So last night I manged to pick up a pristine used OT. The craziest surprise was it was from a guy less than 10 blocks away from my house. I didn’t even think there were any other elektron users in my cowboy town in Canada. Super awesome - he was a really nice dude and I said lets keep in touch maybe jam sometime.
Anyways I just wanted to post here to say that my first 15minutes with this machine was the most happy I’ve ever been with a musical instrument.
It’s not because I was immediately writing the best grooves ever. It’s because I was literally shit scared that the OT would be too much for me to handle. I’ve read so many things on this forum and elsewhere about how hard this thing is to tackle. It’s not such a scary beast!
I read Merlin’s thoughts already, but haven’t finished the manual (I plan to read it a few times lol). I have extensive knowledge of AR, A4, and I’m pretty solid on the monomachine. OT wasn’t a huge leap.
Granted, I followed some comments from other 'Nauts and just stuck to stuff that’s on the CF card to mess around rather than dive into sampling.
5 min in … tried to figure out the menus … 10 minutes in had a kick assigned to a flex machine on track one. 15 minutes in had a beat playing with some sample locks to a few other samples I loaded. That led to some fantastic p-locking. Experimented with adding FX … struggled to get LFO’s going, but eventually got it. I had a basic basic beat going right away. Started making a few simple scenes, moved the fader and …
MIND BLOWN.
bliss.
More to come of my experiences taming this gorgeous beast.
Oh one thing I was wondering … because I got it used. Is the fader supposed to slide side to side like super fast almost no resistance ? I find if I tip the machine it’ll slide itself. Normal behavior ?
Had mine for almost a week now and I felt the same way. I’ve never shied away from a challenge when it comes to gear but I was intimidated by the OT, on paper. But I watched Cuckoo’s AWESOME tutorials the couple of nights before it arrived and had a pretty good idea of how to get around when I finally got it in my grubby little mitts. Still a long way to go until I’ve figured it all out but I knew how to sample, chop, assign machines and all the really important stuff right away, so that’s cool. The trickiest part for me has been figuring out saving in a way that ensures that I won’t lose anything.
It gets better and better as I get through the manual. I keep finding that there are shortcuts that you would never think of. One very useful one, for me, is that you can set “Workspaces” up; basically bookmarks in the file browser. I was finding it very tedious to load up a large group of samples into the audio pool and being able to make bookmarks really helps. These guys obviously put a great deal of thought into the UI, just little things here and there that make it easier.
It’s really kind of hard to believe that this thing is, what, 5 years old already? Even now it still has no equal that I’ve ever laid hands on. Love it.
Totally missed the ‘workspaces’ function thing before when I was regularly hitting the manual, thanks for the tip i keep vaguely planning to re-read the manual some time and see what else I didn’t digest or have forgot…
And congrats OP on grabbing an OT It’s an incredible piece of hardware. Mine still regularly blows my mind. Have fun!
the fader does sound looser than normal but I only have my very rarely used one to compare to. Maybe they all get loose after more use? Like someone else said it shouldn’t be a problem, as long as it doesn’t move by itself when laid flat from vibrations etc.
So glad you have such fun with your new instrument onoffon !
I share similar feelings these days with my brand new MD : I’m amazed how it sounds and how nicely conceived it is ! I just love playing music with it !!!
Such joy is priceless !
Oh fantastic ! Thanks so much Duncan.
I thought there would be a remedy. There’s a tension screw which adjusts how tightly the fader slides along the metal rails it’s attached to. I’ll have to open the OT to tighen it, but atleast I know that I can adjust this ! Also got some great info for keeping the thing clean and free of debris.
I thought the loose fader was odd because the person I bought mine from has only had it for 6 months and it’s literally in perfect condition. He admitted to being totally lost by the manual and I could tell since he hadn’t formatted the cfcard - there were only a few projects with a couple patterns — very minimal use. Just an update:
Spent just over an hour with it yesterday after progressing further into the manual. Still digging this box. I managed to craft some fantastic sounding drum beats. I also love how loops just fall into sync with the pattern regardless of your tempo! The filter and envelopes sound/function really similar to my MnM so familiar territory. I managed to carve out some pretty punchy and raw sounding drums almost to match the heaviness of my RYTM. Since I’m still learning I keep the OT on a separate desk from my MnM, A4, AR, and OP1 since I feel it’s pre-mature to try a jam putting them altogether, but I’m excited to learn the pickup machine and sampling and go BUCK !!
OT is the best Elektron machine for MIDI control : if you have Volcas, Shruthi or any tiny synth it’s a pleasure to bring them Elektron sequencer force.
Plus you can use OT filters + FX on them, really nice thing to do !
Another thing is to use sample chains : you can use the “slice” play mode to trig a slice of them, so that you get a whole drum on one track.
OK, I won’t spoil any further, just saying : there’s a lot on your road, nice discoveries ahead !
[quote=““Lying Dalai””]
OT is the best Elektron machine for MIDI control : if you have Volcas, Shruthi or any tiny synth it’s a pleasure to bring them Elektron sequencer force.
Plus you can use OT filters + FX on them, really nice thing to do !
Another thing is to use sample chains : you can use the “slice” play mode to trig a slice of them, so that you get a whole drum on one track.
OK, I won’t spoil any further, just saying : there’s a lot on your road, nice discoveries ahead !
[/quote]
Hah thanks Lying Dalai.
I’m so stoked for all the things I’ll learn about OT! Slice locks just astonish me – it’s like having 127x64 samples available on all tracks at your fingertips. I’ll get so lost in this badboy. I figured out the sample editor last night (and how to slice and edit loops). My goal tonight is to figure out sampling/recording. I tried and failed last night just because I ran out of time. I think there’s some wicked tutorials by Cuckoo that I’ll check out today.
There are a few different ways to sample with the OT. Check out the QREC settings which can make sampling very easy. If you’re feeding OT with another device that’s in sync via midi, the PLEN value is especially nice because it will start recording at the start of the next pattern. This lets you build up the loop you wish to sample in real-time, then when you’re ready to sample, just manually hit the record button without any concern about timing, and you’ll capture a perfectly timed loop starting at the 1. I find this manual-yet-quantized recording very pleasing without any need for recording trigs on the sequencer.
And just a heads up, the OT does not support threshold-based recording like many other samplers.
UPDATE:
I managed to sample some stuff last night ! SO STOKED
I hooked up my volca keys. (I’m still trying to keep my OT away from my other elektrons so I can focus on learning only) First I got the midi hooked up and managed to get a little 4 bar sequence going out to the Volca (was very similar to how the MnM seq’s other synths).
I was only able to manually record in a flex machine and then trim it to the correct loop in the sample editor. I don’t know why it was so exciting, but any small success on the machine is like a rush to me!
Thanks to error_42’s advice I’m going to try and get a sample loop recorded that syncs automatically to the pattern so I don’t have to trim.
OH and I totally nailed slicing and playing slices… too fun.
TONIGHT goals: Quantized recording, and … dum dum DUM Routing…
Quantized recording is really easy once you get it.
One shot trig on recorder track
Check recorder track length (64 for a 4 bar loop)
Get a flex track playing your record buffer
Don’t forget to place a trig at the very first step of this Flex track (easy mistake)
And voilà !
Cool thing with the Volca is to,plock the arp, you can get really crazy stuff with this.
Then plocking the input with filters and FX make it all a different beast !
i keep vaguely planning to re-read the manual some time and see what else I didn’t digest or have forgot…
It’s an incredible piece of hardware. Mine still regularly blows my mind. Have fun!
