Octatrack as a looper - Questions

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi all,

I have started jones’ing for the Octatrack, and one very useful feature to me is the looper functionality. I saw the Elektron tutorial video of this and have some more detailed questions, if anyone would be so kind…

Part 1. Loop record/Stop Management

As background, the tutorial shows that the OT will derive tempo from the loop source, and in the case of that video, it was a non sync’d source being a guitar. Now, my main goal with a looper would be to use with gear midi sync’d to the OT and so the following questions arise…

a) can the sequencer be running in clock master mode while the looper goes into record for its master loop?
b) can I use the sequencer to trigger loops record & stop?

If the above is true then I could have the sequencer running clock sync to my gear, then use a sequencer track to activate the looper, resulting in perfectly captured sync’d data of a set number of measures…

Hopefully I have clearly explained the situation, essentially to capture (say) a fixed 2/4 measure arp’d sequencer from a synth as a loop and use that as the basis of the looper… to overdub etc.

Part 2. Audio manipulation of a loop

My understanding from my so far brief read of the manual is that the pickup machines have more limited FX processing than other machines, so is it possible, while the looper is playing, to save the loop sample, so that it then can be use it as part of a flex (I think that’s the one) machine to slice/retrigger and FX mangle etc?..

thanks in advance

A bunch of questions before I spend 1.2K
#2

SOme short answers, that may be wrong:

1a: Not really, as I use it i often have a master loop with a limited number of steps… i start the sequencer and the record to the loop, often empty… now this loop will be aligned with the sequencer… THEN i have another Pickup machine to which i record and this will NOT retrigger tempo.
In worst case you have a “useless” fixed length “Master” loop… i however like to have fixed length loops…
b: I have found that if you have a pattern with e record trigger for a flex machine and the change to a Pickup then the record trigger will still be there… then you can just adjust length of loop to get it to record as many bars as you like, pattern length will need to be longer than the steps you set other wise it will only retrigger and never really end…
2… the COOL thing is that you can have a flex machine using the record buffer of your pickup machine, then you can do ALMOST all that you can do with a ordinary flex, but proper slicing wont work since you will be replacing the sample, however id you slice then the slices will remain at least until you overdub on the pickup. and (I THINK) that it will still jump to slice points even after overdub
THe nice thing is that the flex stuff will be applied to a potentially ever changing loop which allows for great unpredictable surprises.
My advice is to let the Octatrack inspire, rather than to limit yourself to what you think you want to do or what the manual says is possible… the Octatrack is much more fun and more versatile than what is explained in the manual… Approach the Octatrack as an instrument and you will be awarded …
In my opinion :slight_smile:

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#3

Pickup machines are known to be buggy. The most prolific of the bugs is a sharp click at the begining of some recordings. Then again they are still quite new I can’t wait for them to be fixed.

#4

I have no experience in syncing the master pickup machine to external sequencer, so I defer to abergdahl on that question.

As for Part 2, I have tried his technique and it does work. This is the technique of assigning a Flex machine to a different track, and setting the sample source to the Recorder of the pickup machine track, so you can sample the pickup machine output, slice the sample, and do what you want to the slices.

BTW, you can use FX on a pickup machine track. All tracks get two FX slots, regardless of whether you assign a pickup machine to the track. You can assign track LFOs to a variety of parameters in your pickup machine track too for more craziness, though if your track is assigned to a SLAVE pickup machine, mucking about with the pitch may mess up overdubs on that track.

I have found MASTER pickup machine to be reliable. You can avoid clicks by setting the FIN value in Recording Setup to some value above zero - this is the fade-in parameter. By not using a Slave pickup machine, I’m using the OT a lot like I used to use a Line 6 DL4 looper, which didn’t have any concept of a “slave looper” anyway.

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#5

Thanks so much for the replies… my apologies for any vagueness here. I am still waiting for the OT to arrive…so I appreciate all the input, and yes, I need to read this manual some more :slight_smile:

@abergdahl

looking further into recording sync with your option b.
In this scenario… are you saying that you setup (say) track one as in this OT tut?..


Then the machine of track one is reassigned to pickup before recording?..

looking further into the manual, if I read this correctly, it indicates that pickup machines respond to all the recording screen setup menus… which would indicate that they can also directly be made to sync to OT tempo using QREC?..perhaps that just validates what you said above…lol

my original thought was to dedicate a midi track to the pursuit of controlling the rec start stop of the pickup machine, even if it meant connecting midi pout>midi in… seems that may not be necessary, but looking at the midi implementation it should be possible.

@ Governer Silver

Thanks for that input also… conceivably then a flex on another track could sample the loop, slice it, random the slot playback and scenes could be used to fade from normal to random?.. nevermind the FX possibilities…

all good stuff! :slight_smile:

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#6

Yes, I do this a lot:

  1. Build loop on Track 1 (pickup machine)
  2. Assign Flex machine to Track 3
  3. Assign Sample Slot of Track 3 to R1 (the Recorder for Track 1 - note that in this specific case you do not have to initiate sampling on Track 3 - because you told it to share the recording buffer with Track 1, it already has the sample)
  4. Enter Audio Editor for Track 3.
  5. Create slice grid to slice the audio
  6. Set sample trigs for Track 3 (in grid sequencer -recording mode)
  7. Assign random locks to randomly assign sequencer locks - this assigns the slices to the trigs you set in the previous step.
  8. Start sequencer to play slices.

I plan to simply my workflow by using Scenes. I think you would do a Scene lock on the Slice parameter to use the fader to control slice selection - Allerian demonstrated this in last weekend’s workshop.

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#7

Hi there, thanks for your post it opened new doors of possibilities. About that workshop, was that online is there a recording of it?