Listening to the evolving tape loops of William Basinsky and wondered how to set something similar up on the octa.
Primarily, starting with some source material, which is continiously recorded anew/played back so that any changes to it (ie through some subtle distortion or filtering) would affect it now and next time around, possibly also, if I slow down the tempo for a while during playback, the recorder loop becomes longer as pauses are added to it…
any idea how to achieve this?
To sum up you want to overdub the loop with modulations ?
Flex can be interesting for overdub, disabling timestretch, disabling Filters Fx, set to None or another Fx, because after 20 or more records it gets muddy. Add microtiming if needed.
Modulate Rate, eventually pitch, but it can stop direct playback.
A nice tape FX :
Delay send = Max
Feedback = 0
Time = 1
Dir = 0 (Fx Page 2)
Modulate Time, Base, Width, Feedback…
Not sure if you can change tempo/record time easily, and keep the same loop.
Cool. Will try to set this up with flex once I’m back “at the office”. I was thinking of the delay for this purpose, but I think in order to achieve a loop/drone at around 20-30 seconds the delay time is not sufficient. I will try this time:1 trick however.
Regarding the loop duration, if I play the flex machine without starting the sequencer (ie: one shot track) with loop enabled, it should loop even if the length of the sample changes? I’m not sure however how to dynamically adjust the time of the recorder as it may kick in on the same time each “round”
Me neither. Don’t think it’s possible.
I tested with Pickups and Overdub, the time=1 trick works too. You can’t use pitch.
I find it more convenient with Flex and One Shot Rec Trigs you manually arm.
You can change Scale Per Track to 1/8 to make longer records with One Shot Rec Trigs.
but…if you have a pickup machine running, and while its overdubbing, you nudge the tempo down slightly, so the result would be that the loop becomes longer then next time round?
Did you try it ?
Not yet, day-to-day got in the way. Let me report back in a day or two 
a few thoughts that may help:
i never use pickup machines but i suspect they’d give you other options.
I’d rather say less options, compared to flex.
Very interesting. I will try this out as well. How is William Basinskys workflow to create these evolving loops? What ist he basically doing?
Pickup machines do allow for live monitoring on the track you are overdubbing on, and if you reduce the “Gain” parameter, it works as a loop decay or fade (some call it “loop aging”). I’m not sure if this will help, but it is a unique feature of PMs (along with overdubbing) compared to flex on the OT.
Overdub is possible with Flex, and I think the ability to use Pitch, without timestretch, let you make nice tape Fx…
Nice! I tried the overdubbing technique with Flex once awhile ago. It was fiddly for me and didn’t give quite the results I was looking for, but that was likely user error.
Fiddly it is. 
Can’t wait to test with Rec Trig Conditions.
Welcome random record lengths !
Mixer is key, he uses 3 decks (portable kind) usually all fitted with tape loops of various lengths without the reels which are guided using D size batteries (tape is looped around) which he also moves around to modulate the sound. For his seminal pieces (Disintegration loops) he found some old loops dating back from his early recording days in the 80s of various radio stations playing classical music and decided to digitise them, whilst doing so, the tapes started to fall apart due to age and poor storage conditions, he recorded it all in realtime and mixed later with reverb etc.