoskeleton ^^ Maybe more than Digitakt, with scenes for example, and arranger is a real + for creativity (for me the arranger is the most fun part of the Octatrack, a real compositor and remixer-editer tool).
:slight_smile:

#17

It really depends on your abilities to grasp Elektron’s workflow. I spent the first month I had mine in deep learning mode, trying to learn everything about it, and got very little music done. I bought the DT first as well, and got the OT to incorporate patterns I had in Maschine into a hardware set-up, but once I got it… I really got addicted to trying to figure out everything about it. After 3 months, I am getting my own workflow, and I am back to the DT using that as a drum sampler (which it is the most amzing drum sampler I’ve ever worked with) and the OT as a loop recorder, effects box, dj mixer. I am almost where I want to be…And when I get confused or stuck with the OT, I just switch to the DT… If you do have the DT already, I think they are a good pair.

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#18

I really enjoyed learning the OT starting out as stated above as an XoX drum machine. Part of the fun with it is even two years on there’s still things I haven’t explored -> I’m looking at you pick up machines. Mostly now I use it for midi sequencing and as a mixer/efx box, sampling loops as I go. Don’t worry about it, just enjoy the ride.

#19

I repeat myself over and over.
I never felt it was that difficult to learn it enough in order to be able to enjoy it, using it as a drum machine, playing live, building tracks, looping things. The midi sequencer is also pretty straight forward. I never could understand the problems many people had with sampling. It’s a combination of two buttons to record. And there is a well laid out record setup page. It was my first elektron machine and I didn’t read the whole f… manual, because there are a tons of videos and information in this forum here. Basically any problem you can imagine has been addressed here.

That said. It is very difficult to learn all of what this thing can do, and after years, I’m still far away from that.
But I don’t know everything about ableton or logic either, and I always enjoyed them and built tracks with them.
Just don’t try to grasp everything at once, just start to use it for certain purposes you missed in your setup. The rest will follow.

I think it’s a pity that many people abandon trying this machine because of it’s bad reputation, you read in so many forums.

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#20

Very very new to the elactronic music world and started with Elektron gear. The OT can so so mant things and for me it was a case of ‘what do i want/need to do with it’.
Theres other gear i have that i find easier to do certain things with but ive learnt quite a bit about the OT in mot much time.
I think there was a lot of scary stories mai ly because it is what it is - a very capable and complex machine, and one which is fun to discover work arounds on.
It is subjective i guess.

#21

I think everyone else has pretty much nailed it.

“Subjective” is the word to keep in mind here. If you approach the OT slowly and compartmentalise in the early days you will sit wondering why the hell folks think it’s complicated. It’s only when you try to do everything at once that your mind begins to melt and the temptation to chuck the OT out the window comes.

I’ve found that in it’s own way, the OT is the closest an electronic instrument has come to the experience of learning a traditional musical instrument. If you bought a piano/guitar/whatever you wouldn’t expect to be belting out amazing, original material from the get go but you can get going with a few chords fairly quickly and over time get increasingly proficient. Years down the line you’ll still be learning. That’s the OT right there.

I’m on my 4th time owning one and I still haven’t touched parts in any way! Or decided if I prefer track 8 as a master or not. Or really used static and pickup machines in any capacity! Of all the years I’ve had one in my possession I’ve probably used less than a tenth of what it’s capable of! But that’s what I find fascinating. It’s been a long journey getting to the place I’m at now but I feel delighted that I’ve ended up back where I started (OT was my first “serious” music purchase years ago).

In short, all that the OT can do is it’s blessing and its curse. As long as you remember the KISS approach when feeling a little out of depth then you’ll be grand.

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#22

I don’t think the problem is the fact it is hard, more do you want to invest the required time, when precious time can be used elsewhere, more productively? This was my case anyway

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#23

I found the Octatrack massively easy to learn, the only thing that bummed me was the way the RAM deletes your unsaved recordings at power cycle.

#24

OH I think to something else because people make a big mistake too it’s learning without stepping out to practice. If you not practice like a lot in between, you end up with forgotten what you’ve learn… if the OT stays for weeks to take dust, you switch on and say how we do that ? damn I can’t remember… That’s sort of things doesn’t help at all.

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#25

Interesting. I understand that.

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#26

What you say about the OT being the closest thing to a actual musical instrument is exactly the way I feel about it. I played saxophone as a child and the OT really reminds of those days- Having to remember which button combinations to press to make the sound happen and the amount of actual practice it takes. Sometimes I sit down and play even when I don’t want to (actually once I do, I forget that I didn’t want to and end up having a bunch of fun), but do anyways, just to keep my mind fresh in the mix.

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#27

I strongly agree with you, I think that you need to take a couple of week to play around with the OT, learn how it works, learn how you can make it work for you and find out what it does that you wouldn’t even have though about!

And then practice what you’ve learned, because the next time you come to your OT with an idea in mind you don’t want to have to go through the manual, or find that youtube tutorial to remember how to transition between patterns, or how to sample internaly (yes, I speak from experience :slight_smile: ).

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