Ok here is what I like to do with my OT and how I do it now. I’d like to try and add more tricks and ideas into the arsenal, so please throw some ideas at me that can be applied to these uses. I troll through YT videos, but a lot of the results people are going are more noise based and less musical.
Track transitions - I currently feed a group or entire track into the OT and jam it through an EZ bot template. Feel like this is a pretty solid way to finalize and polish an arrangement, so this has been working well for me.
Creating pads out of random sounds - I sample records and stretch them out, cross fade into filter/Lo fi effect modulation. Feel like I am just scratching the surface here though. Typical LFO targets are sample start and maybe some pitch mod.
Coming up with vocal hooks - I sample vocals in, mess with the start point and modulate them, I need to get deeper on this though. I used to chop, but lately have been enjoying sliding around the sample start time because I find results between the sounds that chops don’t really cater towards. Still want to learn more techniques on this.
Resampling chord stabs. I’ll make a chord stab on a synth and then throw it into the OT. Sometimes I will play the stab an octave up, pitch it down in the OT and then modulate filter/amp decay…really anything.
I need to master the filter. It’s an interesting filter because turning the base up also opens up the high end even if the width is dialed down. The distortion can be great, the resonance can work on both poles…I just want to really learn this thing inside and out so I can make more and more creative variations of deep techyy housey stabs.
LFO - same story. There are so many things that can be done with these LFOs that it can be easy to default to random or triangle and do the usual. But for deep stab modulation I am still learning the tricks. Do I want free, trig, trig sync…sometimes I cannot tell which is best for which parameter or sound I am going for.
Anyway vague question but I tried to give specific examples to see if any of you all resonate with these types of sounds and ideas. Would love to read what works for you or any ideas you suggest I try.
my suggestions would be, if you haven’t already, to try out the arpeggiator; and trigless trigs (especially useful for warping the pitch on vocals, but fun with any parameter really). also go ham with slide trigs, lots of gold there.
Free is your free running lfo - works great if you want to introduce a bit if movement or can be used to spice up a tempo synced lfo (modulate lfo depth with a slow free running lfo)
Trig retriggers with sample trigs (and trigless trigs IIRC), so it works well if the modulation should be synced to note start (like opening the filter with a saw wave for riser type sounds, or staccato type of modulation).
You can place trigless trigs to restart the lfo.
Trig sync syncs the lfo to the pattern. It starts from step 1 and then restarts it when the pattern loops. If you sync the tempo to the pattern (x8 at 16 spd, I think), you can treat the lfo designer as a mod sequencer with 16 steps that correspond to the 16 steps of the pattern. Basically 16 p-locks, but with a depth control.
One and half can turn the lfo into an envelope. Exp wave or downwards saw in one shot mode for decay envelopes, inv exp wave for ducking.
Ducking sounds with the filter width sounds super smooth btw.
Say you’ve got some source material on track 1 (either a sample playing or a Thru track receiving an external source). Then, on track 2, set up a Flex machine to record track 1. You could trigger the recording manually, or add record trigs (maybe assign some probability to those record trigs to keep things interesting woops, can’t assign probability to record trigs, but you can to playback trigs). Throw some trigs on track 2, some p-locks on those trigs, maybe slice, maybe LFOs, some way to mix up your recording.
Next add a Flex track on track 3 that records track 2. Repeat the process so track 3 is capturing and scrambling track 2 as its source.
You can probably see where this is going. You can expand this chain as much as you like. The point is, now when you make changes to your source material on track 1, the changes are reflected downstream to your flex tracks as they continue to record and reimagine the track before them.
I used to do this with OT plus an 0-Coast and it was bananas. It helps if the track 1 source is relatively simple like a mono synth, because the layers build up quite quickly. Enjoy!
Feedback on recorders to degrade pad sounds. Record a sample and set up the recorder so it records from cue out. Monitor from main out and turn up cue level to introduce feedback. You can sample this track with another flex recorder.
