I would like to sample all of my basslines from my Minibrute to the Octatrack. The reason is because of the limited external midi control over the Minibrute, and I don’t have time to do all the live tweaking on it because I am doing other stuff with my hands most of the time.
How would you go about sampling the bassline to get the best results? Would you sample the raw output with the filter all the way open on the Minibrute, and then use the filters on the Octatrack? Or would you try to sample the loop like it is intended to sound from the start?
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I would prefer the “non-destructive” way, i.e., sampling unfiltered, as long as no special characteristics of the MBs filter are required. Just because you can add more filter on the OT, but you can’t “unfilter”. If the sonic result is the one you want is for you to decide though, can’t help you there.
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For my AR I’m usually recording an unfiltered 3-5 sec. note to apply filtering afterwards and to play the bass chromatic as a sample. If the Mini Brute filter sounds better to your ears while for example with a filter envelope it adds an extra characteristic to your sound, you could record the filtered sound for the cost of some flexibility in shaping the sound later on the OT and having better abilities to reusing it.
In general I prefer to keep recordings pure whenever possible for more abilities to work with it while designing the concrete whenever it makes sense with whatever effect inside or outside the AR/OT. Of course there’s also a difference in playing a rare sample chromatically and recording a full sequence played on your synth, which can make a noticable difference the more your notes vary accross your played scale.
I’d recommend to try it out and hear the difference then finding the compromise between flexibility and sound.
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The other option would be to sample a long tweak session (say 64 bars) load it to a static machine and use slices to pick a section, it is a little more work and planning but might be more flexible? The advantage with this approach is that you can chop 64 bars into 64 slices and jump around in a measured or chaotic way. For example you could assign a scene to have random LFO select slice number, and so on.
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And the must is to use Megabreak to morph between different bassline settings you’ve recorded. I’ve maid an exemple :
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and then like darenager suggested record a slightly longer version to then resample or resequence via slice access sequence with a Flex machine, perhaps to then resample later, and load to a Static machine.
during the re-recording, could use old-school recording engineer technique of “volume riding”, slightly attenuating or increasing volume during the re-sampling of the bassline snippet reseqeunce, for the purpose of groove, fitting into the mix, virtual manual compression.
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What about recording both filtered and unfiltered? If you’re using a static machine the length of the sample won’t matter so much.
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Or… buy a bass synth that will allow MIDI control 
No more hassle…
Well if you like the way it sounds then recording dry with filter open to the OT won’t be right, it will sound different and no matter what you do in the OT you won’t replicate the brutes SP filter. The filter is half the magic of the brute.
I’d record it the way you like it AND have a second version of it with filter wide open, then flip between the two as and when using a scene or trigs.
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Apparently you can use OT’s CC1 and Aftertouch to control MB’s Filter Cutoff and other parameters.
Yes i am actually already using the CC1 on cutoff with a FCB1010. Perhaps should have written limited midi control… The thing that I am missing the most is perhaps midi control over the sustain/release time. And to do that manually while playing other stuff with your hands is quite hard. I have thought about using my nose or chin. Or the create some kind of mechanism to attach a long stick to my shoulder, but it is a quite hard and inaccurate technique haha…
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That is true. I really like the filter on the Minibrute 
Thanks for the advise!
That is actually a quite nice approach. To play through the whole song and sample the whole bassline and then chop it up to respective pattern.
I’ve read a bit about the Megabreak technique but I can’t see the main difference between this and the @darenager solution in this situation.
Can you unlight me ?
ps : I don’t own an OT (yet)
Well the megabreak scans though flex slots and slices so upto 64x64 different possible audio on any step (if you use 64 flex slots each sliced into 64 pieces) The downside being you would use half of your flex slots, ok for short samples though.
The static slice method I mentioned earlier only needs to use 1 static slot, although you could use more if you wanted to.
Flex slots are loaded into memory, static stream from card.
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Hi @darenager Yep, slot consuming, and yes main advantage of Megabreak : 64 loop versions can be changed at each step.
I wonder if with your method it would be possible to change start points on the fly as it is possible with wavetables (slice mode off). 
Don’t have OT to test…
I don’t think it would be the same due to card access time, still never know till try it, not able to either at present but one for the future to try.
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Thanks @sezare56 and @darenager for your answers.
I’m a bit afraid by the slot consumption of the megabreak method. If I want to play a 1h live show I’ll be probably running out of flex slots.
I’m looking for a good method to replicate the natural interaction you could have while playing with the parameters of a synth but using already recorded material on the octatrack.
So let’s say I have a 4 bars loop and 4 variations of this loop :
- The normal loop
- Another one a bit angrier, with filter opened wider and more delay feedback
- A calm one with shorter envelope
- And a super deconstructed one
I then make a file with those 4 loops so I get a big 16 bars loop that I slice 4 times.
Is it possible to have a scene that allow me to “browse” this loop in time ? Like this I can go from the normal loop to the angry one and then back to the calm one, everything in time and only using one pattern ?
Sorry if this has already been discuss, feel free to point me an already open post about this.
Parts are your friend here. Same pattern, different sample. Change part on the fly, and it is pretty much what you’re looking for.
And yes, you can assign the crossfader/scenes to start from a different slice. So you change the scene or move the crossfader to acces the different loops
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