How hard is it to use an Octatrack?

Pitch sound the same as Akai with timestretch off, except one octave up max.
What old Akai with good reatime timestretch are you talking about ?

It’s does absolutely not sound the same. And I did not talk about Akai timestretch, I mentioned the pitching. I use a s3200.

It can sound bad with timestretch on. That’s pitch shifting. With timestretch off, it sounds normally.
Maybe you didn’t disable timestretch in OT.
By default, timestretch is activated.

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I see - thank you :slight_smile: I did always disable timestretch. But still, without it, the pitching is kinda weak.

I had Mpc 2000Xl, 2 Mpc 1000, still have Mpc 500, I didn’t notice pitch differences, except max pitch, limited to one octave up in Ot…
Possible it doesn’t sound the same.

This is a good thing to point out, that with timestretch off pitch works like slowing or speeding up a record, I have seen a few DJ OTists wondering about this…

The old s-series is a different ballgame. Big and nowhere near as fun as the OT to work on, but the sound is killer.

I forgot I had an S5000 ! No realtime filtering after keypress. Ot is more user friendly compared to it, for sure.
I wonder how the sample frequency is changed, maybe there an explanation.

I read an explanation once, but I forgot the technical details.

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You don’t hear that one much… :smile:

(Since I’m on this thread I will say however that as a user the OT is quite friendly to me)

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I found the OT a delight to work on :+1:

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The OT is perfect for what I’m up to, I got it on a whim and had no idea it would do the things it does for me now, I get along with it very well!
It’s funny, the OT fits in to my specific workflow very well, and a lot of the things that bug people about it I actually prefer…

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Encountering the same frustration that caused me to give up on the OT before. But I’m determined to get past it. I mean, the problem to some degree is that there aren’t tutorials for most things, and so you try to do something, and don’t even know what to look up in the bleepin’ manual. I traded up from the digitakt, and did not have these problems with the midi sequencer there, as I recall. But here - I press the midi button, and I’m on track 1. If I select steps in grid record mode, they play as expected, I can use parameter locks. So far so good. But when I unselect the record key, midi seems to be sent on a different channel per trig key, and live record similarly doesn’t work. But I’m not finding the solution in the manual, because they don’t ever seem to anticipate that users might not know what to look up? I had a friend who is good with this recommend that I just read the manual in order from beginning to end, but you know, that seems like it shouldn’t be necessary with a well written manual. Totally stuck right now, not knowing what the problem is, what to look up, and wanting to throw this bleeping thing out the window again.

EDIT: ok. Have to choose Chromatic trigger mode. I’m not sure I would have found that, except that I had this vague memory that I did encounter this on the digitakt, but that at least there there was a dedicated button for it. Now, why exactly don’t they mention this in the midi sequencer section? A typical problem with the manual. The functionaity is great, but finding it…that’s another thing altogether. One problem solved On to the next one. I again would answer - the difficulty in using the octatrack isn’t really in using it per se, it’s in finding the answers to your questions that inevitably arise when you’re trying to learn it.

It’s best just to take it slow and expect to frustrated by some stuff in order to not be frustrated by it…
There’s plenty of people here willing to shed light on the ol Octatracks ways, and plenty of past topics here to search through and read when your stuck in a corner.

The manual is pretty vague, it explains all the functions but it doesn’t say much at all about how to use and combine them to make music… :joy:
Moog manuals for example are usually very good at explaining how parameters work and give examples of musical settings, and even background on the synthesis techniques…

I will say that however awkward the manual is, the info is indeed in there. I answer tons of OT questions on here and understand it very well, I learned everything from the manual. I’ve probably searched it hundreds of times and have read it front to back at least half a dozen times…

The Octatrack eventually makes sense, slowly pieces of it sink in to your brain… You just gotta keep at it. I stared at mine a lot slightly intimidated when I first got it. It took a bit just to get it to make a sound and I was proud… :joy: I’ve spent hours chasing down weird behaviors and things that seemed like bugs, have had epic jams stopped dead in their tracks and me spiraling into bug hunting. I’m sure glad I did that though because now I get to experience the sonic rewards of my endeavors. I could have tossed mine out a window a bunch of times, but I persevered and it was worth it… I’d do it again…

Now it’s a few years later and I just cruise around the thing, I don’t really have to think at all about how it works or how to use it, I just think of ideas for it or simply fire it up and jam away… There’s still a bunch of stuff for me to learn about it too but nothing left that stops me from doing anything, just more things to add…

You’ll hit some roadblocks but just do your best to figure it out and if it’s not happening ask a very specific question on here and someone will get you past that roadblock… You’ll hit a few more but eventually you’ll be cruising.
Best of luck!

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so - i’m curious. where does it explicitly say that in order to live record a midi track, you need to set the trigs to chromatic mode?

Oh I don’t know, I learned it from there, maybe I just pieced it together. Like I said the manual is really vague and doesn’t explain how to use things together, but I’m sure it explains chromatic mode and also live record, the functions…
Also like I said if you have any questions feel free to ask us…

Basically I was trying to acknowledge that the manual is super vague and it’s frustrating, but also say that the info is in there, and also give you some hope and support by saying we all go through that part, and I offered to help and encouraged asking things on the forum before you get frustrated…
Maybe that’s not how you read my reply, I don’t know…

I appreciate it. I can;t ask a question every time I get frustrated - i have to give it a bit of time to see if I can figure out the answer first i was just quibbling a bit - sure - they explain chromatic mode, and they explain the midi sequencer, but you need to know that chromatic mode is necessary to record in certain ways, and I don’t think that info is in there. And I’ve encountered that with other things also.

but hell - yeah - people are quite helpful here, and I appreciate it.

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Page C-1 , Note Mapping.

Chromatic trig keys sent to the auto channel or the MIDI channel
of the active track can, when in LIVE RECORDING mode or holding
a note trig, be used to enter note trigs with locked PTCH param-
eters.

But I’m almost 100% sure you don’t have to be in chromatic mode to live record MIDI data from an external controller, just from the trig buttons themselves.

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ok. that would be great. Obviously I was set up so that when I pressed individual keys, it changed the track/channel, not the actual note sent out. I’d love to learn how to play the trig keys to play midi notes without being in chromatic mode. I realize that just because that’s how I solved the problem doesn’t mean that it’s the only way.

EDIT: the thing is, that when you’re first learning the OT (certainly at the stage I’m at) the quoted passage doesn’t necessarily give you the info that this is how the chromatic trig mode functions. I’m not even sure at this point how what I’m trying to do (just play the keys and send out the individual notes) is the same as “locked PTCH parameters”. Maybe it is, but this is part of the problem - the OT lingo is so embedded in the docs that they don’t necessarily tell you that this is what you need to know and how. Yeah - I saw that passage, and I didn’t infer from it that to play the keys I needed to be in chromatic mode.