Octatrack LFO designer and "fractal" generative melodies

[Sjozef]

Having love-hate relationship with Octa I must admit its grandiose.

Buying MIDI controller to OT forced me to rearrange MIDI signal flow a bit. Now OT was feeding signal to my AK. This inspired me to try out OT capabilities in sending MIDI cc messages. It has amazing three LFOs with LFO designer built in. Very tempting, then why not to try?

I put simple 16 steps of the same 1/16th notes on my AK and used OT to modulate pitch of oscillator 1. Then I designed some LFO, treating it as a step sequencer. Next step was putting the same designed LFO on all threee slots, with the same speed parameter, but different multipliers, remember “fractal” structure. I used x1, x2 and x4. This created nice fractal melody, with three levels of depth. Then I started with the same amplitude of LFO, but afterwards started to play with them.

This way, you can create fractal melodies just out of a single designed LFO, and you can very easily evolve this complex melody using the amplitudes.

Nice thing about this setup is, that you can overlay your pitch modulations on any other sequence you already have in toyur synth. In my case AK.

Anyway, very convenient way of creating generative melodies, without modular setups, and yet one more time OT surprised me, proving that it’s not a sampler, but really swiss army knife.

All the best Octarians!!!

[sezare56]

I’ll add you can also randomize lfo designer values using Hold mode, and modulate its speed by another lfo (has to be higher lfo number, lfo2 can’t modulate lfo3 for ex). Example at the beginning, a few notes are randomly played with lfo designer, some trigs. (Higher notes are played by OTs arp).

Another way to randomize values without using a secondary lfo is to use an lfo with a fast non synced speed, Hold mode, and change it speed with one or several ٪ trig conditions.

[JPM]

If you have it modulate the ARP you can also have the fractal melody in a scale!

[Supercolor_T-120]

You can also use a second LFO to modulate the depth of the first one.

[PeteRabb]

I’m still a bit of a newb to the OT, are there any videos that demonstrate this kind of if stuff? I Struggle to wrap my head around it sometimes

[sezare56]

@PeteRabb

this kind of if stuff

"Playing" the comb filter using a custom LFO?

I usually use a minor 7 chord, or a minor pentatonic, or minor scale… Choose a root note first minor 7 notes : 0 Base note 3 m3rd 7 Fifth 10 7th 12 Octave 15 m3rd 19 Fith 22 7th 24 Octave Pro Tip to set the notes by ear : set temporarily to mode TRIG, Speed 0 Set first note Shift Lfo values with Fn + Arrow keys Set next note Shift again, etc… Set back to a different speed, mode (I use Hold, to trig the lfo only on trigs, trigless).

[sezare56]

@PeteRabb

any videos that demonstrate this kind of if stuff?

Around 1 min…

Octatrack - Comb Filters - No samples

[lowph]

Very cool! I watched it twice. haha

[sezare56]

The result is at 5min. It was a challenge to make something in 5 minutes from scratch, without samples…

[lowph]

Those were just impulses of noise, recorded from the inputs, yeah?

[sezare56]

@lowph

noise, recorded from the inputs

Yep. Noise from inputs constantly recorded, nothing plugged. Where’s the “Octatrack inputs are noisy” thread ?

[JSZ]

I seem to recall you can still modulate the note parameter, just have the scale set on the arp page and your notes will be quantised to that scale. Arp doesn’t need to be active either.

[Volt_Thrower]

If I am following, it sounds like what OP did would create an effect very similar to what an Analog Shift Register does in a modular land.

[PeteRabb]

Sounds fantastic!