heard he made this with an octatrack
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I suspect this song would make excellent OT fodder.
i made several concerts with only 1 pattern w 7 tracks and 1 master track, blending heavily fx w the fader! like streamin from card! the trick is to keep it simple. as the ot is sooo deep. now i am random slicin imported samples, great remix function… the ot is one of my best hardware investment, very well build und made by musicians for musicians. love to tweak the knobs, filter/fx sessions, wonderful for experimental stuff. in fact the ot IS intuitive, IF u don t loose urself i the deep… and keep it simple especially i the beginning as the ot can be used in widely manners.
The OT must be one of the most misunderstood gearz out there. It often frustrates the schmack out of people before they can realize what they’ve got in their hands. No one said this was gonna be easy, but in the end it’s not that hard!
It’s weird, it’s an instrument, but it’s kinda like a calculator, but once you really get accustom to it’s calculations, it’s an instrument again…
The OT’s boss, you can’t tell it what it should do and it doesn’t back down from a fight. If you do like the OT says though you usually end up in the same place much quicker. In the beginning you have let the OT pummel you to the ground a few times until you surrender… It makes you do homework too and sometimes gives pop quizzes while your tyring to do something with it… You have to start thinking like an OT…
If you venture past the breaking point with a desire to understand and think like an OT, you’ll find yourself at a mathematically musical wormhole bus station, operating a vortex matrix. The wormhole buses take your music to other parts of the Galaxy, you route their destinations by programming the vortex matrix.
Once the matrix has been programmed the wormholes become very accessible and take you far off places and back rather quickly and efficiently, and there’s lots of fun tricks you get to do while navigating.
It takes some effort but once you happen to catch just a glimpse the bus station, you’ll see why we keep it.
I highly doubt any of us are really pushing this thing toward its mind bogglingly mathematically musically extreme potential…
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holy shit
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That’s how I see tonight anyway, I’ll probably see it all sorts of other ways all sorts of other nights.
I could have tried to explain what I was saying with functions and math stuffs, but that didn’t seem like too much fun… 
While love is not a concept that applies to me and gear I am intrigued by the OT since day one. I feel there’s always another corner behind which another universe lurks. In a sense it’s like a generic computer. There’s so much you can do with it, but no guarding rails.
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Hahaha! This is poetic, metaphorically beautiful and wholly true! Put it on the box please Elektron.
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I got my OT2 for a shade over £1,000. Quite the bargain considering regular prices just now. Anyway, due to work I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it over the past 2 or 3 weeks. Do I feel bad that I have a £1k+ piece of equipment getting zero use lying on my desk? Hell no! That’s how I can tell I love my OT2.
Anyone who has followed any of the guff I’ve written round here over the years will know I’ve been cursed with guilt over unused gear and things resulting in me flogging everything. Genuinely don’t feel the need with my OT now. Quite happy. Just need to work on my time management to get using this beast!
Maybe I’m the conflicting one here.
I do not love my OT, but I’m still keeping it. The only reason to keep it is that it’s the only sampler that’s multitimbral, with some midi output and it can keep the levels and machine setup between patterns, using just one of the four parts.
When Digitakt was out, I almost sell my OT to purchase one, but as soon as I see that it’s like an Electribe - each pattern with its settings - I avoided it like the plague.
I know the purpose of the OT isn’t sequence samples in the way DT does, but for effects, I prefer other devices. For mixer, I prefer another thing like the Aira - more control. In the OT you cannot use a send reveerb or delay, unless you purchase an external unit for it, or you do some CUE tricks with audio feedback.
I know that the OT can do all those things that you maybe need purchase 5-6 pieces of hardware gear to do the same. However the amount of funtions and the lack of physical controls do it for me a little tedious to use. I have attached to it a MIDI controller and I still need more control.
Using looped samples are nice in videos, however the timestretch is simply… bad. Ofc you can use this for your advantage, but if what you want is be really elastic with your samples… isn’t good.
Maybe I replace it for a cheaper unit, even if it lacks the parts feature. I’m not using it to the limit.
