I am using a Nektar Pacer to controller pickup machine on T1, so guitarist can use as looper. I want to program other tracks on the OT at the same time. How do I do this without the foot controller focusing on the pickup machine track every time a pedal is pressed?
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Set your midi channels on the Nektar.
Defaulft OT audio track channels are 1-8.
Or maybe I missunderstoodā¦
Selected track is changed by the Nektar ?
Anyway you have to know what midi notes youāre sending to OT.
Hi @sezare56. Thanks for your quick reply. What I meant by controlling other tracks on the OT is that I want to program the other tracks using the OT directly (ie not with an external controller) whilst the guitarist is using the foot pedal. What I want to know is: Is there a way to control the pickup machines with an external controller, whilst being able to program other tracks directly on the Octatrack?
And donāt use Auto Channel but channel 1 to control T1.
Iāve also noticed that triggering a pickup track to record via MIDI will focus that track. Seems to be default behaviour, donāt know if thereās a way to prevent it.
Ah yes sorry, my bad. Just tryed. Totally forgot that. Should be an option, once again.
Edit : @Clancy I just read it was one of your feature request during last betaā¦I suppose you didnāt find a workaround sinceā¦
I tried using same channel as Auto Channel (11) for track T1. No luck, T1 donāt react to channel 11.
No focus with Recorder + Flex.
@interjector would you try it ?
Possible to overdub with Rec/Flex.
Some caveats.
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Hey @sezare56. Thanks for offering up suggestions. Really helpful, but yes your findings seem to point to a limitation with the MIDI control setup for Pickup Machine recording. I think the use of MIDI notes to control the various recording functions will always focus to the respective track. It should be an option to ādisable MIDI cc and/or note to focus trackā. The point of an external control should be to offer additional functionality, but all this focus behaviour does is restrict OT user interface control when controlling pickup machines with a foot switch.
I was using flex recorders before, but this was restrictive for the guitarist, who I want to have complete control over the loop timings. We have had to opt for an external looper (Ableton Live) which will feed audio into OT for me to mangle, plus clock and start/stop. So thatās a workaround for now.
How do you overdub with flex/record? Use multiple recorders, Iām guessing.
If it suits youā¦
On a budget Iād recommend RC500.
Possible with SRC3=T1-8, so that it records inputs and the Flex track playing previous recording > Overdub. CUE can be also used, with loop decay possibility.
Main problem with OT recordings, problematic with Pickups too because of tempo change.
Loop length can be also free or quantized with REC/FLEX, you just have to send a play message just after end of recording. Caveats : if you want to overdub you may redefine loop length, you canāt overdub punctually.
Multiple recorders is useful is you want to overdub and mangle with pitch, reverse, timestretch, slicesā¦
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Noā¦ plus Iād forgotten that part of the problem (external midi focussing the damn track argh!)
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Wondering if thereās some potential in the fact that if you are in midi mode your track āstays putā. Or at least you remain blissfully unaware of that focussing going on on āthe other sideā
Of course itās youāre then using midi tracks, but combined with midi loopbackā¦?
I mean, I really like midi loopback control of the OT but itās another layer of complexity and remove from your sample tracks.
Would need to merge OTās midi out with the guitarist pedal out before it goes back into the OT. Or maybe the pedal can do thatā¦
Pretty far from OPās wants but food for though
Coincidentally, we did look into the RC500 as an external option the other day, and went to a shop to check it out. But even though the manual appeared to imply that it takes a type B MIDI jack cable, I could not see any data coming through on the OT, despite setting up the RC500 to send MIDI as the OT would see it. The guy in the shop found some info online that suggested we needed to use a Type A MIDI cable (turns out BMIDI-5-35 is NOT a Type B cable 
Youād think the clue would be in the name). Any brand that uses Type A is not to be trusted, imho. 
Anyway, there were no Type A cables around, so we tested an RC600 (because that had DIN connectors) to verify that it works - which it does, very well. But we found that stopping any loop independently of the global start/stop was sending a stop message to the OT, and changing the functions of the foot controls didnāt appear to differentiate track stop and global stop messages, so it added another layer of complexity that was giving us a research headache.
Since I already have a laptop, we came to the conclusion that routing the guitar into Ableton Live, and using the native Looper plugin (which has a button dedicated to using with an external control) is really straightforward. Sending clock and start/stop messages and the audio loops to OT is an inexpensive and simple solution for now. Plus it allows me to explore some programming in Max to do some cool things with an expression pedal and the other foot switches. 
Something worth exploring for sure.
This was part of the reason for the guitarist having control over the loop - so he had the freedom to preset the tempo by playing what he wanted to play to start with. We had no problem with the tempo timings for the most part, but we did run into a few issues with how OT time-stretched some recordings, and slaving the other tracks and the sequencer appears very sloppy. So our conclusion was the pickup machines were proving unreliable. I think with a bit of practice and using the OT solely as a pickup machine, it could be a good standalone looper, but it would be a PITA setting it up and is not a patch on an RC505 - Marc Rebillet is a supreme example of that
Yeh, we also played with flex tracks using the foot pedal and found it worked best if the guitarist had a click track, which meant the timing was preset on the OT.
This was how our first jams went. I was demonstrating what I could do when sampling his guitar with the OT, and we built some very cool ideas. I think weāre going to try multiple ways of working with the OT, including just capturing straight to flex tracks, but I wanted to cut out the need for a reference from the OT, to give him some freedom. Moving the looper component out of the OT is actually a great way to free up more resampling options for me.
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The Nektar Pacer has MIDI out only and USB is bi-directional, so could send out from OT to computer and back through Pacer, but since weāre using the computer now, it would be overkill at this stage.
The good news is that all this research has made me value my computer as a live performance tool. I can do so much with it that would otherwise be costly with hardware that would bloat my kit list and be more time-consuming to setup. As a looper, recorder, multichannel audio device and all-round powerhouse, I think the computer could actually save me a lot of time and money.
Having said that Iād still like @Elektron to add an option to disable track focus when receiving any MIDI messages.
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Related to tempo. OT wants power of 2 step values : 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc.
If you record 3, 5, 6, 7 bars, its wrong. I couldnāt find a way to solve that, except with a defined RLEN length, which is also limited to 64 steps.
Not my cup of tea, but if it works ! You can share youāre experience in Loopers threadā¦
Loopers - #569 by sezare56
Ah yes, no focus in midi mode of course. Doable, not practical at all.
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Iāve got an update on this. Iāve stopped using the Nektar Pacer and pickup machines. Now Iām using Flex + Recorders and the buttons on Faderfox UC4 to arm the recorders. When I arm a recorder, it doesnāt focus on that track, so Iām very happy with this setup. I found the Pickup Machines to be a PITA anyway.
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you mean that each time the pedal is pressed, the OT screen switches to the pickup machine window?
this is annoying indeed, maybe a parameter in the system settings?
Yes, exactly. I donāt know what the cause was, but I couldnāt find any culprit functions/options.