How much do you REALLY love the Octatrack?

Analog Heat was kind of an impulse buy, it replaced a soundcard while getting an external effects box that was standalone - I figured, I’ll try it, if it sucks, I’ll return it. I had it for about two weeks before I sold my focusrite.

Though it does nice / dirty / evil /squishy things to audio which can be automated from the OT, the soundcard use is very useful.

Oh, I was well on my way by the end of the first week, but it took a bit longer to reach the point where I really started noticing I was using less and less of my other gear, and less often, because why would I use anything more than the Octatrack and the 3 or 4 things I can hook up to it before I run out of inputs?

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Yeah, honestly I should probably sell a few things I never use anymore and pick one up.

They make mixers for this. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I got one, I almost didn’t get it. There was an extra one sent to where I ordered a Rytm, the shop owner told me it was available but would go quickly, this was after the OT drought. I said no but kept thinking about it for two days, then finally called and told em I’d take it… I thought it was just a suped up looper, I thought maybe it could get me out of the computer, but I really didn’t know…
Now it’s years later and I’ve been blown away by the thing, still learning new stuff and barely feel like I’ve pushed it that hard… Has replaced the computer in my setup and is a perfect brain for my looping/audio processing, midi sequencing, mixing, and fx… I didn’t know that would happen…

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The word “Part” itself is not great, but it serves as a differentiator from “Kit”.

When the OT was launched, one of the big talking points was Scenes. If you think of what can be achieved when there are 16 Scenes within each Part and the ability to cross-fade between any two of them, you get to the essence of the Dynamic Performance Sampler that Elektron envisaged, in contrast to the comparatively static Kits that were present on the MD and MM.

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I can’t tell how much satisfied i AM (not speaking about mark1 or mark2 i don’t care) But Trig conditions on it just give me a hardware of doing one thing i could only achieve in Ableton Live before. And it was an essential way of making tracks for me… Like my secret tool (which is not really something i’m the only one to know, but i never heard someone using it the way i use it.)

I have not exactly the same, but i challenge my self to recreate this special effect and i think because of TRC i’m at 85% recreated… it’s a bit tricky thought…

i need extra work on this one to be satisfied… but if i succeed, each time i hit play my track will become alive and live each time differently ! Something on i worked since years to get it done the good way. I really enjoyed Harnessing Chaos tutorial from Noah Pred, i guess it’s part of things i watched who give me this idea. I try to replicate that for “visuals” but it’s more complicated. But i’m on the good path to what i try to achieve.

And only Octatrack can gives me that, there’s no other hardware device out there capable of that. So i really LOVE so much my Octatrack again. I forgive OT to this eight tracks that I would wish to be sixteen

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Last night I found myself hardly even using the CZ-101 hooked up to one of the inputs, because it seemed kind of superfluous. I’d like to get it out of the setup altogether in some ways, since it’s the biggest thing and makes it harder to carry it all at the same time, but every once in a while you just have to do this and there’s really no way around it.

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I think I’ll add that when I got the OT I had no idea about Elektron brand or anything, I did research for a drum machine, always wanted a tempest, Rytm won, and like I said the OT was this mysterious impulse buy, I knew I wanted it somehow but I didn’t know why or what it was even…

I talk about the OT a lot because I love the thing, and I love it not because it’s a hardware box or because Elektron made it, but simply because of my unfolding musical journey I’ve had with it…
I care not about brand name or what’s cool or not cool, but I respect this box a lot having operated it for some years and definitely think whomever designed the thing are flipping geniuses as people, brand name aside, it’s simply an incredible invention…

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The OT was my first Elektron-gear. It serves me well as a

  • MIDI-trigger-thing
  • music-sketch-pad
  • experimental tool
  • black box between my other two Elektrons
  • time-witness (many things happend in my life since i bough this peace)
  • brother

and probably (if i could resist the DT) a long-term equipment i won’t sell

i think i will stay by my black trio … not going for the new ones

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Hi @j24 !

Read lots of awesome responses from people in this thread. So much OT love … and a bit of non-love too hehehe

I can honestly say that OT would be my desert island machine if I could only choose one.