I hated my octatrack at first, I had a list as long as my face of all the things it can’t do, things it does terribly, why its crap etc. Then I persevered and slowly learned to love it. I’ve had it about 3 months and i don’t think its that complicated at all and I don’t learn something new every time at all so not sure what im doing wrong. For me it is not a machine that can do everything at all, what it does have is enough options, i/o and routing that can combine so that there are workarounds for so many things you might like to do. My advice is just keep using it until you love it.
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My recommendation is to label the tracks, with the material you insert on those tracks. If you sample your tempest into track 1, label it tempest. Label track two with the sound source or type of sounds you insert there.
Track 2 (FX) Track 3 (Vocals). I would recommend to use the master track setup, and studio mode for an extra stereo out, to send your signal to an external FX processor if you have one.
For me its a bit love /hate relationship, it is not as flexible as midi clips in a DAW. My workaround is: I sample and sequence with NI Maschine, i export the loops back to Octatrack for further mangling, and because i like the FX in Octatrack.
I think music is a lot of work, (which is of course fun.) and for me a process where i can create a lot of output fast is essential. I may not like everything what i do, but the more i can create in less time, the more material i have to choose from. (And i am getting more rigid, if its not good, i delete it.)
That doesn’t free me from the “perfecting” the loop addiction, but i can now switch faster my material. (And i dont use pre recorded loops from sampling.)
(Also, if you havent done it already: Put a sticker on the PSU, and the same sticker on the Octatrack, so you dont interchange it with other Elektron PSU, wrong Voltage on the Octatrack kills it.)
“Think of Parts like Kits, you have 4 kits per bank.” now I have an Octatrack again (3rd time lucky?) this still seems to me the most obtuse/odd part of the octatracks design.
Why Parts at all? Is there some weird advantage I’ve never been able to see? Why not 1 kit per pattern as per every other elektron machine? Its just odd, slightly confusing and personally I find it limiting for how I like to work.
Oh well, will get on with it and not worry too much I guess.
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Yep, I’d like very much the OT to be able to have a Kit per Pattern, (as well as being able to share a Kit between Patterns).
In my studio, OT is the eye of Sauron, controlling some of my sequencer-less/poor gear, chewing the master outs of my console or turning some of my synths output into something weirder and/or more beautiful…
It also transform any sound into hypnotic sequences, very quickly kicking my mind with some inspiration juice.
Playing live, it contains the sounds of all the gear I wouldn’t dare bringing with me + the laughs of my children, the noises of my bedroom door and all other field recordings I fed it with. It also acts like a mixer/FX for the few synths I did brought with me, and reveals itself as a formidable instrument for experimentation and improvisation despite its complexity, even if I haven’t prepared much.
I can’t think of another gear that does so many things in such a coherent way. I tried to get rid of it, because I thought Digitakt would be able to replace it. But no, it’s not just the sampler that I like in it, it’s the sum of its parts…
I love it !
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I had the mk1 two years ago and sold it, but now I have a mk2. It’s like an old friend. Just started getting into eurorack and it is such a good companion for that.
Had a Digitakt and Rytm and sold both to buy some modular and an Octatrack. Now the possibilities are endless.
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It’s changed my attitudes and interests in regards to music making.
I go through phases with it - putting it on the naughty step (lowest shelf in my room) when I feel like it’s restricting me. This is usually because I realise I haven’t recorded anything ITB in a long time because I’ve been having too much fun in the temporary world of pickup machines.
Then… I convince myself it’s all possible on a computer, start working ITB with ableton and soon remember why the Octatrack is so fun - the interface, fast workflow, just necessary options and processes rather than time consuming and largely pointless ones, focusing on the sound rather than the screen. It likes being fed and keeps things running while you do so.
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Same here. I used to kind of roll my eyes whenever Elekron people showed up in gear discussions around the web but it only took a month or two of actually owning a Octatrack to be fully indoctrinated in the cult, at least as far as the OT is concerned (I don’t really plan on any other Elektron kit just because I like to mix up gear from different companies with their own sounds and design philosophies, just to keep things a little weirder).
EDIT: I could actually see myself jumping on an Analog Heat some day if I had more money to spare than I do now and the price was right.
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Too relatable, I think I was ready to drink the kool aid after about a week
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