Getting Experimental with OT

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#62

Going for some name dropping? :wink:

Euler, Lagrange, Gauss and others had also their fair share in all of this. When it comes down to modern usage I’ll guess it’s Gauss who can complain most. He invented FFT even before Fourier wrote about DFT in general, but his manuscript got only published posthum and got completely ignored.

I referred above to the fourier transformation, because it’s discrete variant (DFT) approximates a finite sequence in the time domain with a finite sequence in the frequency domain, which is exactly what you need in digital signal processing.

The discrete laplace transformation on the other hand (also known as z transformation) isn’t that handy, because you still get an infinite sum as result which needs further treatment.

Both have their usages, but DFT (and especially FFT to do it fast) is used a lot more in engineering.

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#63

This is a pretty good explanation that has enough math but not too much:

http://www.dspguide.com/ch6/2.htm

But yeah, I was being reductive to make a point.

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#64

Love this thread as a resource for me to come back and check when I need some inspiration. Great stuff on here. Thank you Elektronauts community!
So, like 6 months ago, I sampled this video off YouTube (actually not sure which broken VCR vid it was, but maybe…) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq4FuVnv0g8
It sat on my OT Hard drive and I forgot about it. I thought I’d use it to layer under tracks…Or, whatever, I forgot about it. But I was messing around trying to add some dirty drums to my mix on this track and I found it again. Loaded it into a Static channel, turned down the hold to zero, turned down the release to a very low percussive amount…Then went to the filter and turned the env all the way up, pulled back the width to zero (plock resonance high for kick drums) and input a simple random pattern on the sequencer.
At first I tried LFO’s to control the startpoint, which gave interesting “experimental” results on random setting…But quickly realized that plocking the start gave more control.
Then started plocking all the paremeter’s of the filter, and I ended up with these other worldly rhythms. I think I must’ve gotten the idea kinda from that Max Marco (great YouTube channel) video of him making a track with the noise on the inputs of the OT, but the noise from a VCR has a bunch of different sounds, and depending on where your trigger is triggering, and how your filters are set, it’s dirty drum machine heaven.
It was one of those moments where I wanted a sound, I asked the OT, and it gave in spades.

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#65

This thread inspired me to some KSS on my OT with my Minibrute 2S as the noise source. Here’s what I did (first steps are traditional, last step was my twist :wink: ) :

  • Noise from Minibrute Input C, Master output from Minibrute to Input B
  • Setup some Comb filters + reverb on two tracks with Thru machines to listen to the noise with different pitches (all in the same key), sequence lengths and conditional trigs
  • Another track to hear the Minibrute normal output
  • Send a nice MIDI ARP to Minibrute
  • Start mixing Input B into the KSS tracks

You get the original ARP coming through as well as some random KSS nylon-string-esque hits but occasionally when the KSS notes match up with the Minibrute notes you get these giant “swells”. Don’t know exactly how to describe it but it was awesome … thanks for the inspiration!!

It was my first exploration with KSS, happy to learn more. Digging all these OT ideas threads :honeybee:

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#66

What I enjoy on the OT is using a flex track and a neighbour track that kind of work against each other.

For example, I have a percussion sound on my flex track, filter and lofi fx and I’m using p-locks and slide trigs (on rate, SRR, and filter for example) + lfo modulation (usually sync trig so modulation is predictable) to get movement and texture - the neighbour machine has filter and a reverb (usually dark reverb and plate work best).

Amp hold and release on the flex track are also tuned to what happens on the neighbour.

I set the neighbour track to run at 3/4 or 1/2 and the modulation and p-locks on that track are sort of an additional layer to the flex track, but trigs
are set to work against the flex track -e.g. the filter or the gate of the plate reverb cut off the sound at the right point so that the flex track has room to inject sound again.

Reverb decay and filter envelope are also ‘tuned’ to what happens on the flex.

I also do that often with sampled fm basses and a filter on the flex track. Sometimes I have reverb, sometimes a high feedback delay after the filter, sometimes lofi fx - the point is to create a texture on the flex that the neighbour track fx can sort of ‘bite’ into.