I performed a live set recently using AR, OT, and A4 and I’m currently working on porting this whole set down to just OT and some pedals. This is mostly for reasons of portability and convenience. Also I have to send both my analogs in for repairs soon EEEK

Here’s a vid of my last set:

What I use OT for currently is:

  • Brains of the set … runs the sync, pattern changes on the fly
  • Mixer for the other two machines (I sometimes bring other synths live and it sequences them)
  • FX processor for the other two machines various different FX depending on the song.
  • FX send/return loop to get nice reverb, delay, and chorus on the OT tracks via EXT in on the A4
  • T7 gives me the ability to record a 4 bar loop of whats playing live … I can crossfade to that and then switch patterns to the next song. I can then slowly fade back into the next song creating a nice dj style transition. This can be seen/heard a lot in the vid. This is usually the time I take a drink of wine or water :stuck_out_tongue: This is without a doubt the most important part of performing live with OT (for me anyways)
  • I have a few scenes set up for perfoming that is the same across all banks and parts so I’m never confused what a scene is going to do in my live set. One I use commonly in this vid is a highpass reverb wash and another one that does a highpass on the drums and does a phaser on drums and a flanger on the synths.
  • I program all vocals, ambiance, and any percussive loops that are pre-sampled. Basically anything that requires a long sample so I don’t fill up my rytm’s memory. Since I can play up to 32 songs in my set my RYTM mem is JAMMED full of drum and chord samples already. The FX send/return loop I use with the A4 makes these tracks sound very lush and nice and also blends their vibe with the rest of the synth sounds.
  • edit haha I forgot to mention that I use my T7 transition recorded material to do live remixing and fade between the remixed sound to the other sounds :smiley: total fun and madness.

So pretty much without the OT my live shows would be pretty stale and extremely hard to do transitions between songs. Also I’d have to bring a mixer which would be one more piece of gear and more cables to hook up. Probably I would need some pedals in a send/return on the mixer.

OT makes my life so easy !

Now in proper response to your experiences with it. As with what many other people have said … I have to reiterate that OT takes a long time to get into. For the first few months I barely used it for anything in my songs. Just maybe some dumb things like delay locking for stutters and some scenes for filter etc.

I think it took me a few months before I was good at writing songs and designing sounds on it. Also the memory structure baffled me for the first year hahahaha Now I got it all dialed in. I think I spent about 3 months perfecting the transition system for my live set. With great dedication comes great reward, though. Nowadays I gig about once per month with it. I play/write/practice every day.

cheers,
Walter

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Yeah, I was vaguel aware of the OT but when I got it my main concerns were

1 - I love the MPC2000xl but I was being held back by the inability to sample (internally or externally) in real time without stopping playback

2 - Real-time, Ableton style timestretch and tempo mathcing in hardware. I’d already gotten a VP9000 and was about 1/4" of the way through building a MIDIbox Seq v4 to basically achieve an Octatrack-like workflow (except without the real time sampling and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t know about yet) when I realized the OT could do almost everything I wanted in that regard (the VP000 still has it an most other gear beat for certain tricks involving polyphonic pitch and formant shifting and stuff, but it’s really a totally different kind of unique machine)

3 - on paper, pickup machines came closer to my personal wish list for a looper than anything else I’ve heard of, hardware or software

And then in the end I’ve pretty much done completely different things with it than I had planned to (I haven’t even used a pickup machine since the first two weeks after it arrived, simply because I haven’t really needed them). The OT decided what it wanted me to do and I just went with it.

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All this :lips: letters are making me slightly needy and wanting this OT

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To realize what the OT can do, try not to see it as something you press buttons on that makes sound, but rather look at it as a very complex musical math equation. If you start thinking like an OT about how the layers of parameters interact, and take into consideration different track length/scale, per step recording and playback x8, midi sequencing also with different track length sent back into inputs, to be further manipulated, slices, plocks, scenes, etc…
You can start to see the OT as this uber complex musical algorithm, with umpteen bazillion permutations which are then again multiplied because sample source is not a constant… With resampling and resampling again, etc, it’s practically infinite would could come out of the outputs…

Note:
This is just to fathom what the OT can do, when your using it it’s OK to think about it as something you press buttons on that makes sound… :wink:
Also once you see the operation of the machine as a musical algorithm, you can grok crazy complicated things that it could do even if your nowhere near programming them in yet…
I answer a lot of OT questions on the forum, and I think I’m probably one of the more simple programmers of the device, the questions I answer I have never done before, I only can answer them because I’ve learned to think like an OT… :slight_smile:

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On your thread I was gonna suggest you get speakers, a mixer, and spend the rest on Octatracks… :joy:

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This board is gonna cost me 5 á 6k by the end of next year… thanks :):hourglass_flowing_sand:

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Yeah it’s definitively the one to go for every Time, Variation, Swap, Morph, Glitch, Random, Chance, Rework, Resample Synthesis techniques, Crazy Routing, Crazy Looping, A must regarding Groove Machine, Excel as Sampler becoming a Synth, doing fine as a Voice Transformer too… it’s one the best device to turn your sample collection to your own and unique materials and sequences :slight_smile:

I’m sure i can find a lot more than that.

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Inf.

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Came On William, tell us your secret! :blush::yum:

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