Multiply on Pickup?

Who experienced a MULTIPLY happening on Pickup and pressing TRACK+MIDI ?

What does it mean?

On the manual only this is reported:

11. Pressing the [MIDI] button activates the MIDI sequencer mode. A lit LED indi- cates the MIDI sequencer is active. When in the RECORD SETUP menu this LED indi- cates both the signal strength of the internal sample source and the internal source selection for recorder trigs. [FUNCTION] + [MIDI] opens the PARTS menu. When a Pickup machine is used, the button combination performs a multiply command.

Multiply is an overdub feature, which multiplies the loop lenght: 1 loop lenght = 2 loop lenght and so on (within the mem limit of course).

Great for using when you want to build up an bigger and longer structure from a very few and short sounds.

Example:
Take an hi-hat on one track, looper on next track. Start looper recording, hit the hi-hat triggkey a few hits in any random fashion. End looper recording. Say that the looper counter went to 6 in this example. If you would like to do an looper overdub with another extra sound, the overdub lenght would be within the same time frame (very short). Pressing multiply once would expand the hi-hat loop lenght from 6 to 12. Pressing multiply again, 12 becomes 24 and so on.

Hope that was clear enough…

/mike

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Thanks Mike!
Im really new to Pickup machines…and i never found this feature written in the manual.

Anyway…Is there a way to set the sampling length without going in the Pickup Recorder menu?
I really would like to have the LEN (encoder C in Playback page) knob to be my spot…but it only works for slave loops, right?
Or can i let this MULTIPLY function to come in my help?

I say what: i am using Pickups for looping some portion of audio in a DjDecks situation. I have a Pickup for each deck so i can sample a loop from a song and a loop from the other. (like Traktor does setting just the length in bars)
I would like to have the ability to be fast in deciding which loop length and set it on the fly, without going in the Recorder menu and set the RLEN…
Any help?

thanks a lot in advance!
GiGi

Thanks Mike!
Im really new to Pickup machines…and i never found this feature written in the manual.

Anyway…Is there a way to set the sampling length without going in the Pickup Recorder menu?
I really would like to have the LEN (encoder C in Playback page) knob to be my spot…but it only works for slave loops, right?
Or can i let this MULTIPLY function to come in my help?

I say what: i am using Pickups for looping some portion of audio in a DjDecks situation. I have a Pickup for each deck so i can sample a loop from a song and a loop from the other. (like Traktor does setting just the length in bars)
I would like to have the ability to be fast in deciding which loop length and set it on the fly, without going in the Recorder menu and set the RLEN…
Any help?

thanks a lot in advance!
GiGi[/quote]
No problem, yes I was a bit surprised of that too when I read your post. A search in the OT PDF manual doesn´t get many matches. However I do know that it is a bit inspired of similar feature in the Gibson(/Oberheim) Echoplex Looper (which I own one of). But I think there are some differencies between them in certain situations, I haven´t compared them to each other in this regard yet. I am at the moment unable to respond and/or clarify your question, but will look into it. If you get to some conclusions/experiments in the meanwhile, feel free to share your findings!

/mike

No problem, yes I was a bit surprised of that too when I read your post. A search in the OT PDF manual doesn´t get many matches. However I do know that it is a bit inspired of similar feature in the Gibson(/Oberheim) Echoplex Looper (which I own one of). But I think there are some differencies between them in certain situations, I haven´t compared them to each other in this regard yet. I am at the moment unable to respond and/or clarify your question, but will look into it. If you get to some conclusions/experiments in the meanwhile, feel free to share your findings!

/mike[/quote]
Hello Mike (and friends)
I too have a Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro (EDP), using [url=“http://www.aurisis.com/loopiv.htm”]Loop IV software.
I am very interested in the OctaTrack’s Pickup machines for live looping to a master clock (grabbing and warping melodic stuff slaved to a groovebox).
When I read the present specification of the OT’s Multiply operation, it seems to look just like the Electrix Repeater, where one Multiply Message simply doubles the loop length.
On the Gibson Echoplex Loop IV, Multiply is done with two messages, let’s call them “From” and “To”…
Where you can have a loop going
“1 2 3 4”
And if you punch in/from at the “1”, and let the loop repeat N times before punching Out/From Multiply landing on the “1”, then you’ve overdubbed a longer phrase over N repeats of the shorter

Of course, you can also Multiply DOWN/shorter:
using “1 2 3 4”…
punching FROM the “1” TO the “3” gives you the shorter loop.
1212121212”

For a demo of someone doing this repeatedly (4 beats to 3 to 2 to 1…)
check out http://youtu.be/_Xw4dtOaCwE?t=3m46s.

What’s even MORE fun is how you can use Multiply to change meter and loop centering .
For example, say I have my 4-beat sequence “1 2 3 4” running
I punch in/FROM on “2,” let it Multiply " …3412" and then punch out/TO on the “4”, then my new loop is 5 beats long,
23412”… with only the “2” doubled…
so it would repeat as a longer phrase in a new time signature at the same tempo.
23412234122341223412…

for an example of THAT form of multiplying UP into new time-signature, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijGDH3qr9dQ, which also shows how you can move the shorter looper within the previously-longer loop by UnDo’ing your start point.

Very fun destructive editing.
(or as Aurisis, authors of Loop IV, call it, “real-time granular looping”…)
This feature can become very performative, and taken REALLY far, especially when you add other (more) basic looper behaviors (like overdub and reverse, and UnDo…).
These techniques seem to be taken their furthest shown by the brilliant Andre Lafosse,with methods he documents in his website of tutorials.

Check the performance HERE, where he works without MIDI or quantization…

Using this “performative Multiply” in tandem with the EDP’s other sampler-looper features (reversal, half-speed, deletion, UnDo) are what have made the Gibson’s EDP such an agile tool among live loop-artists…

Of course, going deep and fast with that rack box effectively REQUIRES a foot-controller to allow direct access to all these messages.
I understand the OT has menus and knobs to handle everything else, but I don’t know if I can pull of this same kind of “re-multiply” …YET

I’d hope that the memory management that Allows OT PU machines to Multiply a loop while overdubbing into itself might (also/eventually) allow for arbitrary positioning of loop From and To points
(all within each track/machine’s memory allocation, of course).

If the OT strives to push the Pickup Machines to be the most powerful live loopers around, I REALLY hope they embrace the best features of the Gibson Loop 4 OS. If it were able to re-window and re-meter loops with performative button pushes (and not pre-determined track lengths), the OT would effectively combine and replace THE REST the gear in my rack…

I have an advanced Midi FootController, if messages need to be stacked into single operations.

If anyone who owns an OT (and a Gibson Echoplex?) could dig in and try to emulate this behavior, I’d love to hear if/how any of the above features are possible.
(in or outside of PU machines).

cheers,
Patrick.

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