these aren’t requests as i’ve built solutions to most of this in max or with other gear.
midi:
entering midi notes/values is not all that dynamic or performance oriented imo. for me it’s missing the nice details that makes the audio side of the octatrack so useful.
compare to monomachine. for instance, it’s great how the arp in the monomachine pops up on top so you can still get ready to jump into the next thing you want to do as soon as you’re done w, or you can hit function + left or right while entering notes to jump a whole octave.
it’s not common that dialing through midi notes 1 at a time will be musically useful for me. being able to skip +/- 2,3,5 or 7, etc. would make changing notes on the fly more performative, i think. if you could do something like assign “skip values” per note you could really zip around. i mostly use the notes to trigger patterns or tracks on other machines or for drums because dialing notes one at a time isn’t that fun for me.
midi cc mapping could use “machines” imo. with 8 tracks that aren’t as mutable as the audio, sometimes i’ll devote multiple tracks to one device to use different lfo settings, p-locked values, one shot tracks. if i start with a blank pattern or project i have to dig up an old pattern that has the same ccs mapped or re-learn it or dial them all in again. if i copy a track i have to mute the destination, clear the trigs, clear the lfos, clear the arp just to use the ccs. it’s stuff that you’re better off preparing for rather than thinking up and then doing.
why can’t we mute/unmute midi tracks with the crossfader and scenes? it’s like if i’m doing a lot on the audio side, playing scenes, locking values, working the crossfader i can’t be jumping over the to midi side or the mute page that much, so the midi tracks can end up kinda static. i can get way more going with only permutations of 4 midi tracks at a time if they’re reactive and i can switch it up than i can with 8. it’s a hassle to deal with midi feedback by patching the crossfader midi out to something and translating it back to mute the octatrack’s midi tracks.
if you could use the crossfader to adjust midi track lengths or tempo multiplier or shuffle trigs left or right or adjust swing… basically, i don’t care if it doesn’t smoothly morph through p-locks, make it do anything on the midi side at either end of the range and i’d figure out something cool. i’d gladly give up parts on the midi side if i could use the crossfader and scenes to do a small amount of that kind of switching.
lack of function snapping on the midi side is a pain for transpose and pitch bend. chances are transpose is going to go through a bunch of notes i don’t want before i get it to where i want it.
as it is now i have to switch patterns about 8x more often for MIDI than audio and the MIDI side takes longer to program. i could use parts, but…
not midi:
changing the total pattern length to 2 steps usually causes the ot to freak out or crash for me. might have to do with # of flex recorders and independent track lengths as well. with scenes/parts it’s crazy what you can do with 2-4 steps.
ime part reload needs and idiot/safety mode, when you’re working in a dark, busy environment, live it’s just too easy or i’m too stupid not to accidentally reload. it’s frustrating because i really like parts, especially for MIDI but probably only use them 1/8th of the time and mostly to do something and quickly reload because i don’t want to accidentally reload after 30+ minutes of work as the track’s mutated to where it currently is.