How to turn Octatrack into a linear sequencer

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Each Project in the OT can have up to 256 patterns. Some patterns, or tracks within patterns, can be programmed to play at a fraction of the overall tempo, thus increasing the number of ‘measures’. Has anyone tried just telling the Arranger to play all 256 patterns in order, and composed each one as a bar of a linear sequencer?

For simplicity, let’s assume the tempo is 120 bpm and every pattern is 64 steps (or 16 beats). Without playing with tempo subdivisions, that works out to over a half hour of linear sequencing per project: 16 beats per pattern X 256 patterns divided by 120 beats per minute = number of minutes.

It doesn’t seem like this would be too hard to do, and you wouldn’t lose any functionality in the process. I’ve never used an MPC, but from what everyone tells me you can make it into a linear sequencer in much the same way, by just copying and pasting a loop over and over again. But everybody says the OT is strictly a pattern sequencer for some reason, when it can easily accomplish the switch to linear. Am I missing something?

#2

Yeah, I mean it’s not the most intuitive or obvious way to use the OT because the Arranger takes a bit of getting used to, but there’s nothing stopping you from using it this way and it will work as you expect. Basically, if this is something you need then go ahead. There was a good thread recently delving in to the Arranger, check it out.

#3

What an interesting idea. :+1:

#4

With an Mpc 1000 you have 64 voices polyphony, 32 channels, overdub, and possibly different note lengths on one chord.
I sold my Mpc 1000, bought an Octatrack, bought again an Mpc 1000 Jjos2xl, an finally sold it because it was boring !

#5

What you described is entirely valid.

Not sure whether the following is on-topic or not, but I think that what many people miss in the OT’s sequencer compared to the MPC’s sequencer is that the latter has high-resolution recording of continual MIDI events whereas the OT (despite microtiming precision) only has 16 steps to the bar (when tempo multiplier is 1).

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#6

I suppose if you record live and turn off quantization you can mitigate this. But does live recording work across multiple patterns? I’ve never tried it.

#7

That’s interesting to try.

#8

interesting

#9

To turn the OT to a linear sequencer is not possible, because there are important differences between how a step sequencer and a linear sequencer work, technically speaking.

A step sequencer records events as a sequence of single descrete steps. If there are 16 steps we can use less than 16 steps but never 17 or more. We can run the sequence slow or fast, we can (on some sequencers) modify the length of single steps, we can (on some sequencers) store a step, which might be composed of more than one event (like a chord, or the p-locks on the OT), BUT we get only the maximum of steps, which the sequencer provides … 16.

A typcial issue caused by this happens regularily, if we try to record live playing on a step sequencer.

No human plays exactly at the beat of a sequencer and so it happens that two notes may be played and fall in the same time slot of the recording step, which deletes the first note and stores the second only. The result is quite a destruction of the musical idea. This does not change in principle, if we have much more steps or run the step sequencer at higher speed.

A linear sequencer records events continuously as single events, which are composed of event-values and a time-stamp. This allows many more (all but parallel) events per time-frame to be recorded (eg. of a quarter note). Live playing is recorded almost identical to the performance, if the time-resolution is good enough and this would be above 160 ppqn (pulses per quarter note).

We can simulate a step sequencer by using a linear sequencer, but not the other way around. There is no “switch to linear” possible.

A work-around to get a higher number of events per time-frame is to use a lot of steps and run the sequence at high speed. But this will never get us near the possibilities of a real linear sequencer with a decent time-resolution.

Examples: A MPC 500, 1000, and 2500 provides 96 ppqn, a MPC 4k, 5k 960 ppqn, the new MPC Live and X should provide 960 ppqn too. That’s just on another level, if we consider recording and playback with respect to time-resolution and number of events per time frame only.

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#10

The Ot micro timing corresponds to 96 ppqn.

#11

A step sequencer is a “hard quantising” recording device. With the OT we have the option to turn off quantisation, but this allows for a “sloppy” recording only. Not each note has to be exactly at the same constant time position of the sequence and this allows us to record grooves, which are not straight and mechanically.

BUT … if a sequence has 16 steps, we can only record 16 “sloppy” notes maximum and not one more :wink: This is one of the major differences between step and linear sequencers.

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#12

IMO … not exactly in the same meaning of ppqn of a linear sequencer …

If we have a linear sequencer, all the events could be recorded and stored on one single time-stamp or beeing distributed along the length of the sequence at will. A step sequencer does not allow something like this.

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#13

I sometimes use the OT this way. It captures your playing okay when running at a high speed. The problem I run into is with erasing a take which stretches over many patterns - say you want to retake what you did on ‘track 1’ (which is actually T1 across patterns A01 to C16 for example). Switching to each pattern and deleting their individual T1s takes to long, so you have to live record again but holding NO+TRACK to wipe the trigs

Maybe there is a quicker way?

A regular old linear sequencer will have overdub or overwrite per track, so you wouldn’t even have to delete first, just overwrite. The OT is always overdubbing in live record (but not even really overdubbing because if you land on a previously used step it will overwrite it)

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Sequencing ext gear
#14

I know, that why I used “corresponds to”.

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#15

Meh, I’ll just get a Pyramid then. Got an ASR-88 coming in a few days, the combo should be a reasonable approximation of a linear OT.

#16

For me I haven’t had success live recording if I freely play because of the step resolution. I’d rather just record the audio loop than try to play to fit into a grid. Next time I’ll try 2x tempo multiplier and see how it goes…
And what about cc’s? It’s like you record one thing and then get a chopped up version coming back around… It can work out but without careful consideration you don’t know what you’ll get. Maybe there’s other parameters that would work better for cc live record? My first attempt was with filter cutoff of a synth and it sent me consulting the manual…