Helllo folks,
Warning: long post, but for those who want to turn the ot into a highly interactive loop building machine: this is for you…
Here it goes…
-Setup a track (1) with a simple 4 tot the floor basedrum, just for reference.
-Setup a track (2) with a sliced percussion loop. Put triggers on 1, 3, 5, etc.
-Use random lfo’ s on track 2 to modulate the slice start parameter. This indeed creates chaos and that is what I am after.
-Increase the chaos by also randomly modulating the rate parameter. Other parameters to experiment with: retrigger and, perhaps, the pitch or feedback parameters of a comb filter.
-See to it that track 2 spits out a lot of random noises which move all over the frequency spectrum.
-Copy track 2 to track 3 and assign a different (sliced) sample to it. By doing so you only have to go through the lfo mayhem and other settings once. This saves a lot of dull work:)
-Shift the triggers of track 3 one step. The triggers are now on steps 2, 4, 6, etc.
-mute both tracks 2 and 3 and cue one of them. Now you have a lot of randomness spitting out on the cue output…
-On track 5, set up a pickup machine…settings:
recordlength: 4: yep: 4! more on this later…
qrec: 4: recording starts at step 1,5,9 or 13, etc.
qplay: 16: this ensures that playing the machine always starts on the first step of a bar.
source3: cue
-Set up an lfo to modulate the volume parameter in the amp page of the pickup machine. Get the settings so that it mimics a sidechain compressor.
-Set up a filter on the pickup machine and use an exponential lfo to mimic a filter envelope which is triggered on every step. Keep the cutoff frequency opened at this stage so you can hear what you are doing and refine it later…
Now then…
Hit play on your pattern, set focus to track 5 and hit [record ab] to start sampling.
Once you do this, the pickup machine records 4 steps and immediately turns to overdubbing. You will hear that this 4 step loop starts to build and build as the cued track feeds more and more random noises to it. The pickup machine will keep going until the noise gets very ugly.
To prevent this from happening, press [record cd] quickly: Now the 4 step loop simply plays and does not grow anymore. You can always turn back to overdub by pressing [record ab] and get back to playing again by pressing [record cd].
If you are overdubbing press [record ab] to switch to overwriting the 4 step loop.
Experiment and see to it that you understand how to switch from overdub to play to overdub to overwrite, etc. It will take some practicing, but it will pay off as you will see…
-Record a 4 step loop and press [record cd] to let it play without growing.
-Take a look at the sample by opening the sample editor.
-move out of the sample editor and press [track5+midi] The word “multiply” shows up on the screen.
Multiplying means that the ot copies the 4 step loop and pastes it after the original. So your 4 step loop has now turned into an 8 step loop. Verify this in the sample editor.
-Again press [track5+midi]. You now have a 16 step loop. Multiplying again doubles that to 32 -> 64, etc, etc. as long as the ram memory of the ot can hold it.
Since qrec is set to 4 steps, you can now let the sample grow but only on the steps that you want. If you press [record ab] on step 7, the overdubbing will start at step 9 and keeps going until you move out by pressing [record cd].
In other words: you can build a very abstract loop by switching between play and overdub on the steps that you want. This allows for a very interactive way of building insane loops in real time.
I frequently build crazy loops with this technique by starting out with a very repetitive 4 step loop and multiplying this to 8->16->32 steps and then using the play<->overdub switch to add variation in specific portions of the loop. The filter on the pickup machine ensures that the noise keeps in control and the lfo on the volume adds a nice sidechain effect.
Some refinements:
-the crossfader:
Setup a scene which lowers the gain parameter on the pickup machine to -3dB or a little more to taste. Portions of your loop that run out of control volumewise can be dampenend a little by moving the crossfader to that scene. You can even do this while the sample editor is open and see it happening in real time.
-the crossfader:
setup two scenes. On the first scene you set xvol parameter of track 2 to max, while xvol of track 3 is min. On the other scene you reverse this. Now the crossfader fades between tracks 2 and 3 as you like it and since the steps on track 3 and 2 are each one step apart, this creates nice effects.
-live input:
For the modular heads out there: use whatever synths you have and let them feed the live inputs with the same kind of randomized noises to feed your pickup machine.
-scenes and chords:
Put a single cycle on track two and program some triggers.
copy to track 3 and copy to track 4.
Use the scenes to modulate the pitch parameters of all these three tracks. Now you can play chords while the pickup machine records it all in a live fashion…
Once you have a loop you like to keep: move into the sample editor of the pickup machine and save the to the cf card, auto assign it to a free flex slot and now any flex machine can be used to mangle it even further.
M.
