Octatrack and Guitar

Any other guitar + OT users here?
I was on the brink to setup a new pedal board… After watching a lot of pedal demos, I found this channel (where many awesome pedals are demonstrated) and finally saw this video

I use the OT for years, but only for electonic music stuff. This video is awesome, using the OT as a guitar looper/fx box.
In a band scenario - how would you route this? Obviously using a midi pedal for the pickup machines (can you recommend one?). Then going from a mic’d amp into the OT? Or using a preamp? Using the cue outs for other pedals, and back into the OT?
Or using the Amp after the OT?
Any suggestions?

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I use my OT with a Disaster Area DMC 7 midi pedal. I also have used a DMC 6 as well as a logidy UMI3. All work great although I had to write my own firmware for the DMCs (should be floating around here somewhere). I just set everything up (like in the Cuckoo video) and save as a “template” so I can load it up and go. I use an attenuator after my preamp section that has a line out to my mixer then send that channel to the OT and back to the mixer. I don’t play live so just through the monitors or headphones after that.

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Amps sounds are great but too loud for me. Hard to have allways the same sound.

I use amp/cab simulators. I had Two Notes Torpedo Live/Cab/VB101. If you want to keep your amp sound, I’d choose Torpedo Live, with inside loadbox. You can plug your speaker or note

For the moment I use a Muse Research Receptor with Guitar Rig vst in it, or even a 25€ Sansamp Blond clone. I’d like a Kemper rack.

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Too loud for you or for the octatrack?

Do you think it would make sense live, going with the raw guitar signal through the pedals, then OT and then to the amp. So that the OT is like an expansion of the pedals.
Or would the signal be too quiet.?
I guess I just have to try it :wink:

I will have a look at am simulators. I know good vsts but no pedals

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Too loud for me and my family to have the best sound, cranking the volume.
No fx loop on your amp?
Line out ?

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Yes I see, same for me at home…
It has fx loop. Never used it.

The Kemper Rack looks awesome, but out of my budget plans

Depending on FX, it can be before preamp (wah) or in fx loop (reverb)

Try both at the same time !

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I’m just starting to integrate my OT into my live rig which consists of me, a guitar, and a mahoosive pedalboard.

I’ve run my cab sim into the AB in on the OT, have OT’s CUE out running into a second small pedalboard for additional mangling which is brought back into CD on the OT.

I’n toying with flex sampling using one-shots for recording and triggering samples but definitely need a floorboard MIDI box of some kind to arm/disarm the record and audio tracks… The DMC Gen 3 boxes look good but I need to do more research. I’m going to look at using the MIDI on th OT to control my Infinity looper and Strymon boxes, too, but that’s for another day.

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Yamaha MFC 10 midi foot controller seems the best for me. As @avantronica mentionned, there are min/max settings, very useful.

I have a decent Roland FC 200, and a midi processor, so I can send any message.
I always recommand a midi processor to get rid of hardware midi limitations, with certain limits of course. I can control Ot’s slices, comb filters freq, etc with midi notes for instance.
I helped a guy using DMC6 sending only notes to map it precisely to Prog Changes, in order to change OT patterns. He already had Event Processor I use.

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You’ll need a USB midi host, or their midi breakout adapter, but the Softstep is a really great tool with tons of versatility.

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Yeah I forgot it , great possibilities for configuration and original sensitive behaviours…
12 step seems interesting too…

I’m not sure if I want to invest in a amp simulator. At home I can use Amplitube or waves, and live it seems like a downgrade to my real amp. I guess good sounding simulations are in a price range, where you get pretty solid normal amps.
Also have to try if I like the OT for looping with a midi controller. Another option might be using a loop pedal, capture loops and then have the hands free for sampling and mangling on the OT…
So you are using a midi footpedal for sampling and for program changes for effects?

My goal mainly is to create ambientish, strange guitar sounds, that doesn’t sound too much like guitar anymore. There are so many great pedals out there nowadays. I saw the demos for the “count to five” and “Bitquest” on the knobs channel. Awesome. But then I thought, well, I own the OT. It was made for crazy sound mangling and change sound completely into something else, why not use it with guitars.

I did, but I had a RC 505 looper. Since 1 or 2 years, I mostly experiment things with OT, and A4 since one year, but rarely with a guitar. I play a little acoustic Guitalele and it’s fine before I finish my home studio room. No walls yet.

I experimented realtime guitare mangling with pitch/rate/reverse, with a Thru track and several realtime Flex recordings, with different pitches, without time stretch.
Time stretch with rate can be interesting though.

Many things to say, have to test TRC again !

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Can you do real-time audio damage with a thru track or do you have to capture it first on a flex?

Drastic manipulation won’t be with Thru, because you don’t have access to Playback settings.
I have to correct, in fact the Thru track was for “dry” sound, and the other mangled tracks were recording Input A, playing realtime (No -1 microtiming necessary for analog inputs, maybe timestretch off)

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I thought about using a thru track for the dry sound, a pickup for capturing loop and tempo, then a flex with the same recorder buffer as the pickup, presliced and then many neighbour tracks for fx with prepared scenes.
Hope something like that works for me. Then send the cue outs into some great delay and reverb pedals

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Can you assign the same record buffer for a pickup as you can a flex?

That plan sounds pretty solid, too. Would be interested to hear the results!

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I think the Pickup automatically records in the corresponding recorder buffer. I would choose this buffer as sample in a flex machine on another track.
edit: yes works

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So… Pickup on Track 1, record buffer 1 on Track 2?

My mind. It is blown.

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