I am currently working on a song making use of the external midi tracks. I’ve banged out a few different varied patterns and am ready put the song into some kind of structure. One of my MIDI tracks however, requires variation on its CC’s (decay envelope, filter cutoff and LFO frequency) for different sections of the song. I’d like to have many different variations of these as the sound can change pretty drastically, and keeps the song interesting.
MIDI scenes would be the obvious answer, but to our despair we all know these don’t exist
So my question is, what would be the best way to integrate this MIDI track and its desired variations to work with the rest of the track in building a proper structure for the song? The options I can think of would be:
Creating separate patterns with P-Locks on the CC’s? That obviously massively limits the 16 available patterns though.
Im not sure if this usable or even possible, but I had a thought that you use separate banks for one track to allow for over 16 patterns? If so, would this method be advisable (I generally see people referring to each new bank as a separate track in the same project; in the context of live use etc).
Or would the best option here be to set the parameters for the desired variation, sample each variation into the OT, then p-lock the sample trig to different scenes?
If I’m missing any options here, please feel free to add them. But in a more general sense, what methods do you guys use to integrate your MIDI tracks on your OT (especially when variation to CC’s is needed throughout the song)? Do you have any funky techniques to mash, mangle and progress them throughout the song or do you generally print them to audio and mash them further with the OT’s scenes?
P.s. as a side question, can anyone explain or point me in the direction (i.e. section of the manual) of recording in MIDI cc automation (I guess by using trigless trigs)?
Ok thanks clearing that up for me! Just seen allot of stuff in the past saying ‘think of a bank as a track’. Thought it might get a bit complicated potentially?
I’ll definitely mess around with the LFO’s! The thing about changing the knobs myself is that I’d like the changes to be ‘wired in’ so to speak, so I can get a feel for how the track is sounding and experiment with different sections without having to constantly worry about manually changing the knobs.
What makes you opt for that route rather than bouncing the variations?
A large amount of patterns certainly seems to make things easier, but I’m still not convinced you can build a song in the same way and have the same capacity for live improv if the tracks can’t be modulated with the rest of the song by the scenes. On the other hand though, bouncing many variations could become very tedious and also interrupt the flow.
What is your method of working? Do you create a load of patterns with midi variation, put them together with the arranger, then do further song progression / modulation / mangling with scenes on the audio tracks? Or something completely different haha?!
It seems that would be one way of working and the alternative would be creating a few core patterns with some variations, recording in the desired amount of variations for the midi tracks, then using scenes to sample lock different variations and to work through the track, allowing more flexibility for improvising and further adaption of the original midi sounds.
Can’t seem to figure out which method is better and if there is any other methods to achieve a similar kind of thing?
Don’t forget you have parts to work with too, 4 per bank and they will change all the cc’s without using plocks…
Just something else for you to consider while figuring it out…
The bank-is-a-track convention is useful for some people who want to play back several pieces of music without the interruption caused by loading a new project. If the piece you are writing is sufficiently complicated that you need a lot of variations (more than 16 patterns), and you don’t need to have many other songs in the project at the same time, then there is no need to stick to the bank-is-a-track convention.
The Octatrack allows many modes of working, and part of the fun is figuring out which mode works for you in any particular creative situation.
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand the question…
Personally I don’t use the arranger and I use parts to rearrange recorder buffers to flex tracks for crazy sampling tricks…
You certainly could use the arranger to play through patterns assigned to different parts to change your midi cc’s, if that’s what you were thinking…
I was thinking since a moment to play short 4/4 ou 8 bar patterns, (edit or create triolets ands things with other not squared rythms) to do stuff like change part at each pattern and have a inspired remodulation possibilty with the arranger or chaining, I tried it yesterday, on the analog four, it can be nice to switch scales + Parts but in fact, after concentrating on Slides and deep nice (A4 synthesis) (Whoa what I learned) I’m back to basic 64 patterns…
But
Here you push me to something new, that I didn’t did so much, how can you find yourself exact with part changing the recorders trigs, how many track did you affect like that ? Please tell me more…
I often use a pattern/part switch for sort of a breakdown/remix where I take one of the elements of a groove(a recorder buffer) and have a bunch of flex machines all playing the same buffer but doing different things with them, slice/reverse/fx/etc…
I’l have them muted with a scene, fader to the left, and be able to choose one or more to mix in, fader to the right…
