I´ve been messing around with the arranger ´cause I´d like to create a biiiiiiig pattern to improvise and record MIDI notes on it.
What I´d like to do is to have the longest MIDI timeline possible to jam on, or to play something live over an existing song and “steal” maybe it´s harmony, structure or whatever.
Imagine an Ableton´s arrangement view. The loop would be the whole reference song (or mayble my own bassline, chord progression, etc. but long enough to avoid “MIDI overdubbing”). Then I´d try to simplify everything and reduce to the least and shortest patterns possible.
If I chain or arrange all needed patterns to last, let´s say, a 5 minutes song at 120bpm, I´d need more than 2 banks of 64-step patterns.
I want to try this on the Octatrack for some reason, I could do it more easily on Ableton as well.
When I´ve tried with slower pattern scales I need to set the master to INF and I haven´t tried if this is usable with the arranger. Another thing that I don´t understand very well is pattern chains, I´d like to have 128-step patterns .
Will I have to copy-paste again and again and again?
But if the master lenght is 64 and the pattern is 64 x 1/2 it will restart at the middle, isn´t it?
I´ve only tried with MIDI. I want to try this with resampling and/or pickup machines but for the moment I´m thinking about how to do it with MIDI notes to send to the Digitone and make further sound tweaks.
Imagine I have a four-pattern bassline (nothing fancy, four notes, one on the first trigger of each bar). These notes are looped, but not the sound, ´cause this way I can change the pattern on the Digitone and change the sound character or whatever. So if I have, let´s say, 40 patterns chained, I´d have to copy-paste the first pattern on the fifth, nineth, etc., the second on the sixth, tenth, and so on.