Octatrack as live bass/guitar fx module

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hello Elektronauts :smile:

  • I’m looking into the possibility of using an Octatrack as a live fx pedal buy adding a midi foot switch to control it.

  • This is the pedal board that i’m trying to emulate: Midi foot controlled filter, time sync delay, time sync tremolo, reverb, chorus, distortion/overdrive, whammy (pitch modulation)

I have read that the behringer fcb1010 with uno firmware can send midi commands to the Octatrack and that the Octatrack can ad delay, reverb, chorus, filter, lfo tremolo(?) and distortion to an incoming signal

My Questions are:

  • Does the Octatrack have scenes that i can recall from a midi controller to activate and deactivate FX chains?

  • Can i control the filter cutoff with a midi expression pedal?

  • I’ve read that the octatrack can perform realtime pitch modulation. Is it possible to apply this to an incoming signal and control it via midi?

I know this sounds strange since there are many dedicated FX units that do exactly this but i would like to switch between playing bass and playing the octatrack during my bands live shows.

Maybe you guys can recommend another Elektron product that i can do this with (not the analog heat). I like the analog four and the rythem a lot but they seem to have more limited FX and routing options.

So am I dreaming or is this possible? :blush:

Even small amounts of information will be useful since maybe i can put ends together and figure this out.

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#2

Yeah pitch is controllable by CC value, and you could set scenes up assigned to different FX and change scene on either side via midi. And cross fader is controllable by CC48 too so if you wanted and had enough switches you could set different scenes on OT by foot and even fade between FX if you have an appropriate rocking midi expression pedal

#3

Wow thanks for the reply! I can do all that on an incoming signal?

#4

Is it possible to assignee bpm to a scene or is that controlled only by master??

#5

I would say that the effects are incredibly lacking on the octatrack

#6

I read that on a few other threads :frowning: I have analog distortion and chours pedals. I would still be up for this if i was only to use the filter, lfo tremo, delay and pitch. I guess the chorus, overdrive and reverb are the ones lacking right?

#7

Well I would definitely say so in the context of bass/guitar which usually need dedicated effects to do the job properly but I would wait until a guitar player with an octatrack chimes in because honestly I don’t know. I’d be very wary though. Ideally you need a friend with an octatrack so you can try it for yourself

#8

You definitely can with FX and I’m sure you can with pitch with a bit of a trick but Ive never tried it.

Think of it this way, you have 16 scenes, you can assign any of these to side A and side B of the cross fader. a scene is an altered set of parameters, you can say for example set scene A to have reverb off and scene B to have reverb on, when you slide from A to B it will morph to the level of reverb assigned to scene B.

You can assign basically every parameter to scenes, so say for example scene 1 is set to be a gentle reverb, scene 2 is a huge infinite reverb, scene 3 is a delay, and scene 4 is a different delay setting and so on, you can choose which one is assigned to scene A or B via midi, so that’s doable by footpedal.

Cause the cross fader receives CC 48 you can control that with a footpedal sending to the faders channel rather than by hand, so morphing is possible by pedal. The limitation being that you can only assign 2 of the effects per track, and each track cant do reverb and delay at the same time. You can work around this using neighbor tracks. A neighbor track routes the audio of the track before it through it, so say you have track 1 and a neighbor on track 2 you can use 4 effects on track 1s audio, and double LFOs etc

Now, real-time pitch shifting is a tricky one which is gonna be a bit complicated to explain to a newcomer, you can only pitch shift a recorded signal, but basically you can set it to record and play back at the same time. You should be able to timestretch or reverse what you’re live recording. If you go for it you will realise that OT is way way more than an FX box.

Bpm is not assignable to scene but I’ve never found I really needed it to, and it’s true that the FX aren’t boutique level but that’s cause the box does way way more and allows you to be incredibly flexible with how you set it up, you can for example use 3 neighbors and add 8 effects to to a track if you want, and resample, chop up, rearrange, further process etc. It has chorus, flanger, phaser, delay, three reverbs, filter, EQ, dj EQ, comb filter and a compressor, probably missing some but I’m not at home. you can use two of these per track.

2 Likes
#9

The sp404 has great effects, is much cheaper and is better for handling investors IF by chance that’s all you want. It’s worth a look. No midi controlled effects though.

