Hi all!
I’m wondering if someone has a tutorial for how to use single cycle waves to use the octatrack as a synth.
I’ve searched but haven’t found an answer.
Thanks!
in Playback Setup, turn Loop on. set Rate to Pitch
in Playback Main, use Rate to set your initial octave: 64, 32 (one octave below), 16 (two octaves below), or 8 (three octaves below). 0 = silence.
in Amp, set Hold and Release to taste
if the note sounds out of tune, adjust Pich and/or Rate on the Playback Main page.
have fun!
Also, you can use any type of sample. Go into audio editor, and play with the loop. Zoom in and find a single cycle, move the loop start around to find different waveforms, loop length will change the pitch etc…
To get more in depth, when you want to use it as a basic wavetable synth what I usually do is use Part 4 for synthesis.
I just load up every track with a different single cycle wave, put effects, change pitch, raise and lower volumes, filter, etc. Much like a wavetable.
Then I just resample the main out and now drop that back into the Part I was using for the song, pitch, fuck up some more, go crazy.
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I get artifacts when pingpong looping a wave. any clue how to get rid of this?
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Like you get clicks? Just turn up attack. Not sure if you mean that
regarding wavetables, inspektor gadjet has created sample chains of adventure kid’s waveforms at (http://www.inspektorgadjet.com/item/waveforms-library/). 4400 waves total, all tuned to C, so you don’t have to use the Rate and Pitch knobs to get them in tune.
in Playback Setup, turn on loop and set LEN to SLIC
in Playback Main, use Slice to choose a starting waveform and use LEN to 1 to play one single-cycle wave or another number to set how many slices will loop (in other words, how long your wavetable is). try a random lfo to modulate start.
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Thank you for all the replies!
I got it working, but most of the sounds I get are a bit to low, pitch-wise.
Is it possible te get a higher sound, so you can use it as a lead-synth?
Once again, thank you!!
Try setting the LEN to TIME then shorten it…it will pitch up, but you won’t have a big range
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Like you get clicks? Just turn up attack. Not sure if you mean that [/quote]
pingponging a single cycle wave is not a good thing to do in a conventional sense anyway
for a single harmonic (ie sine) wave if you ping pong that you end up creating a whole bunch of crazy harmonics which swamp and repitch the note you thought you had, plus i’m not sure the OT was set up with this synth style single cycle reversal in mind, even doing ping pong on a pickup machine creates horrible glitches - either way, it’s worth keeping in mind what’s actually happening - the two graphs below show the waves, one ping-ponged and the harmonics - your note which was a C e.g. before is something else now and it sounds nasty - i’m no theorist, it’s just a screen grab from the software i’m putting together to auto create kit sample chains and tuned/drawable single cycle wave chains and other sample prep goodies
quite what the OT does at the rebounds i am not sure, it may not be as simple as i’ve presented, ie the wave may effectively become 1 sample short
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To get higher pitch just pitch up, resemble, pitch up resample as many times as needed. This creates artifacts the more you do it
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Like you get clicks? Just turn up attack. Not sure if you mean that [/quote]
No, it’s weird. I was getting this yesterday too. It was on a Flex channel too so it wasn’t CF card buffering. It does this high pitched buzzing at the sample end, where it turns around the playback from forward to backward. Didn’t seem to happen at the beginning.
I should come up with some reproduction steps and submit a bug… don’t let me stop anyone else from submitting one for it though!
(edit: Also, this was not a single cycle wave. It was a nasty old kick drum.)
avantronica: thanks for your reply, very informative indeed. I should have pointed out that the artifact (which is exactly as described by license) appears with all sorts of pingponged files.
I usually take a synth stab, trim it to its middle part and pingpong it for some rhytmical pad sound.
I will turn this issue into a new thread. if it’s a bug, it’s more likely to get attention by Elektron
Probably obvious but a couple of notes on this:
- Pitch up to a whole octave at a time to reduce both the number of interpolation artifacts and the amount of head scratching when you try to figure out what pitch/rate to set the thing to.
- Make sure you turn timestretch off unless you want LOTS of artifacts
- Use powers of 2 for the rate parameter to switch octaves. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 - just like the drawbars on an organ
This should clear up any remaining confusion / questions 
Cheers !
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Okay,
This sounds absolutely fantastic. Can you be silent and accept my money, please?
^ It’s something that’ll take a bit more time to finish, it’s a hotch-potch of sample prep stuff that is mostly time consuming by other routes, but there’re some unique aspects to it - the challenge for me is partly focus (getting bogged down in UI tinkering) and finding a satisfactory way to distribute if i get it done - so no promises but good to hear there may be a few who could see a use to merit getting on with it quicker
This sounds like a great helping tool for all OT users.
I hope you find the time/motivation to finish it up and release it for the rest of us.
^ i’ve lost about a month of continuity following a dead mac crisis - i’ve just about got most things in order on another, but my workflow (& elektron time) has been hit - one aspect i’m thinking about is usable time stretching algorithms to help build up files automatically for this method, there are a few other hurdles, but i’m hoping for some time on it soon, general interest noted, i’ll do my best to realise it !