Just by changing scale or some lock trigs it’s possible to transform the construct to drive the arrangement further or to accommodate to changes in the arrangement (e.g. from intro to verse).

Scenes can be used to exaggerate modulation and fx or to tame them ofc.

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#67

That’s a really great idea for subtle changes, that aren’t on the grid as much…with the neighbor running at 3/4…Yeah thank you. I’m gonna do that. :ok_hand:

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#68

It’s not very exotic, but if you plug just about any instrument into the inputs and then set up all 8 tracks as thru machines running in parallel, dial in completely different sounds using everything available (effects, LFOs modulating everything, maybe some trigless locks on the sequencer to give you more variation) on all of them, set up a bunch of crossfader scenes with really extreme parameter changes, and then play the instrument with one hand and the crossfader with the other - between 16 scenes and 8 tracks you’ll end up finding all kinds of stuff you never could have planned for.

Bonus points for routing cue to a few of the thru machines and then using studio mode to add some feedback into the equation.

I’ve done a couple shows over the years that ware basically just crossfader and a casio keyboard and it worked really well.

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#69

When it comes down to it, I guess you don’t have to do anything exotic to get experimental with the OT, or any other Elektron box really- when you have plocks on everything- and with the OT/MnM the neighbor structure… But, that is also an interesting idea. Loads of Neighbors.

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#70

Yeah, multiple neighbor machines is good, too.

#71

I’m experimenting a lot with feedback loops at the moment and paired my Boss BX-8 with the Octatrack.

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#72

nice. i was using a no input mixer setup with the analog four yesterday. ran in into the input for oscillator 2 and had oscillator 1 set to feedback. now i need to try it with the octatrack. perhaps i’ll use some record trigs and trigless locks to add some rhythmic movement to the shrieking feedback.

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#73

I kind of always have Neighbors in my OT sessions. So my tracks are always in pairs. Two efx never seem to be enough. Also, 8 tracks is usually too much for me. So I’m fine with 4 tracks, with 4 efx slots each.

On the first track of the pair, it’s usually Lo-Fi and Compressor. On the Neighbor, the experimental stuff. Even the Filter in the OT can get quite experimental. The Comb Filter is my favorite.

Here’s a jam where I’m utilizing Comb Filter on the Crossfader a lot. The Comb Filter is of course tuned to the song’s key. Also on the Crossfader I have my main beat’s Retrig. I love the feeling that these efx combined give me.

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#74

Love this thread

I’ve been trying to get out of my comfort zone by playing with another artist and basically getting bit and pieces of his signal using a thru track and then dumping them to different flex tracks

I’m finding it extremely hard to disconnect from the usual sampling/beatmaking approach though, everything just comes out very ambient-y and samey. Any ideas?

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#75

Not very useful but I sold mine. Fixed the issue for me!

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#76

What is the other artist sending u and what is your goal?

#77

Not sure if this has been talked about before, but a fun trick to get fast fx transitions is to make a “third scene” for the crossfader. This works on sounds that fade to 0 vol on one scene, on that scene also change fx parameters and increase the amp gain of that scene. so when you fade to 0, halfway through will be an equal volume scene of different parameters than either side of the crossfader. I like this with reverb - dry to the left, big spacey in the middle, total silence to the right.

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#78

Eurorack mixer. At least I have some cheap Eurorack stuff. :content:

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#79

Yeah, this is how I use the Lexicon Vortex too, although it’s different because it’s actually crossfading internal routing between low level logical units inside the effect algorithm itself as well as the higher level parameters, so the middle of a crossfade can be really unpredictable and chaotic depending on which algorithms you assign, what parameter values and where the tempo is set.

OT can get pretty close sometimes, though (and can do a whoel lot of stuff the Vortex can’t).

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#80

I like plenty of Behringer stuff but these are easily the worst sounding mixers I’ve ever used at any price point, by far. Which makes them REALLY good for noise and I regret trading my last one.

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#81

Sooo cool.

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