Great for pads and background textures.
Switch to studio mode for easy access to both main and cue out level.
You probably know this so apologies for stating the obvious, but it took me a while to get used to it. Base adjusts the cutoff of both the hp and lp filter. Width adjusts just the lp (iirc). Not as intuitive as individual HP and LP cutoffs but it allows you to sweep both together like a bp filter by modulating base.
Yep, if you only turn base (wdth stays at 127), you essentially have a hp filter. With only wdth (base at 0), it behaves like an lp filter.
If wdth is not at 127 and you turn the base knob, it behaves like a bp filter with adjustable width. Turn down wdth to smt like 10-20 and you have a narrow bp filter.
In the filter setup you can switch the envelope target to base.
So for bp filter sweeps turn down wdth and use base. Set env target to base and you can do these bandpass filter zaps.
A lot of the discussion around scenes focuses heavily on the crossfader but imo it can be interesting to just directly jump between scenes. The crossfader is good for dj style filter sweeps, tape stop, throwing stuff into a delay, etc. but directly jumping between scenes can be more rhythmic plus you can access more scenes at once. Create a bunch of subtle variations and you can really play it in time with the music.
Ha! this was my other tip I was just about to post. One interesting use of this is when you use drum sample chains. Each scene can be a completely different drum kit. Then add an lfo (or 3) to the start parameter and you’re cooking
This sounds awesome. I need to get more dialed in on recording trigs, I currently have mine set to one 2 but maybe thats not the best way. Is there a video or walk thru on this technique?
An unrelated thing that annoys me. Lets say I am on track 5 and I set its source to track 5 so I can load a sample into that slot. I then hit AED and go to load sample and try different samples by highlting and hitting Func + yes. But if the OT is playing it seems to go back to mapping itself to a record buffer and then I can not select a sample to preview. when I hgit the arrow to highlight, it keeps going back to the File menu where it says Load new sample…etc. Not sure if I am explaining this well, but it would be cool to have a flex slot with a sample loaded in it and be able to preview other samples instead, but for some reason it will fight me on doing that at times.
Good question about a video for this approach. Possibly something from Max Marco? I don’t think I invented this idea, and I know Max does some awesome stuff with record buffers, so that could be a good place to start.
I corrected my comment, because it turns out you can’t actually assign probability to record trigs, only to playback trigs. That’s OK though, probability on playback works just as well.
I just tried whipping up a quick version of this and recording some acoustic guitar as a sound source. I made it really fast so it might not be the best example of the idea (the end result just kinda sounds like a granular pedal), and after this experiment I think it might work best if you can manually control recording (which I couldn’t do while playing the guitar; I just used record trigs) but you’ll get the idea.
Basically it’s: guitar going into a Thru track on track 1, track 2 recording track 1, track 3 recording track 2, and track 4 recording track 3. On each of tracks 2-4 there are a couple record trigs laid down and maybe 6-8 playback trigs at various levels of probability. Some of those playback trigs have a p-lock to pitch an octave up or down, and each track has some LFO on filter plus some delay or reverb.
A funny thing happened while recording this — right when I was about to turn off the recording, a fire truck went by with the siren wailing, and the OT picked up the siren through my open window, then passed it through the record buffers and pitched it up/down. You never know what you’re gonna get with the OT!
Perfectly mixed siren !
I also used buffers for similar things, this one is recent and inspired by the Microcosm.
Tons of possibilities! Particularly interesting to try to mimick drums from the guitar sound.
Not a power user here… Still: the filter is a great one on the OT. I am using the distortion on my kicks (Eurorack Battering Ram) to give it body and mainly on master (T8) to “bump” my dynamics before going through a FMR RNC and then an Analog Heat Mk2. Could NOT live without this filter distortion to be honest… Have tried various other (Eurorack) filters but no… The OT’s filter distortion works best for me
