Bug with pick-up machine tempo

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I’d like to write down a quirk I’ve found with pick-up machine controlling master tempo.

I’ve only had the Octatrack for a day, however I do think this is a bug. Please let me know if I’m off.

The manual states pick-up machines can work as loopers and act as master/slave tempo controllers. Crucially it says the first pick-up machine to be recorded will set the tempo and others will follow. Sounds like Ableton’s looper.

This is broken:

Scenario - Loop over backing track

Version

  • Octatrack MK2
  • Firmware 1.40A

Steps to reproduce

  1. Set-up pick-up machine & quantize pick-up by pattern length or 4 beats (playback & recording)
  2. Set global tempo to 130bpm
  3. Start recording pick-up machine
  4. Wait 10 beats and stop recording anywhere on the 3rd bar of the loop - any number of bars that isn’t a power of 2

Expected results

The loop will start after beat 12 and sequencer will continue at 130bpm.

Actual results

Loop will start at right time/length.

But global tempo will be changed to 86.6

Notes

86.6/130 = 2/3

What has happened is the octatrack has mistakenly updated tempo to have 2 bars of 86.6, instead of 3 bars of 130

Why this is broken:

  • Cannot record a 12 bar blues for example (not sure see below)
  • Certainly can’t record 3 bars over 4/4
  • Pick-up machine should not change the tempo of a running sequence

—-
Further details and quick questions/answers:

Is the manual suggesting the 1st machine will set the tempo always, so it works literally as expected?

No. This issue will happen even if there was already a pick-up machine recorded and playing back at 130bpm

Note both pickup machines should have “length” set to bone instead of 1x, 2x and so on.

Can this be fixed with different quantization options?

I don’t think so. I’ve tried: pattern length, 16, 4 and 1 beats. The 3 options do this.

Without retesting, I think 1 beat quantization outputs 104bpm when the loop is stopped at 3rd bar ; need to retest and make sense of the other scenario.

——

What might be the issue?

  • Hypothesis: OT always gets the tempo from pick-up machines regardless of other state
  • Pick-up machines are slaved only due to quantization of their length

So if tempo is at 130bpm and we stop during beat 10/bar 3; octatrack correctly understands we want to wait until the next bar. It’ll slave lengths of recordings.

However it will always (incorrectly) try to use the pickup machine’s length to determine tempo, by picking power of 2 n# bars that fit under length.

(I have admittedly not tried 12-bar blues so I’m not sure if this happens on non power of 2 or non multiple of 2)

I’d be super happy with a fix or workaround. Seems like a relatively easy thing to fix.

I don’t think a performer would want to change the global tempo of the whole sequence while recording a loop over the sequence as a backing track. In my opinion after the sequencer started all pick-up machines should stop setting global tempo.

Regardless, if quantized the pickup machines should set the correct global tempo - which in this case would be unchanged (130bpm).

Best,
Pedro

1 Like
#2

Here’s a video of the problem:

#3

Flex machines are way better for live looping. Give me 2 sec’s I’ll post a link to techno bears amazing video.

1 Like
#4
1 Like
#5

Thanks :slightly_smiling_face:.

I don’t want to plan the length ahead of time.
I understand I’d have to do that with flex.

The bug is related to this ; if I plan ahead I won’t hit it with pickup either.

#6

Like it or not, there are no 12 bar blues in electronic music … i.e the pickup machine works out what tempo works for 4 or 8 etc

A bug is unexpected behaviour, this isn’t unexpected, but I agree it’s not ideal … there are a few ways in which pickup machines diverge from the expectations of a seasoned looper … lots of potential, not fully realised for that audience … the next best plan is to exploit what it can do, now there is still a lot of potential and no doubt ways to get closer to what you want

But instead of imprisoning yourself with expectations it might be easier to bend to fit what the OT is capable of, which should still be awesome

It’s not an everyman looper, not by a long way … it is best to read the old threads on this to set your aspirations accordingly, it’s probably not something that will get much more attention … bugs I found years ago still exist … I ended up getting other loopers, which still don fit my workflow perfectly

It has potential, but it needs careful handling and patience and lots of evaluation in your own workflow to master

3 Likes
#7

I kind of think it is probably easy to fix - for example give an option so pickups never set the tempo of a running sequence.

I’m less concerned about being able to record a 3 bar loop and more that if I accidentally record one the whole song’s tempo will be incorrectly set.

Note it’ll be incorrect:

I record to a 130bpm click/backing track, but when I press play the track switches to 86.6bpm.

I can’t think of a scenario one would want that.

Even if you wanted to abuse it as a feature you’d have to calculate time/bar ratios and reverse engineer whatever heuristic they use to guess the tempo; for example on my video 3 bars over 120 bpm goes to 160bpm (so 4 bars of 160 instead of 3 of 120), but 3 bars over 130 will use 2 bars of 86.6 rather than 4 of a higher tempo.

Why would I want this instead of following the global tempo when it’s running?

1 Like
#8

You might want to skip pickups and use flex instead, the annoying tempo change, and lack of plocks on pickups pretty much nerf them for a lot of users.

For flex you can set the tempo and time signature you want before, then just record into the track recorder.

#9

I might have found a workaround. It involves locking the tempo to a pickup.

So as long as I do a 2^N bars loop first and lock tempo onto it, I can do whatever on other pickups. This works until the locked pickup starts recording again after being erased, but if you pay a lot of attention you can lock another loop first (& it :crossed_fingers: won’t have the wrong tempo).

I’d still want to lock everything regardless of pickups as this is extra stress, but it goes some of the way.

1 Like
Octatrack OS 1.40A: bug reports