I’ve had this extreme curiosity and urge to purchase an Elektron Octatrack MkII for the last few months.
In general, I am quite obsessive about samplers and sequencers, and spend much more money on these machines than on keyboards or other equipment.
Although I own and use an AKAI MPC1000 with JJOS2XL installed to sample and sequence, I am wondering wether an OT could improve my workflow, after getting through the learning curve, or if it wouldn’t make any difference and/or improve what the MPC1000 can already do.
I know the OT is a much more sophisticated machine, but has anybody experimented with both machines together, or had noticed the improvement with the extra features and tech the OT has over the MPC? Or any way they could work together?
I have an OT since 5 years, and I had 2 MPC1000, the last one Black with JJOS2XL.
I bought the Black especually because OT lacks polyphony, midi overdub, linear midi recording. I barely used it.
Now I have an MPC500 I don’t use.
Very different beast / approach!
I was working with loopers, OT is much better in that concern, with its 8 recorders instantly accessible. Random lfos, random arp, trig conditions are lacking on the MPC1000, ecen with JJOS2XL it’s not fun / subbtle at all.
With OT you can make generative one bar pattern. You can’t with MPCs. The scenes / crossfader are a total game changer.
Together they can be interesting, you can use OT step sequencer / arp and record in the MPC. You can record automation in the MPC to control the OT. You can sequence MPC drums randomly…
OT 1 bar, random arp playing MPC500.
Depends what is meant by “work-flow”. Both are very different machines musically and considering the handling.
Some examples …
Playing:
A MPC is a machine made to be played by striking pads, which are sensitive to the touch, and often this playing is recorded to a pattern or sequence. The OT is a typical XoX box and has buttons, which can only be pushed down - no velocity sensitivity etc. there. IMO it’s a totally different concept to get pattern in the machine.
Sampling:
Neglecting potential differences of pure audio quality for the moment, both machines support to do a lot with samples. Recording, slicing, manipulating etc. Short single shots are handled quickly but long samples can become tedious work on both machines. Small screens, scrolling, zooming, just takes much time (here I talk about my OT and my MPC 5000). The MPC Live and X are excellent and very efficiently used in this regard.
One thing, which is definitly special to the OT is that we can use prepared slicing pattern to be used on real-time recorded material. That is very flexible and lot of creative fun, if applied well.
and what can i say…make the mpc the master and start dreaming…this combination goes beyond any limitations…they compliment each other in best way possible…
u got both best sequencer concepts of the planet right in front of u…
and u’ll never need to think about samplers ever again…
Looking forward to combining MPC2500 with the OT. I think the 2500 will be the master and sequence the other synths, and the OT played like an instrument for sample wizardry. But then I have moments when I think I could sell everything and just keep the OT
OT is THE realtime sampling beast, and this works better if it’s the master clock (in this case loop recordings don’t suffer from sync fluctuations).
The MPC can be clock slaved, and control all other synths…
…once ur in the rabbit hole…it never ends…constant learning is part of the whole game…
while u never know it all…
apart from it’s way bigger foot print, the 2500 with jjos does all the same as the mpc 1000 with jjos does…
a few more single outs, a few more action sliders, one more midi in/out port, bigger and straight square sized pads…
but that’s about it…
making ot master is ok as long u run the same tempo…once u got different tempi involved, u’d need ot’s arranger mode, since only there u can pre fix different tempi…otherwise u gotto scroll manually each time to another tempo…
the mpc keeps different tempi information within each single sequence…therefor this machine is more first choice in this case…
and it’s song mode is way more fast forward thinking than ot’s arranger mode…
and the ot does’nt care that much if it’s slaved, even if it has to manage realtime recordings…
but yup, liquid audio all in all can become tricky sometimes, once it has to follow external sync…truu…
on the other hand, mpc’s in sync run still super tight, but in slave they tend to cut stop the one shots not that auccurately anymore…can make a difference, since we all know as musicians, the silence between two notes/sounds can often be as much important as the note/sound itself…
Not much to add to the above comments, but in the short time I’ve had the Octatrack I’ve had a great time using it paired to an MPC (2000XL). The MPC is the MIDI master, with Octatrack as the slave. I use the MPC for sequencing polyphonic parts, and route them into the Octatrack for processing.
Also, it’s fun making drum loops on the the MPC, sampling them in the Octatrack, and then using the OT to play back random slices.
Basically, they’re two very different samplers that do a lot of inspiring things when combined together.
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