Octatrack resolutions... What habits do you wish you followed?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Are there Octatrack habits that you wish you followed but don’t?

For me, I wish I could stick to (nearly) always keeping the trig keys in mute mode. I’m speedy enough muting with function + track but I think I’d be that much happier if I kept the trig buttons in mute mode. I’m usually in the default track mode which is never useful for my needs.

Another more obvious one is making sure I always use the same “role” for each track - ie. kicks on track 1, etc. - I usually do but occasionally in the excitement of creating don’t. If I don’t fix it right away I soon have banks of patterns spawned from the first that have the tracks all wrong.

What workflow changes do you plan to work on for the new year?

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#2

Turning it on each day / week would be a start.

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#3

That one is easily fixed. Never turn it off :slight_smile: Mine is literally on for months at a time.

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#4

how’s the screen holding up?

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#5

I wish I took the time to make more than 1 or 2 patterns per Part.
I budget myself 4 patterns but rarely use more than 4. Often times I just make use of fills and scenes to get those 1-2 patterns working well, and lots of live tweaks.
You only get 4 Parts per Bank, so unused patterns are a bit of a waste.

I wish I didn’t use neighbor routing so much. It’s powerful and all, but it often ends up confusing me since I try to set up each Part’s track sound assignments somewhat similar. I’d enjoy neighbor routing more if the Level parameter of the root track wasn’t disabled.
Using my MF Twister for levels helped a lot, but I just reprogrammed the whole thing and with the intention of no neighbor tracks.

I wish I purged my samples more. Sometimes the slot list gets overwhelmed and a purge would do me a lot of good, but I arrange the list into certain sections so, like a bad hoarder I get nervous at the thought of the purge. Yea, it’s a pile, but it’s my pile and I know exactly what’s in it and where it is!

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#6

I have an mk1 and mk2 but only use the mk1 (habit). The mk1 screen looks great to me after 10 years. I sometimes think the Elektron screens (at least on the analog mk1s) do better if kept on longer. I’ve only had problems when I’ve not powered them on. Even bought a second hand a4 with a “broke” screen that fix themselves once I let them sit for a long time.

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#7

I think I need to do the opposite of you and use neighbors more. I’m too stingy and feel like I’m “wasting” a track when I use a neighbor. Must break my ingrained ways of working!

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#8

To make it worse, I’m trying to do my EQs all on FX2 so they are all in the same spot, as I prefer them post compressor on tracks I use a compressor on.
So reverb/delay is master track only, lately.
I might have to try that reverb on FX1 trick or whatever it is

Good thing I got two OTs now, and the Blackhole.

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#9

Fun idea for a thread. Hmm, let me see…

I mostly just want to continue diving into the features that I don’t use much / aren’t familiar.

For example - I want to figure out how to tame the compressor, or at least to make it work for me. And then, decide whether I even need to use a compressor at all!

There are a ton of FX, but I usually reach for the same four (lo-fi, filter, delay, dark reverb), so I want to try using the others.

Make more structured use of scenes, instead of just setting up a scene and maxing out effects, say.

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#10

Speaking of Blackhole, another of mine would be to never used master effects that I can apply outside. I can see someone who is performing wanting to get as much out of the Octatrack itself (less to carry around) but for me just sitting in my room I need to never use master effects that I can apply outside. For me, master reverb should be replaced with a master freeze delay. I may not use it all the time but the freeze delay would give me something I can’t easily add outside. Reverb? I’ve got plenty of options. Same for compression.

So far I’ve only succeed in always keeping the microlimiter on the Octa (and even that was just my lame attempt to bite @adamjay’s octatrack/ms/microlimiter liveset results - sounded so nice!)

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#11

Same here, and what the Blackhole has done for me is also allow me to go comp+filter on master, and use a compressor before a filter on the master track, which allows me to tweak the filter live much more without changing how the sound is compressed. I’ve basically sought to use the compressor on FX1 whenever I use it.
Aside from that, the more I use OT’s compressor on the master, the more I love it, since I can p-lock it to keep all the dynamics under control. I’m just not going to find that outside of the OT. I only wish it had an HPF side chain.

And since I’ve stuck to that resolution so far (it’s been about a week), I can see myself letting go of my MicroLimiters, maybe keep one for M:S.

Oh, and another one, I need to make better use of LFO designer and the third LFO more. It often sits idle on nearly all my tracks. I should at least assign them to something so that I can tweak the depth live here and there.

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#12

I want to get better at performing with it. I’m so bad at transitions. I’d love to get to the point where I have the muscle memory to queue up a pattern and mess with things until the next pattern starts. Maybe I just need to make the “chain after” length longer so I have more time to get my bearings after initiating a pattern change.

Also I want to make more OT-only tracks. I love using it with other gear, but it has a certain conciseness when used on its own.

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#13

That’s the fairy tale we tell ourselves for comfort before reality hits a few weeks later.
:wink:

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#14

Probably best I don’t say…

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#15

I wish I had habits with OT. :content:

The Reverb FX1 hack doesn’t work for master. From my tests it works on tracks 1/3/5/7 only. You can use track 7 to add reverb and/or delay to the master, using a Recorder / Flex. A kind of Master Neighbor.

Did you try internal fx send, with a Recorder / Flex recording CUE on track 7?

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#16

My ot habit for 2021, is to sell it

#17

:scream:

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#18

A good way to do that would be to create sample folders for each track. I do that mostly when I work on a live set, or when I want to find stuff quickly.
If you have ideas of what types of sound you want to dedicate each track to, just put all the corresponding sounds in a folder and never leave it :slight_smile:

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#19

Good idea. Do you organize the track’s folders in the AUDIO or project’s folder?

I guess you know the Fn+left/right arrows shorcut to select previous/next file in the folder directly…
I wish it could go back to the beginning…feature request.

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#20

That I’d kept it. Sometimes, I miss it. A lot.

But I know why I sold it and that’s still valid.

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