Looping pieces of long files and using a footswitch to change

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi all. Newish here. Been lurking awhile. I’ve resisted asking any questions because I feel like I should be able to figure this out. But at this point I can’t even tell if it’s possible. So I’d like to know if it is and then what the best way to do it will be. If the answer is, read the manual, I get it. I’ve read a bunch of it but I’m deeply not built for this kind of machine. However I am determined to mine the depths of how cool I think it could be. I get confused real quick! Ha.

So this is what I want to do. 5ish minute full songs with a trio of peeps with the drums/some keys on the Octatrack. I’m playing guitar and other keys. I want be able to loop one section infinitely to jam over, the intro, middle section or outro or whatever, then click a button on the floor and it moves on from the loop to play the rest of the song or ends. Inside the looped part I want to loop guitar or keys and mess with them.

So far I’ve learned the one shot trig for long files. I’ve learned to slice and play back each slice with the trigs in slice mode. I’ve messed with the arranger a bit. I’ve not been successful at my specific goal. The loops never loop as long as they should. I wonder if I’m limited to a number of bars or if I can just put a loop point in the slice and it should loop that amount? That hasn’t worked for me yet.

Is this possible? It has to be. I’m sure of it. I have my eyes on an MC6 or a Bridge 6 for the pedal control. This will hopefully click to the next part and arm tracks and start and stop recording loops. Any wise words will be welcome. I just need to crack the surface on this thing. The learning curve is daunting for a man of my limited cranial capacity. I’m just a humble musician. Ha.

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#2

I recommend trying less to fit the OT into your specifics, instead let its design guide your specific choices.

I can’t speak on using foot switches, long loops tho I know a few things.

It’s difficult to decipher someone’s complex ideas.
Sounds like you may have to use a variety of tracks for long playback, and looping.
Long looping is gonna take a few hacks.
I’d try running that particular track super slow.
5mins will most likely max out 1 buffer for recording.
You’ll have to get creative on how to get the desired results.
You can’t use conditional trigs on rec trigs, but you can for playback.

You could also look into saving slices in a blank record buffer for various needs.

Also understanding how “Parts,” work when switching between them while recording and playback.

Another wild hack is using an external sequencer to trigger recording loops at various parts of songs.
If it’s an external elektron sequencer, you can set notes with conditional trigs to trigger recording on the OT.

You might want to look into Bomes midi translator if you want to use a foot switch to do very specific commands to gear.

#3

Are you wanting to play and loop pre-recorded material? Or record stuff in live and work with it as part of the set? It sounds like the former but I just wanted to check.

#4

Awesome. Thanks @bodymechanics. This is perfect. I can clear up some implications in my post.

No long loops. Probably only 8 bars or whatever. Single parts of a song. Loop a piece of the intro. Jam over it for a few minutes. Record some things in and make some noise. When it’s time, click a button and at the end of the current iteration of the loop it goes on to the next part of the song.
I was hoping the arranger would be the thing, i.e. slice a 5 minute track in a static machine. Play back slice 1, slice 2 is a loop that loops infinitely (and during this I record and tweak), push a button and it continues to slice 3 and onward through the song.

If this isn’t the box for it that’s totally fine. And I hear that it’s more of an instrument to be used within it’s design parameters than to force into a use case. I would love to be good at that aspect of it but for now I need it to play back backing tracks at least (I think I can get that done at this point) and I’d love to make jamming sections if possible. I’m really trying to avoid having a screen on stage and looking forward to getting into some tweaking but the playback has to be the main thing.

I’m having a really hard time understanding how parts work and the hierarchy of things is out of my range at the moment but I’m sure I’ll get there.

Another connected piece of gear is out for the moment. I can’t find myself getting more things to have to connect and learn.

I will check into the Bomes thing though!

Much appreciated!

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#5

Yeah. Writing drums and keys in Logic and putting them into the Octatrack as audio files and slicing them up. Then recording some things into the Octatrack in real time and getting weird while playback happens.

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#6

Yeah I’m pretty sure you should be able to do this mostly without too much trouble once you get past the inital setup and practice.

If you use slices and set the length parameter to 1 slice that slice can be as long as you like, but you probably won’t want to use trigs on the sequencer as that will keep cutting off the loop if it’s long. Instead you’ll want to use the QPL setting so a slice will start and switch at the beginning of each 4-bar section for example. Actually I’m not entirely sure if QPL works with static machines, if it doesn’t that might complicate things a bit.

I think what you’ll need to do is change the length parameter on the fly, or set a loop point dead on the start/end of the slice you want to loop, then hit the switch to trigger the next slice and the rest of the track. There’s probably several ways to achieve what you want, such is the OT :stuck_out_tongue:

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#7

Thanks @GurtTractor. I had to read about QPL. I’ll dig in now and see if I can make things work with some of this information. I think I was adding only one loop point and now of course it makes sense you would need two for it to loop between two points. Sometimes I can get two brain cells to fire in unison.

#8

Alright. I guess I take back my new loop point insight. Turns out you can only set one loop point per slice. So I’ll assume when it hits that loop point it loops back to the beginning of the slice. If I can ever make that work. Ha.

