I have an OP-1 too.
Are you expecting to play the OT keys like a keyboard? Yeah, it takes a lot more work to do the same on the OT.
I’ve only seen one person walk up to stage with just one OT, and do his whole set with only that. Impressive as hell I must admit. Usually what happens is the OT owner ends up adding an OP-1, or a Volca, or some other external thing; but that comes with time and discovering what workflow one likes and all that.
The OT might very well take hours, weeks, months, or a year to get used to…
But after that you 
to be able to live record slices, slots, or chromatic to make a melody lickidy split… 
(With all the disadvantages mentioned by using samples instead of a real synth, but also with a bunch of advantages of being a sample in the OT instead of a real synth)
Not one person has ever been ready for an OT. It just calls your name, you bring one home, and it decides if it likes you or not… 
I’m pretty sure it’s not even up to you, the OT makes the call to whether it stays with you or not…
There’s only one way to find out… 
Cheers guys. Heres my thoughts. I will write bassline/melody/drum pattern on vst. Then import samples. Now I can have fun. Once their written i can do with them what i want. Then back to Ableton for editing and post production.
With the Digitone i was drawn towards what you are mostly saying in that its easier and much quicker. Im slow anyway lol so speed isnt going to frustrate me. But easier? Well thats why i asked. Will the octatrack drag me in or not.
I think your right. Nobody is prepared or ready. The OP-1 was a steep learning curve. Its something you grow into and learn as you go.
I’m on the fence with you…
I’m not going to give any specifics, only strange vague innuendos…
Feel it out…
The Merlin guide is pretty good. Is there going to be an updated one? I love manuals!
I would start with the OT MKII, and then add the Digitone at a later date
They make a lovely pair.
I’ve been making all my sounds on the DN and then I use my OT MKII to offload DN tracks. It allows me to apply the bigger unison DN sound with more voices to more tracks (while sampling), and the pair turns my DN into a 12 track beast with 6 outputs and some fun scene trickery for live use.
Of course you’d be able to do this with an OT MKII and any other synth. That’s why I suggest the OT first. Getting good with the OT and with no other distraction pays dividends.
FWIW, my most productive work has come from pairs of Elektron sequencers. MD+A4, MM+AR, AR+A4… but I am finding the OT MKII + DN pair to be the absolutely most powerful and interesting sounding. Either on their own are powerful enough to get a track started and nearly fully hashed out without the other. Adding the other just accelerates the finishing process.
one thing to keep in mind if you don’t currently have any synths to work with the octatrack mk2 you are a bit more limited in chromatic range than the other current electron products which makes me feel octatrack works better in a larger set up and having to resample too often for more chromatic range is a bit too much of a pain. Lots of the features on it really only come to life when incorporating other instruments as well. I think Digitone, A4, Digitakt or Rytm would be nicer options if you’re looking to write more melody in them just due to note range. Pretty curious about the Rytm MK2 new bass synth once that update comes around.
Imo you need to complement any sampler with a synthesiser.
Trying to mimic a synths functionality with a sampler just doesn’t cut it, as you lose the specific synthesis parameters necessary to tailor the sound in any way
Thanks. Thats really helpful my friends. I can see the logic behind neding two devices at least.
It s now down to
Octatrack 2 and vsts
Octatrack 2 and Digitone
Digitone and Digitakt
If i use vsts to create samples plus my Sony field Recorder would that be better? How do people on here feel about vsts like Diva? I have Luftrums help with incredible patches. If i used them as thats what im used to i would have more time to mess around on the Octatrack. On the other hand the Digitone has it already mostly done. I like the idea of learning the Octa without distractions. Plus i know its inept but i really like those backlit buttons and Sample generator for randomization. Plus i hear sequencer triggers are so helpful.
Thankyou again all this is really helpful.
OT + VSTs + field recordings … that’s really enough to get started.
And Diva is a nice beast 
Recommanded !
Coming from the OP-1, if you thought that was a learning curve, then maybe DT & DN are more suited, I think they’re closer to the OP-1 than the OT in terms of fun factor and ease of use. That said, just buy one. You’re not going to really know how things sit with you until you have them in your hands. If it was me I’d go out and buy a DN - like the OP-1 it’s also a 4-track, so nothing lost there (me personally the DN is far more accessible and approachable than working with the OP-1’s tape metaphor), then if you feel limited by the 4 tracks, grab a DT, get used to the Elektron workflow and sync and all that stuff, then if you’ve really hit the wall grab an OT. And anywhere along that path you can always sell one or any of the units.
The Octatrack learning curve is steeper than OP1, but certainly not as difficult as say fluently learning a DAW from scratch, if you will be making loops and sequences in the DAW to replay them as samples in the Octatrack then it could be a nice platform for experimentation and further mangling of those samples. If I was to work like this I’d probably make 1-8 bar loops in the DAW, and make variations and combinations of them in the DAW, render them out, so that you have a bunch of loops to work with. Then I’d probably make some chains* of melodic sounds in the key of your song, some drum chains.
It would be a fair amount of work, probably 1-2 hours to make all those, and load them into the Octatrack, then assign them in the slots/tracks of Octatrack, set fx, then lay out the trigs to create your basic parts probably another 1-2 hours, but then once you have done all of this it can be quite quick to come up with variations using copy/paste, scenes, trig conditions, slot locks, p-locks etc.
*If you want to do melodic sequencing on the Octatrack and are concerned about the limited pitch range of the samples then you can make a chain of pitches then use slices to sequence them, you can use trig mode set to slice to play melodic stuff on the slices, it can be an interesting way of coming up with stuff you might not think to play on a regular keyboard, each slice need not represent linear chromatic pitches, you could even purposely make the chains in a set scale or assign them randomly within a scale to keep it interesting. Of course once you have a chain of even only 12 slices, you can still p-lock pitch and octave, so it isn’t as limiting as it can seem. Just bear in mind that you won’t be able to play more than 1 slice at a time, so for example if you want to do chords make a bunch of chords as the source samples in your chain.
Ehh… I don’t agree with that. Like it really depends on your work flow. The sample will of course be inferior and sound quality, and will not be edited the same way as it can be straight from the synthesizer. But I can think of number of things you can do on a sampler that you can’t on a synth.
It really depends on what you care about and what is missing from your setup. To me, VSTs are no where as fun as a live instrument, mostly because of playability rather than sound quality. Sound quality wise, I don’t think there would be much of a difference. It’s all about the playability to me at least.
Why not Digitakt & Digitone? That’s about the same price as the Octatrack, unless you want the Octatrack specifically.
Might be fun to play with this myself. As a monophonic sample-based synth, I wouldn’t expect Monolith to replace my Monologue, MS-20 Mini, or Microbrute, but could be fun. I guess I should look into getting a bigger CF card for my OT though.
Yeah, this could work for you - this workflow seems to be proven for others here.
I would go for a second hand Digitakt.
Way easier to play samples chromatically, and it sounds really great.
Plus it’s a good way to learn Elektron sequencer.
If you’re ok with synthesis only, Digitone is the most versatile synth I own, it covers a lot of territories. But from what you say I feel like DT would suit you better.
OT is a very awesome machine but it took me a whole year to find my way with it, whereas Digi series workflow is more focused.
You might also have a look at AR that does samples and synthesis
Thanks - nice tutorial/review. I have an idea for a duet between OT-Monolith and MS-20-Mini, even with the limitations that he mentions - eg. Chromatic mode seems to not work that well with this. Later on, mess with darenager’s chain idea.
Could lead to more fun and educational experiences with the OT.
Time to order that 64GB CF card…