Octatone merging

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hey guys. I’m planning to take my setup to the next level and loop a midi cable from the DN to the OT whereas my OT was master for almost one year. I discovered in a topic I could send MIDI CCs, Notes and more to genuinely merge the octatrack and the digitone together creating a whole new kind of instruments.
I have my OT sampling from all 5 sources and I wanted to make a conditional trig on D#4 so that the digitone as a master could send imprevisible recorder trigs on different channels. I have been able to set this up but the MIDI trig doesn’t seem to activate the OT Track Recorders.

However, it sounds dope because it is now possible to set track recorders to specific jobs at a glance just hitting the around the D#4 trig on the DN, but I wanted to enjoy conditional trigs to make things less predictable and after triple checking both of the menus I am starting to believe it is not possible.

I’ve been able to reproduce this situation on midi loopback on the octatrack but I would have loved to do so on the digitone.

One more subsidiary question : is it normal to lose the ability to pre listen to the track sounds when a Midi Out is being plugged in from the DN? I can take it out for a few seconds in my studio to taste a preset without loading it to the pool or the active track but it’s a little bit tortuous as I am one of those DAWless psytrance weirdos lol

Thank you very much for your help, I always appreciate to read long topics where ideas are coming from the whole globe… Except I feel like one expert knows the answers around! :slight_smile:

Have a nice week and happy knob tweaking my dudes.

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#2

I’d set OT as master if you record with it… Still possible to send notes and CCs from DN.

What channel do you use? I’d choose an audio track channel (default are channels 1-8).

Listen samples with Fn+Yes?
Should work. (Doesn’t work on T8 set as Master track).

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#3

Hi.
Thanks for answering fast.

My OT was master in the first place, and the modification in progress is just the adding of a cheap MIDI cable to the setup from the DN output to the OT input. Did not try to throw one D#4 from a DN audio track yet. I will try out with a silent D#4 in a few hours and write out how it turns
My 4 first OT MIDI tracks master the 4 DN Audio tracks, I got a couple of synths on T5/T6, one Kaoss Pad and one more channel to pLock FX on the DN.
no Master track on the OT, running in studio mode and both devices up to be each other’s masters dans slaves, works great except for the conditional trig I’m looking for.

i can listen to the octatrack sounds, but whenever I try to pre listen to newer track sounds on the DN, I can only hear the sound of the active track ;/

#4

How are you isolating each track? Even with a hard pan and 4 mono thru tracks on the OT you would only be able to isolate 2 panned tracks at a time. Or are you recording 1 track at a time? Unless you are using a Digitone Keys (individual stereo outs per track)?

Because that would make for some cool live FX for sure. Especially with the xfader changing Operator ratios and OT FX…

But after reading more it seems that you are sampling? Do you have some sort of live playback or just recording goodies for later use?

Sorry for all the questions but I also have a OT/DN that I pair often together and I am interested haha

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#5

FYI the fader doesn’t send midi :sob:

#6

Uhhhh I can record a Video where when I move my fader my B operator values change…did I do something wrong? It’s tied to Pitch on the OT. And the Pitch encoder changes operator B on the DN :sunglasses:

So while the xfader doesn’t send MIDI my scene values do :upside_down_face:

Complete accidental discovery on my part, but I’m sure others use this trick.

Another reason to use OT as master as @sezare56 recommended!

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#7

clarification: it sends one fixed midi value. you can’t assign scenes to it like you can in the audio engine.

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#8

You can disable OT CC send in MIDI > CONTROL.

I recommend OT Master if you want to record with it. Slight tempo variations can change recording length.

Otherwise you can send CCs in both ways, master or slaved. Just check channels.
Crossdader sends CC48 only.

:sketchy:
I’m talking about OT audio tracks, which are the tracks that can receive Midi notes for different controls, including Recorders control.
Use a DN midi track that send notes on the same channel as an OT audio track.

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#9

Thanks for that! Still a lot to learn with both devices but always happy to have happy little accidents.

I guess I got a little confused with this thread because of the “merging” statement. Looks like its more of a MIDI merge than an audio merge.

Which in retrospect is making more sense :joy:

#10

Check OT Appendix C!

Use a DN midi track, lfo on CC48 (crossfader), plocked CC55 and CC56 (scenes) with trig conditions, have fun!

