Hello, new Octatrack owner, coming from a Digitakt and Digitone.
Is this the best way to have a 16 step drum beat and 32 step bassline - set the individual pattern lengths setting appropriately, then set the Master to 32 steps and then the drum track to 16 steps and the bassline track to 32 steps. Originally I was (unsuccessfully) doing it the other way around (Master to 16 steps and bass track to 32 steps), and also played with the Master multiplier. Eventually I think it clicked that the way I described above is the most logical way, can someone confirm?
The downside to this is that if all my tracks except bass are 16 steps, I have to adjust every track down to 16 steps. In my mind, I was thinking my 32 step track was the exception, so I could just designate that track as 32 steps and keep everything else at 16 by default. The upside to that (seemingly impossible) way to do things is that I would only have to adjust the one longer track and all the rest could stay as they were. Not a huge deal, just not the way my brain was thinking it would work.
Please let me know if that is the best way. Thanks!
If you start from a 16 step pattern and activate āscale per trackā, all tracks will still be 16 steps long so you can only change your bassline track to 32 steps and adjust master length to 32.
If you activate āscale per trackā from within a 32 steps pattern, all tracks will be 32 steps long and youād have to do more button clicking.
Master length can be changed in increments of 16 by pressing function+up arrow.
And yes, you have to set your master length long enough so all tracks can play through.
So if you have a 32 step track, master length needs to be at least 32.
Thereās also another setting which affect what happens when you change to a new pattern.
If you set 16 steps here, the pattern will behave like it was a 16 step pattern when you change to another one (=play until 1 bar is finished and then execute pattern change).
Especially useful for long master lengths and required when master length is set to inf.
Got it, thanks. My mental map of how it would work was a little different regarding āmasterā but it also makes sense the way they have it implemented. Thanks!
Tracks can be configured as free running, not patterns. All tracks of a pattern share the same base tempo (but you can use the scale options, of course).
I was thinking about this out on a walk, and I think the way I would do it is by recording the different temps to loops with timestretch turned off. I would have to fudge some conditional trigs, but i think some trigless locks should work.
Nothing wrong with your method. @Schnork advice is solid.
Personally I always have master seq set to INF, scale per track. This maintains polymetric stuff, which I usually use.
Then in the settings I have āchain afterā set to what ever is appropriate. (Usually 8 or 16 bars, depends what Im doing)
Unless, I want very specific turn arounds, then Iāll set the master seq to a length per pattern. (Eg, 1 pattern of 4 bars, 1 pattern of 8, on pattern of 2 etc)
