Flex track playback while recording

Hi there,
I know it’s possible to playback a flex track while recording.
I’m wondering if there’s any way (hack or legit) to NOT clear the buffer each time a recording starts. Instead I want to just overwrite the buffer as it records, while keeping the previous recording in the buffer up until the point at which the ‘write-head’ gets to it and overwrites.

As an example:
Track 1 Flex track, source set AB, 1 one-time record trig on first step of record track.
Record a 16 step recording by arming the flex track and hitting play.

We should now have a 16 step recording in our buffer.

On Track 1 GRID place down 16 trigs and activate ‘slice’ mode.
Now in AED randomize the trigs so we get a chopped up resampled version of the flex buffer.

Now if I arm the flex track and press play, I won’t hear anything until the first bar is complete. This is because the flex buffer seems to get cleared when recording the new buffer.

Is there a way to maintain the previous contents of the buffer while only over-writing as you go?
I had experimented with overdubbing but I don’t think this will work since I don’t want to keep the previous stuff.

Thanks!

Try adding one tick of microtiming delay to the playback trig. It will record and playback immediately without needing to do a full pass to fill the buffer first.

I believe that’s how you can use a flex machine to do live looping and might work as you’re hoping it will.

@sezare56 can certainly give you a better answer.

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Thanks!
Sadly that didn’t work.
Maybe a better example is putting 16 steps on the track, then setting the sample ‘start’ to near the end of the sample.
When you play + record you will find that the track is silent until the record head catches up with where the playhead would be.
I was wondering if instead it would just keep using the previous stuff stored at the end of the sample until the record head catches up and overwrites! :slight_smile:
Appreciate this may just be a limitation of the software since it likely just clears the buffer then fills it up each time you hit record, so maybe it’s a feature request! But wanted to check first if anyone smarter has figured out a way! :smiley:

Thanks!

I was wondering the exact same thing at some point.

If there’s a way to have the buffer always store the last (say) 16 steps of audio without clearing each time the recorder head hits the start of the buffer, it would allow for making interesting live granular effects that doesn’t result in frequent silence.

I’m away from my OT so I can’t test it, but one thing I haven’t tried is recording in the “replace” mode in pickup machine and accessing the buffer from another track.

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When you start the playback BEFORE the recording (with microtiming) and let it play through, it can still play the old content while simultaneously recording into the buffer. But any play trig which comes AFTER the recording got started will refer to the new recording and therefore cannot play the old content (even if it is still there).

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This…

So if you want to randomize slices, you can select slices that play already recorded stuff.

Another possibility is to activate slice randomisation with the crossfader.
Scene A neutral while recording, then Scene B increasing random lfo on slices for instance.

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Hey @sezare56,

I was just watching your “(Very) Destructive Loop” OT video and I was wondering how you were able to play the same loop yet record and use it at the same time? I’ve tried this and as others have said they wind up with silence instead of resampling the output from Track 1. What am I missing? I feel like this function would better suit Pickup machines, yet you seem to be able to do it with Flex. What am I missing?

A second recorder. :wink:
Pickups don’t record fx iirc.

Settings in that thread and other linked thread

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