It seems in the arranger it’s function is playing back patterns so I need patterns for each slice? I’ve now made patterns A1-3 to have one shot trigs with parameter locks to play back different slices hoping it’ll play the whole slice without looping it. I arm everything and set the arranger to play patterns 1-3 in order but it just plays back the same slice over and over. Except the first step plays a short loop within that pattern and then the next two steps play back the same pattern but no loop? It’s very confusing.

One thing I’ve been reading about is LEN either set to SLIC or TIME. I can’t figure out what the manual means by it and changing the setting makes no difference to what I’m doing so far. I was hoping the slices would play back the entire length of the slice and have nothing to do with number of bars. But maybe Octatrack loves to lock to number of bars and that’s where I’m gonna be having issues with my specific use case.

#9

Have you looked into Pickup Machines? I’m pretty dure they are made for live looping.

#10

Simple and easy to setup with pattern changes, one loop per pattern. Send Program Changes to OT. Cheap midi foot controllers can do that.

Use sample locks to avoid part changes (unless you want a machine change, different fx).

I wouldn’t use one shots but 1st Trig Condition.
If you want a change at the end of the loop, set pattern length accordingly (Scale Per Track).

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#11

When length is set to TIME that parameter basically subdivides one slice by 127, so if you set it to 64 and play a slice it will get halfway through before looping or stopping. When you set it to SLIC that parameter now determines how many slices it plays before looping/stopping, so if you set it to 2 then it can play the same two slices over and over.

In general there’s a lot of things like this on the OT that the manual won’t entirely explain, and tbf I think it’s because there’s just so many ways to use any particular setting or tool within the system. So if you come across something like that where you’re not quite sure what it’s doing, my recommendation would be to stop and perform some experiments with it until you do have an intuitive understanding of what it does. That way you end up with more possible ways to approach a problem such as this one.

I’m quite sure that what you want to do is possible one way or another, but it’s probably going to require that you take it bit by bit and learn all the variables. It’s hard to recommend any one method for this as there’s several potential approaches that all have their pros and cons depending on your desired workflow.

I would keep playing around with the slices method for now and see how far you can get. Then try the pattern change thing and see if that works in combination with the other things you want to do on the device.

#12

This is the way!

Simple and uncomplicated

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#13

Just thought of another potential method that might work for you. You can use a “plays free” track to trigger and repeat a particular slice over and over, and turn it off again when you want it to play through the rest of the sample. So for example you could manually trigger slice 1 and have it playing through the song, then when you want to loop a section you trigger a track’s sequencer which has a p-locked trig for the slice you want, then just disengage it with the one2 mode when you’re ready. That should be easy to do with a foot controller.

That probably sounds somewhat incomprehensible if you’re new to the OT, so perhaps don’t worry about it just now. But it’s something I recommend experimenting with at some point just so you have another tool in the box for these kinds of problems.

Again there’s advantages and disadvantages to the potential solutions we’re coming up with, so play around and see what works best for you.

#14

One thing I’ve struggled with on something like this in the past - there is not a way (as far as I know) to send an incremental program change. That is, I can’t say “Go to the next pattern”, I have to say “Go to pattern X”. Am I correct in that?

#15

I use a three button MIDI Baby 3 foot controller from Disaster Area to loop with Pickup Machines. Right now I only have Track 1 and 2 assigned as PU tracks, with others as Flex machine assignments.

One button allows for record / overdub whatever track is selected.

Another controls Start/Stop playback (and a long press on that same button sends the MIDI note value for syncing the sequencer to start with the master PU track.)

The third is for navigating through tracks: press to move to the next track e.g., from T1 to T2 and long press to move backward e.g., T2 to T1.

I also set up the memory management for the project to allow for long loops, should I need them.

The method for setting all of this up is actually written in the OT manual under the Tutorials section–“Controlling the Pick Up Machines With a MIDI Foot Controller.”

Hope this helps!

#16

Possible with Morningstar, Sansamp Midi Mouse, Analog Drive, any gear + a midi processor like Event Processor Plus.

#17

With Pickups you can put a mess with tempo, for sure, but it is harder to mess with loops with Pickups than with Recorders + Flex. Pickups have limited playback control, timestretch is always on, and overdub can be aborted randomly…

What length would be your live loops ? And looped stems ?
Same length for both ?
This is crucial.

#18

so…you kind of can’t get exactly what you want, but you can get close. And I had an MC6 with my OT, so i know what it can do.

this is what i feel like you want to do:
you have 5-6 patterns in the OT.
Intro (P1)
Verse (P2)
Chorus (P3)
Jam (P4)
Verse (P2)
Chorus (P3)
Outro (P5)

You want up through the first chorus to run on rails, fully programmed, but when it gets to the P4, you want P4 to loop indefinitely so you can solo, crowdsurf, rap, etc. Then you hit a button and the P2 kicks in and the rest of the song goes on rails. You are a guitarist, so two hands are always on the guitar and so you have to use your feet.

