Long time lurker, never before posted. But since I bought my first elektron gear, a as new octatrack I thought I’d say hi and give you some of my thoughts and ask a few questions.
First of, I’ve been watching a lot of youtube videos so I have some knowleage about how the machine operates. But I never touched one before today. My biggest concerns was that the sequencer would have a steep learning curve, but to be honest. It functions exactly how one would imagine.
I started with just laying a simple four on the floor kick and a couple of minutes later I’m finding myself para-locking steps and using the scene locking and rocking out some weird berghain-ish dark techno. I’m loving it, and the best part is that I know that I’m just touching the wraping paper of what this machine is capable of.
So for some questions:
Where do you guys find your samples? I feel that the stock ones wasn’t for the type of music I want to make.
I have a MFB-522, should I wait to hook it up for some days/weeks and get to know the machine well, or would you recommend using external HW right from the start?
I’ve already switched my current night book for the manual, but are there some other resources I should check out?
What was the first thing you did when you got your hands on the octatrack?
I initially thought of getting the Octatrack for looping. I lurked and watched the reports of disappointment in its various shortcomings in that department. I then got an Octatrack after hearing Anders Bergdahl’s Soundcloud tracks - he was using it for looping, but he was also exploiting the things it can do that no other hardware device can do. I was thus inspired to follow his footsteps.
I notice other people get an Octatrack, then want to use it as a drum machine. I think it’d be fun to use it that way, but I’m not really into trying to make it sound like a TR-808/TR-909, or to play acoustic-sounding drums. I’d rather load samples of interesting sounds I’ve recorded just walking around somewhere, and manipulate the sounds into drums. Or load in a normal sounding song, and mangle the hell out of it.
One fellow Elektronaut who also inspires me is Allerian. I love what he did with My Little Pony.
Take comfort in knowing it will be a long time before you get bored of this machine. It can be so many things. Lately, I’ve been enjoying live sampling my bandmates and spitting back out new melodies and rhythms with those inputs while jamming, and still having several other tracks to add pre-worked samples. Makes it hard to tell where one instrument stops and the other one starts (in a good way, usually).
I agree with GovernorSilver: Allerian is the shit. Never disappoints. He does some great exploration stuff and is very generous with what he’s discovered. And there is a lot to be discovered with the Octatrack. Reading the manual before bed used to put me to sleep instantly though
Oh god… I did this when I first got the Octatrack, then had a dream (nightmare) I was about to play a show with it and had no idea what to do. Surely the performing equivalent of the turning-up-to-class-in-your-underwear one.
although i haven’t heard disappointed reports regarding the OT’s looping capabilities, personally i like a little less than what comes with most loops. Oftentimes, there is just a section of a loop i enjoy, so use trigless parameter locks to automate the volume.
then in the search for minimal drum beat creative options, i started using one-shots. that is a lot of fun and well worthwhile. it is also possible to “sample-lock” a trig, whereby a different sample is trigged for just that trig in the sequence.
currently i am using a combination of one-shot samples, and single hits within loops, setting the “Start” “Hold” and “Rel” parameters to isolate single one-shots from within loops.
this yields worlds of variation … copy the Pattern, paste to another, copy the Part and paste to a new Part … then try slightly adjusting a couple of tracks’ Start and Hold parameters …
The very same sequence starts to sound very different, very wonky, and occasionally wonderful, when adjusting parameters of loops that are being used as one-shots in a pattern. With some careful rotary tweaking, the “one-shots” become “two-and-a-half shots starting 17% before the beat” … whoa! oh yeah.
I got along by learning just one or two things at a time, instead of trying to learn everything at once. As I said, I learned the live looping (Pickup Machine) functions first, then learned how to slice the looping audio and play the slices with the sequencer. Then I learned basic parameter locking (usually called “p-lock” here), and basic usage of effects.
Then I drank from the figurative fire hose that Allerian gave us at the Midwest OT workshop. Next thing for me is how to use the Scene feature. I “know” it “on paper” - but don’t yet have the real knowledge that comes from using it a lot.
Ortner, welcome to one of the more complex yet rewarding machines ever created. You have got the right idea reading the manual through and through. Three+ years in I still reread the manual all the time.
Once you get a sampling workflow licked, you will build a sample library quickly (I get a lot of samples from youtube, shhhhh!). Don’t be afraid to drop a couple folders of your favorite music onto the CF card. You can learn so much by manipulating existing songs.
There are loads and loads of sample packs out there, many for free. If you find yourself wanting to buy samples, I have had great experiences with loopmasters.
the biggest wall I hit with the OT was difference between recorder trigs and manual trig recording … after I had this sorted things went easier …
I went on a 5 day trip to barcelona and took my brand new OT with me, so I only had a handful of samples and my headphones with me, and could focus on 1 toy at a time, and not get distracted …
that allerian pony song is a kick in the … friggin love it!
So, I got an OT about a month or so ago. Up until today, I have it synced with my Korg ESX Electribe, and would play around with the various presets and what not. Basically, I decided to mess around without really reading anything up on it, to see how far I got in the explore mode. Have some idea of what’s going on, but today I decided to really dive in and start learning it. I deleted the presets and uploaded some of the Sample Chains from Tarekith and Inspektor Gadjet. So, yes it does indeed seem like there is a steep learning curve, but once you learn it seems like there are nearly endless ways to freak out on it. I would not suggest this for a beginner, as it is not quite as intuitive as other hardware samplers, but I have a feeling that once I know what I’m doing and can get into a good workflow things will get really insane!