#10

Ok if you prefer Sp404 let me tell you I prefer 100 times Octatracks Fx possibilities.
I have similar Sp 555, bought for my 4.5 years old son, useless for me.
I made a test with mini guitar straight in OT, without preamp nor samples, only guitar realtime processed by OT :
https://soundcloud.com/user-475861059/lapstick-travel-guitar-straight-to-octatrack
Of course it is better to have analog stuff, I’ll buy a new Amp/Cab Simulator soon, but you can add up to 16 sequenced Fx with OT to an incoming signal, realtime sampling, sample mangling, control up to 240 parameters with the crossfader linked to a midi controller (as @jb mentionned).

Only 1 poor FX with Sp 404. :smile:
No sequence editing, so poor for everything compared to Octatrack.

4 Likes
#11

Thanks you are very knowledgeable about the octa

The crossfade reverb swells sound like great fun and how you explained the scence leads me to beleave that i could have 16 FX chains selectable buy midi controller so that is 80% of my goal.

My band is a trio with Guitar/Voce, Electronic drums, synths (dubstep, electro) played with push,mpk,keyboard and apc, bass guitar (me)

I want the Octa so i can join in on the synth/drum playing and take some of the weight of my band mate.
I produce the songs in ableton live then we go in to the practice room a figure it out live. Soo sometimes my band mate doesnt have enuf hand to play everything and i end up just doubling synth parts with my bass.

Sample mangling and craziness sounds awsome. I love the way Culprate, Koan Sound and Joe Ford use resampling (even if in DAW)

#12

Sweet vibes your sending us there! How are you getting that clicky percussive sound in the mix?
Standalone FX like SP are a no go. I wanna slam some 808 kicks thru my ampeg 4x10 :innocent:

#13

Clicky percussive sounds are my guitar and incoming noise with high gain distortion, hi-passed and sequenced. :wink:
It can be used to make a kick (filter lowpass sweep), snare (overdrive and hi-pass)…

Anyway you can even make realtime music with nothing plugged, record inputs, compress to max : result is a kind of changing white noise you can modulate as you wish.

1 Like
#14

You can have 16 set ups of different parameters but remember it’s 2 FX per track, remember that
And if you’re prepping songs in live it’s really great for loading stuff into OT for arrangement, if you have a bunch of 4 bar loops you can arrange them all in OT and it can stream from disk so it will take a load off your band mates in the background of doing everything else you want to do, without using any RAM. say you have drums on one track, melody on another and bass on another you have 4 free tracks to play with plus a master track which you can set up more master effects on, also assignable to scenes, this is kind of the tip of the iceberg, that’s without even composing within OT, it’s incredibly deep and with that it’s not exactly easy to pick up. But it will leave all your bandmates with hands free to do whatever they want, and when you get better adapted you’ll be able to live sample and chop up what they’re playing

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#15

So 16 scenes can be saved with 2 FX on one track or 16 FX in series on 8 tracks. Do these belong to a bigger group of memory “song” for example. I can maybe set up 16 scenes then have another 16 saved in a different memory? The neighbor tracks can be series and parallel right?

Is any of this diferent between the mk1 and 2?

I pretty sure I’m gonna be 1,400 euros poorer pretty soon! :rofl:

#16

There are 2 Fx per track. You can add 2 Fx using a track as Neighbor Fx, which is enough Fx I think. Technically, you can add 16 Fx to a track, (with a little trick).
With the crossfader, you can morph between scene A and B, with 16 scenes memory per part, which is a king of kit with samples + Fx.
There are 4 parts per bank, 16 banks per project.

I’d ask people having (had) both MkI and MkII.
Second hand MKI, or new MkII ?

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#17

I think parts are gonna confuse him right now lol, but yeah 8 tracks, 2 FX each. I don’t have a mark 2 but I can say I don’t feel like I’m missing much by having a mark 1, by all means go all in and buy the updated version if you want to but the mark 1 definitely gets the job done, at the right price too currently

#18

Nobodies mentioned that the whole Octatrack might be pretty confusing to learn just to set it up as a guitar fx unit. Guitar fx units are guitar fx units when you first open the box and turn it on. The Octatrack, well… :thinking:

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#19

@Open_Mike

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#20

Yeah, hum, a year…

1 Like