Hands free sampling?

Has anyone figured out how to sample things like guitar, keyboards, drums etc… in tempo and easily with the OT without using a foot pedal?

I’d love to know some workflows I could use for recording acoustic instruments so I can eliminate the step of recording parts elsewhere, importing to the OT and editing.

Without using either your hands or a foot controller? Maybe if you have some superior powers of telekinesis, but I can’t imagine how you would do it otherwise.

It’s not that silly, people do it all the time in daws by using things like pre-counts and punch-ins.

I’d like to sample things that I am physically playing by hand, and I’d like to do it ‘on the fly’ so to say. I do not have access to a foot pedal, nor the funding to purchase one currently.

Example: I have a pattern playing and I’d like to perform (on piano for instance) something that is the same length as the pattern and have it sampled. I know this can be done with pickup machines and a foot pedal, but are there other ways to get a similar effect?

Is there something about record trigs that isn’t working for you?

At some point, you’re going to need to touch the machine, if only to arm a track.

couldn’t you use a record trig 1 bar further down the line so you can get ready to punch in ! or sequence the record arm via a separate midi device, the Kenton Mind Control might be handy :wink:

i use a Lemur to set record on / off, so the midi side is sorted, sorta !

Sure, I don’t mind touching the machine. It’s the time between touching the machine and touching the instrument that is the problem.

The issue with recorder trigs is that the time between hitting rec->play and putting my hands on the instrument to perform is going to be too long if the performed part starts on the downbeat. Maybe I’m missing some way to deal with that issue?

If I place the trig further down the sequence, then I’ll be performing the part at the wrong point in the pattern (things such as chord changes, rhythmic changes etc… make this problematic).

Then the entire recorded part would be being performed at the wrong place in the chord progression (of what is already on the octatrack). A one shot-recorder-trig would be 1 bar too short to record the full performance as well.

The trick is to not arm the record trig until sometime after beat one. Then you have until the pattern starts again to get ready.

Maybe you could make a copy of your pattern to use as warm up?
Say you want to sample on pattern 2 then place a recording trigger on step 1
Play pattern 1(the copy) and cue pattern 2, which will play/record when your 64 steps come full cycle
that should get you time to relax before playing,

there are 2 ways i can think of (the 2nd is a bit half arsed but maybe more suited for a performance scenario)

you could try the metronome. (project settings > control > metronome)
you can set and define a pre-roll here. this will then be active if you are in live recording mode [REC+PLAY]

you’d need individual pattern length for this: have the pattern you wanna record twice as long as the pattern you’re going to comp on. set a recorder trig at the begin of the 2nd half (and a play trig on the first step which will play silence for now). make the recorder trig a one shot (which will be already active for the first run)

i really miss threshold based sampling - would be nice to get them to implement this as I think the OT is wasting some potential in combination with non sequenced instruments

hope that helps

edit1: maybe chaining pattern would work too to give some pre-roll
edit2: sheesh I’m typing slow, DaffyDub beat me to it

My workflow is somehow similar:
I use my OT to play a drum pattern, then add layers of chords and stuff with guitar.
I start a 64 long pattern, I set the QREC to 64, QPL 64, Trig ONE2, LOOP ON,
FIN 0.063, FOUT 0, RLEN MAX, Quantize live rec Checked.
Start to run, and when I feel it’s ok I press the record, It will start to sample at the beginning of the next 64 pattern, after a whole pattern is played and it started again the 64 I press the rec again, so at the end of this pattern the recorder will stop.
Now I have a 128 long chord progression.
You can set the RLEN to 64, then it will stop the recording automatically.
If you set the QREC to 64 you have 64 16ths time to reach for the red button and press it before it will actually start to record.
For me it is enough.

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TwoSoldiers, tasmansea and bozobreak have given me some great ideas. I’ll try them out later today and report back .

Thank you very much!

yep i use a 4 bar loop, then when im ready, put a one shot rec trig at the start,
then ive got nearly 4 measures before the recording kicks in,
the beauty of the one shot trig is it’ll just stop recording after the loop (you have to set the recording length accordingly)

it sounds like a lot of people over complicate this to me.

I place a record trig on say pattern one>Track one. with no sample trigs on track one. Mixer set to direct so I can here input.

and on pattern 2 I place the sample trig on Track 1>step 1. to play back the loop.

pretty simple but works for me.

This allows me to keep playing if I fuck up and no audio will be looped until the next pattern is played.

Edit: oops, Just saw daffydub posted the same thing. :thinking:

I think it’d be useful some day to be able to set a ‘threshold trig’ of sorts :slight_smile:

I use OT mostly for live looping of guitar and keyboard loops played in live. I use Pickup Machines and set the “Quantize Recording” to PLEN or pattern length. That way I just press A/B or C/D (which ever input pair I want to record). Then start playing your instrument. The recording will not start until the beginning of the pattern. Not exactly hands free, but only one button push with plenty of time to get in the groove on your instrument before the recording starts

Pickup machines are cool for looping, however if I’m not mistaken you can’t sequence samples in a pickup machine or P-Lock…

Pickup machines are cool for looping, however if I’m not mistaken you can’t sequence samples in a pickup machine or P-Lock…[/quote]
You can save a pickup machine recorder track to an open flex/static machine or save to self and use it ‘as normal’

Pickup machines are cool for looping, however if I’m not mistaken you can’t sequence samples in a pickup machine or P-Lock…[/quote]
You can save a pickup machine recorder track to an open flex/static machine or save to self and use it ‘as normal’[/quote]
Sure. That seems a bit cumbersome to me though.

Pickup machines are cool for looping, however if I’m not mistaken you can’t sequence samples in a pickup machine or P-Lock…[/quote]
You can save a pickup machine recorder track to an open flex/static machine or save to self and use it ‘as normal’[/quote]
Sure. That seems a bit cumbersome to me though.[/quote]
Yep, once I get my loop recorded onto the Pickup Machine, I save it as a Flex sample if I want to further plock, etc. Scenes seem to work right away with Pickup machines though, which is usually more than enough mangling for me before the need to save it as a Flex sample.