Well, the bad news is, you can’t do it exactly like that. You can use the MC6 to queue up the next pattern, but that’s not great because you’re already playing your parts and checking out the crowd or singing backing vocals so you might forget to hit your queue and the verse accidentally plays twice. Or you let the entire song run on rails and you just tell your lead guitarist that he better wrap the solo up in 8 bars because the song is moving on!

My solution for this was to use Ableton Live and a Push 3. I used follow functions except for the Jam section and I would go to the next part manually. But unlike the OT, you have to be careful to trigger the next row in Live at the right time or it will jump too early. But also, you’re a busy guy with guitar duties as well.

I ended up ditching the Push 3 and going back to the OT and just putting our songs on rails. But now i use the Digitone as the repository for songs because the Digi series song mode is WAAAAAY better than the OT and it also gives you a visual queue when the part is about end and go to the next part. Sometimes just a glance down at the progress bar is just like making eye contact with your drummer before they take you to the bridge. It’s not cheating. It’s like having a conductor that keeps you on time.

So yeah, I wouldn’t go with the MC6 route. It’s great, but it also requires a shit-ton of programming and you can only see six patterns at a time and you’ll spend most of your time tapping the pedal rather than enjoying the show.

#19

Ok I just did some testing and I believe the plays free track with quantised trig method is probably the simplest/best and matches the OP’s needs. It uses a single pattern which IMO is preferable for live performance/improvisation use and shouldn’t be too hard to setup.

I won’t go through every specific setting because it’ll depend on your material and other things, but here’s the basics:

Set up a static track with your sliced song track, LOOP = on, SLIC = on, and LEN = slice. Go into the AED screen for that static sample and go to ATTR page, scroll all the way down and change quantised trig to 16/32/64, whatever will match the length of one slice.

Now go into pattern settings. You may want to change scale mode to per track just so you can change that track to run slower so 16 steps = 64 which might be visually useful, it’s up to you. Go into the pattern setting page for the track with the sliced song on it and enable PLAYS FREE, then set trig mode to ONE2 and trig quant to be the same as in the attributes page or whatever works best for you.

Now on the sequencer for that track place a trig and hold it and turn the slice parameter on the SRC page to be whichever slice you would like to loop over and over, so you’ve made a p-lock just for that slice. Also make sure the length parameter on that page is as many slices as you are using for that sample.

Now to test; start the sequencer and hit the trig that corresponds to your track (9-16), it will start playing once the sequencer reaches x steps. If you do nothing it will just play through the whole thing and loop again, but if you hit the track trig for your track (1-8) the sequencer for that track will start running after x steps and continuously restart the same slice over and over, effectively looping it. Then all you have to do is hit the same track trig again, the track sequencer will stop and no longer re-trig the slice, and the song will continue.

Controlling that with a MIDI foot controller should be fairly simple to do, there’s some extra steps to that but I won’t go into that just now.

Once you have that sorted and practiced you can incorporate other tracks that will record sections of your live playing so you can do fun mangling/mixing with them. Arming one shot record trigs with a foot controller might be easiest way to handle that in a live scenario, it will take some practice.

Hope that’s understandable and useful for you.

EDIT: Oh I just remembered that I think I had to use the “per track” scale mode and set the master length to infinite for some reason, I think there was some kind of interference going on between the plays free track timing and the master sequencer restarting. It kept playing two slices instead of one which was confusing.

#20

Dang. I was kind of afraid of this. I just need something too specific. I’ll have to reassess a bit. Many thanks for all the info. And yes, @PAPANOONGAKU, you have it exactly right and it sounds like you live right about in that world. Maybe Live is the thing. Or maybe the Octatrack but simplify the demands. At least I’d like to get into some of the Octatrack’s capabilities before I move on. See if it’s worth incorporating in some other fashion.

@Raskal.X I haven’t tried pickup machines yet but was planning on that being the loop side of my process.

@sezare56 (and @stonecoldgroove) This idea of one part per slice and progressing with the pedal was sounding very promising and I hadn’t thought of that way but the limitations of not being able to send a next pattern message sounds like too much to program and like @PAPANOONGAKU said, I’ll be clicking through things on the pedal too much. And/or like you pointed out later, I’ll need more gear. I can’t yet decide how much more to invest in this particular process.
My loops will be relatively short I think, 4 bars maybe, and now that you mention it I’ll need them to match in length.

@GurtTractor Thanks for the LEN explanation! That makes so much more sense and confirms the manual was a touch vague on that point. The other point you made seems promising and worth chasing but yes, incomprehensible at the moment. Ha.

@izzymonkey That’s awesome and I’ll definitely read that section of the manual and try some things. I have to buy a midi switch pedal anyway to control some guitar pedals so I’ll be able to experiment with that.

@hermbot That’s crucial info. Thanks!

@GurtTractor Just reading your last post. I’ll try to get into this and test it out. Thanks so much for testing it out on your side.

I think I might be able to limit myself to just looping the first or last slice of a track. That might simplify a bit. I also just got a loop function on a guitar pedal so I might just skip live looping on the Octatrack for now although it’s a bummer to lose loop functionality for the keys not going through the guitar pedals.

Still looking forward to diving into some of this stuff to try to make something fun happen!
Incredibly useful information from everyone. Very much appreciated. This is awesome.

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