So I finally pulled the trigger and bought a used octatrack, after a long time playing and loving my Digitakt.
There’s many things I’m missing on the Octa - Pattern mutes, Sequencer level mutes…
But the most ‘annoying’ thing until now is not having BPM per pattern!
I searched for it and discovered it can be done in Arranjer mode, but since I’m new to the Octatrack I’m a little overwhelmed right now.
When I play live, I like to decide when I change patterns, but it would be nice to have the right BPM setting.
Is it possible in the Arranjer mode to only dictate the BPM? Can I only use the Arranjer mode to do that, and still perform live without the Arranjer?
…don’t be afraid of the arranger mode…it has clear bpm choice to nail down in each pattern row…
and u can jump in and out of the arranger at any given time…always keepin’ the ball rollin’…
no worries…it’s a truu music instrument and u’ll get used to it…
You could set each row to loop infinitely, so instead of changing patterns with the pattern button, you change them in the Arranger. So you basically have your BPM per pattern.
Also mutes in the Arranger don‘t cut off the audio like with manually muting tracks.
But there are other workarounds, using scenes for muting, or simply using amp volume.
I just name my parts with the BPM and dial the tempo in manually. More flexible
When you hold Function, you can change the tempo and it will only come into effect when you release the Function button btw.
Frankly, for a musician there is no need to have the tempo automated imho, unless of course you‘re using it as a compositional tool, but the arranger does that perfectly.
Don‘t get me wrong, I mean no offence, but rather want to encourage you!
It might take a little to get used to and if you really can‘t live without BPM per pattern and you can’t really get along using the arranger you can also sync your OT to a Digi
The only thing that bugs me from time to time is that the mutes cut off the audio. Even now that I’ve become pretty good at hitting the button at the right moment. The aforementioned workaround using the amp vol parameter means that I can‘t p-lock amp volume for dynamics/velocity.
Ofc using scenes on amp volume (for scenes is a dedicated parameter called ‘xvol’ which appears on the amp page when you press scene a or scene b) works, because scene locks overpower p-locks, but using scenes for track mutes and different combination of tracks mutes can get convoluted quickly.
Heck, it‘s even possible to set up a square wave lfo with speed zero, trig mode=trig which effectively turns the lfo depth into your amp volume control and again, lfos overpower p-locks…
I guess what I‘m trying to say is, don‘t worry, there‘s always a way on the Octatrack, usually multiple ways.
I’ve found a way to do this that works pretty well for me. I’ve been working on a loose definition for my scenes across patterns. Every 4th scene is a mute scene; so in my case I know that scenes 2, 6, and 10 will always mute tracks in some way. The last 4 scenes I reserve for more global effects, so 14 is less predictably defined.
Related, I’ve found I much prefer to arrange scenes from left to right, so that they are all A/B agnostic. I find this works much better for me than 1 - 8 → A and 9 - 16 → B, much easier to keep track and encourages a more fluid way of working across scenes.
Yeah, I actually set up my scenes in a similar way. Ofc for recording I’m not always sticking to my scheme, but for performance all scenes are set up similarly across all banks and go from left to right, mostly only using scene b with scene a muted.
What I meant is that when I want to have not only single tracks ready to be muted with a scene (e.g. one scene mutes kick, one mutes snare, one mutes hats, one mutes thru machine etc.), but also combinations like mute kick and snare, mute kick and hats, mute kick, snare and hats, solo tracks etc. that takes quite a lot of scenes for a simple task.
Yeah that’s fair, myself I probably wouldn’t use a scene to mute just a single track. Kick for example shouldn’t have to worry about tails too often, so most of the time i’d just mute the track directly. In a pattern with kick + snare i’d have scene 2 mute them both, then if I wanted to mute hats at the same time as either i’d fade them with LVL. I think it’s important to combine all the available options, things end up simpler that way imo.
Naming parts with BPM is nice, adding the pattern as an Arranger row is barely longer, 10 seconds more maybe…
The advantage is that all your patterns can be loaded in a project with many patterns.
There are reminders to describe rows.
Instead of an additional loop row, you can set repeat to 64, and length to 512 : more than 1 hour at 120 bpm.
All Electrons having bpm per pattern, Octatrack’s turn, no ? Even with it, I think Arranger would be still usefull to recall patterns in a complicated (messy?) project…
Thank you very much, yeah I’m definitely in the right direction, I just get overwhelmed very quickly when I can’t see the full picture at first glance I will try your tips for sure, cheers!!
