OctaTip ~ MIDI Turing Machine

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

This may be an obvious one for some but I’m still learning OT.
I didn’t see anyone posting this technique here so wanted to document it in hope that it might possibly help some other OT noobs!

The Basic Idea
You can use the LFO designer on MIDI tracks to get a pseudo ‘Turing Machine’, IE a random repeating sequence generator.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/music-thing-modular-turing-machine-mkii

The Technique

  1. setup a midi channel as usual to output midi to an external synth
  2. on the LFO page, set the PMTR to note.
  3. on the LFO page, set an LFO to use an LFO designer wave (eg TRK1)
  4. open the chosen LFO designer (TRK 1) and randomize (double tap YES)
  5. back on the LFO page, set the TRIG mode to HOLD
  6. on LFO page, set the MULT, SPEED and DEP to your liking (eg SPD=24, MULT=16 will have a 1 bar repeating cycle)
  7. Open the GRID and drop a trig on every step.
  8. Press play

If all worked out, you should have a 1 bar 16 step repeating sequence.

Some extras
Once you have this setup you can play about with all the other parameters OT offers to dive into customizing it!

  1. On the designer page - func + left/right will shift the LFO by 1 step in either direction
  2. Changing the depth parm on LFO page to increase the range
  3. Instead of mapping the LFO to NOTE you can map it to ARP transpose, then set the ARP to a single note and set a scale, now you have a scale quantized random sequence!

Questions
Is there a way to always sync the first step of an LFO to begin at the same place so that it doesn’t change every stop/start. On DT you can p-lock the first trig’s trig mode, doesn’t seem possible on OT?

Hopefully this is useful for someone!

Edit:
If you have a drum machine that has midi notes mapped to individual gates (eg rytm using the low end of the midi piano roll) then you can get some weird randomized / generative drum patterns too!
Eg: Record those into the rytm and tweak away to get some nice randomly generated rhythms too (tho it’s mostly very messy I’ve had inspiration come from the mess)

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The improvised techno thread
Strategies for looping random with OT Midi tracks/LFOs
Melodies with MIDI LFO & Arp - technique
DAWless setup advice please
#3

Hold a step and press No. This places a bright green Trigless Trig, whose only function is to trigger LFOs (and FX envelopes on the audio sequencer). You can place these on steps that already have trigs on them.

To cancel a Trigless Trig, just tap the trig again.

Not sure if DT does this, but if you ever want to p-lock an OT parameter without triggering a note, you can place a dim-green Trigless Lock. Hold a step and press No twice. Now you can p-lock parameters to this step to, say, change a sample’s filter amount without retriggering the sample.

You can find this in the manual under Trig Types.

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#4

In the context of the technique outlined here, I believe @JPM is asking about the position of the LFO in HOLD mode, with a trig already in place on every sequencer step. Any LFO in HOLD mode won’t be affected by a trigless trig. Personally, I find that FUNC + TRIG is an easier shortcut for entering trigless locks than TRIG + NO + NO, but others may disagree.

You can use SYNC TRIG instead of HOLD mode with this technique, as NOTE parameter does not take affect until it is trigged, so effectively it works similar to HOLD, but the LFO position will always reset at the beginning of the sequence. SPD 32 @ x4 MULT = 1 bar LFO. Great idea, by the way! Look forward to experimenting with it.

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#5

Any LFO in HOLD mode won’t be affected by a trigless trig.

Didn’t know this, thanks. Like you, I would have used Sync Trig for the LFO type instead of Hold. But I thought @JPM was trying to trigger a new LFO value in the middle of a pattern, not when the pattern repeated. A trigless lock would have done that, or so I thought.

Personally, I find that FUNC + TRIG is an easier shortcut for entering trigless locks than TRIG + NO + NO, but others may disagree.

FUNC + TRIG works best on a step with no pre-existing trig. If a step already has a MIDI/sample trig, TRIG + NO + NO works better imo because you can remove it without removing the sample/MIDI trig. That’s the great thing about OT – it gives everyone different ways to work.

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#6

but it wont restart the sequence each time to the same note… it will trig the lfo but lfo do not restart the same point than before … I am wrong ?

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#7

Sync Trig LFO, as already mentioned by @Merv. Resets LFO on step 1 of sequence.

Possibly the most useful LFO mode on any Elektron machine.

#8

Here’s some mucking around with the @JPM midi turing machine tip. I locked the arp to a scale.

Sub37 providing synth voice.

This one has no scale lock

@JPM sync trig works well, resets the LFO at the beginning of each bar. Works with stop start too.

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#9

You are correct. I was explaining to Merv that I misunderstood what JPM was asking for, so I recommended a trigless trig, which Merv explained is not what JPM wanted. I too would go with Sync Trig.

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#10

I like to to engage the arp and use an lfo to modulate note2 parameter (or several note parameters). With lfo set to hold, a new sequence is generated each time the seq is started again. Record midi out and pick the good parts, transfer back to OT. I got some pretty wild sequences out of it.

Gotta try your lfo designer approach later.

I wish we would get a way to retrig lfos similar to how it´s handled on the Analogs and Digis. That´s super flexible. Maybe lfo retrig could be added to the microtiming menu…

Wow…Sub37 sounds so good! :blush:

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#11

Hi ! Thank you,

Tho to clearly understand : there is no way to keep the same lfo sequence exactly, when pushing start stop or turning the machine on ?

#12

Don’t forget to try modulating the depth and/or speed of your LFO with other LFOs to get more unpredictable (but still ultimately cyclic, even if the cycle might take minutes to repeat) patterns!

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#13

Also in arp mode, instead of using a single note you could use two notes and modulate one or both of them independently with LFOs 2 and 3, while LFO1 is modulating transpose.

I haven’t actually tried any of this stuff myself, though. But what I HAVE done a fair amount is keeping the ARP edit page open and using the LEN parameter as a performance control. That would probably work well here, too.

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#14

To use the “Turing Machine” but have the 1st note always be the same, why not put the 1st note in normally and use the LFO sequence randomization on step 2 of nn?
assuming I’m trying to randomize 15 of 16 steps / 31 of 32 / 63 of 64 /

SCG

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#15

Just realised if you have a drum machine that has midi notes mapped to individual gates (eg rytm using the low end of the midi piano roll) then you can get some weird randomized / generative drum patterns too!
Record those into the rytm and tweak away to get some nice randomly generated rhythms too! :slight_smile:

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#16

I totally did this by accident with my Rytm! I was going crazy wondering how the OT was negating the mutes on the Rytm without sending to any channels besides the DVCO I intended to sequence. Then a quick manual search made me feel dumb

#17

Would this work for audio tracks if you used a sliced audio file where every slice was a different note? Set the LFO target to slice rather than note.

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#18

Wanted to pass along something similar I did last night. It was tonal, and not necessarily random per se, but it sure sounded like it.

I created the same arp for every midi track, then created a different single cycle sound from a sine wave to control on my DT from the OT. Placed a different chord down for each of 16 steps for every track, put an arp on the speed of some of them, plocked speed for others, set all steps to 6% probability.

I’m new to the OT so I’m not sure but I think that two instances of an arp can run at the same time on a track? Like if a note triggers the arp and then the next step has an arp it plays both at once, which is the only way I can explain the notes that play very fast, since my arp was set at 6x for almost every individual sound.

Here it is if you wanna hear it. It wasn’t 100% generative as I did some messing with scenes and DT parameters during recording. I want to go back and throw an lfo on all of the decay times.

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