I’m following along with Late Night Beat’s video on importing MIDI files via real time recording, but I’m stuck at the point where he arms the OT’s sequencer to record and it waits for an external Start transport command to start recording. Mine doesn’t wait, creating a tricky situation where I need to trigger my DAW and the OT (slaved to the daw) at the same time.
Here’s a video illustrating the question and another question I have. Time stamps for easy seeking.
I found a workaround for this Elektron sequencer problem using PREROLL in metronome menu.
I am not sure if i tried it with OT.
Edit :
Check in his other thread regarding midi tracks behaving like thru machines. I posted the video with the thing he’s talking about. The guy in the video presses record + play together and then the OT waits and then only starts when the DAW transport starts. I’ve never seen that before.
Octatrack Workflow #9: MIDI Import (Late Night Tips)
First guess : older firmware.
Edit : This video is 8 years old. Different behavior now.
Any idea about why his arp triggers off-time? Any way to make it so it only triggers in sync with the tempo?
Arp start with played notes without beat sync start. Only tempo sync.
The only way I found was a tooth pick to block first trig while receiving notes to have beat sync. 
So there is a way 
I’m starting to think this may be something that was available on an older OS, as the video I was following is 8 years old. If the feature was removed and not put back in after this amount of time, they must have had a good reason.
As an alternative method, is there a way to send a CC or MIDI note command to trigger record and play? Then I could put that command at the start of my DAW’s timeline?
Hey again,
Generally, commands like record and play are part of a protocol considered to be midi system “real-time” messages or real-time commands. Typically, that means that there is no CC associated with those types of controls. I guess you could say it’s closer to Midi Machine control (MMC) but the point being that these sorts of actions are sent in a manner unique to the function and therefore don’t react to CC or note triggers.
More than likely, the best strategy will be to trigger both (play in your DAW and then record on the OT) manually and then let the sequence play for a few steps on the come-around of the loop.
Since the elektron sequencer will replace any old notes with the new notes received, there won’t be any doubling up and you can even see it in the video you were talking about where he lets the sequence play and doesn’t stop it until it’s looped and played a few steps. The point of doing this is to make sure that the first note or notes are received “in sync” and that it’s not so paramount to catch that exact moment when both are triggered.
The method using pre-roll which sezare56 mentioned may or may not work with OT, I’ve never tried, so you could experiment with that, but sometimes these sorts of workarounds end up being the same or more work than the behavior that they’re intended to work around.
So, the bottom line is that unfortunately, the only thing that will directly trigger the transport is receiving transport commands in the format of midi real-time messages via pressing the button in your DAW. Also, to my knowledge, there is no way to arm record externally on any elektron devices.
That’s the clincher here is that without fail, I’m pretty sure that you will need to physically interact with the OT in order to arm the record function.
There have been people who literally talk about soldering footswitches onto the main PCB to manually trigger buttons with pedals and such in an effort to work around some things like pressing the func button or arming record etc. So needless to say, you aren’t the first person who wished for a slightly different paradigm out of the hardware.
Anyways, maybe someone with more OT specific knowledge has a special trick, but due to limitations of the system I sort of doubt it.
I’ll let you know if I think of something else though.
Also, if you can get an email address or a website for that guy who made the OT video “late night beats” you may want to contact him directly and ask him if there’s a trick to the wait function, or if there’s a step which is not shown.
The person most likely to know what he was doing there is going to be him, honestly. I can tell you 100% that it’s not standard elektron behavior. The person from the discord or whatever other forum was not incorrect about that.
Pretty sure, as I said above.
I also posted the workaround I found :
EDIT: This is a great work around. I mistakenly thought it wasn’t working before.
Yes, my first post wasn’t clear. I was sure it worked on some Elektron gear but I wasn’t 100% sure about Octatrack. Found a post about a positive test. Hoping it works for you ! 