Interaction ?

6 Likes
#11

When I have time I’ll give it a shot!

And yea words are hard :upside_down_face:

Excited to see where this goes!

#12

You can also send up to 24 midi lfos with OT!
I usually use HOLD mode, so that it sends much less data.

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#13

When I have a DN, 1st thing I’ll do is control DN’s Multi Map with OT’s arp. :loopy:

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#14

My OT does influence on the B operator with CC48 since MIDI CC direct connect/MIDI CC send/receive are enabled, MIDI CC are received on the DN : it creates something special to any pattern crossing my fingers! OT does a bit of MIDI learning but I’d like to make a template project with all of those settings settled. However I don’t see any other CC messages from OT to DN, and the contrary has already destroyed some other parts in previous tryouts lol! this is weird…

I use a Quadra Thru going out from the OT to my other gears, and each OT MIDI track is master of one device, but the 4 first MIDI tracks are reserved for the DN audio tracks.
Studio mode is being used for one year, with hard Pan for each tracks, they all go in the mixer with their friends (synths, DN and KPs) and one audio output from the KP and DN go in the OT to avoid audio loopback from the track mixer. Sampling all those signals feels great.

With the setup I was looking for, I finally found one to record on the go from external and internal sources (kaoss pad, synths, and internal), but I wanted to conditional trig those recorders first to make much more unpredictable sounds.

Yup, me too, that’s what I did at the first place : I tried setting the MIDI tracks to their exact respective channel, but DN won’t receive the D#4 other than by hitting a D#4 trig from the DN’s 8th MIDI channel (at track 1). It launches my OT Track recorder that is set up on the Audio track T4 (ch.8), still no trig cond :confused:

I don’t really get how to get more than 5 LFOs with this setup as DN has two and OT has 3, and this is not the first time i read it, is there any more documentation on that on the forum? :slight_smile:

Very nice topic as expected! Thank you very much guys.
I can make a small video if you need images on words!

cheers.

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#15

Thanks for the detailed response! Sounds like a ton of fun :tada:

1 Like
#16

Oooh, It’s terrific. And really, when I was looking to do the trig conditions trick, and I that fell on the ‘ability’ to throw a track recorder on the go to any track attached to a recorder with different sources sounded really really heavy, that’s the moment I felt Elektron’s powers!
It’s a really different approach on how to make music : I am always getting late in recording because I always find bricks to add to the building… And I need to afford a new track mixer to separate all my audio tracks to a DAW and normalize, but the octatrack left me starving lmfao
I eat cables and screws since I bought the DN and OT but it is clearly the best gear EVER.

4 Likes
#17

It is truly a Sonic soundscape to contend with. So many options! Glad you are digging that Elektron flow. Breeds creativity and super long jam sessions haha

#18

you can point all of the midi tracks to the same channel!

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#19

OK I think I screwed it up
I was trying to do the exact same stuff with DN audio tracks by setting one track channel to the same one as an OT Track recorder and it worked the same but still no trig conditions… Then I had a couple of loopback noisy errors and now I can’t get back to the working state :frowning: I can swear it went from good to worst because “some” notes I could hit transferred midi information (the 4th scale has some mutes, next/previous track and play functions) but not the track recorder, then nothing at all… I believe this could be due to the loopback errors because it worked for a few seconds after a boot cycle and once again after reloading both projects to the working state I made yesterday…
If anyone had the same troubles trying to make a conditional trig from one elektron gear to another, I think I’m being confused between auto channel which I believe concerns the whole machine and track channels which, I believe, concerns the track only.
I’ve had set DN Midi T3 and T4 to channels 8 and 16 to control OT’s T4 T8 track recorders, enabled transp. mode on the OT, CCs (for the xfader to B operators) enabled notes out from DN to OT… Also I tried to play with the Auto channel settings, but now it doesn’t seem to work with any settings, even if I reload the projects, I fear to have broken everything. Hopefully it’s a backup project but I would love to make it work the way it looks, because yesterday my configuration seemed clear enough for me before I post this thread Lol! :expressionless:

#20

  1. i think it does, if my channels aren’t set up correctly sliding the fader will modify the DT sounds. away from my lab + manuals right now so unable to confirm

  2. FALSE INFORMATION REDACTED

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