Or Yes in normal mode : Arm All.
Or Yes in Rec Setup : Arm Rec trigs
Or simple press the one shot to activate it.
Double Stop is risky.
Anyway I prefer Track + REC1/2/3 with QREC, same results, no risk to record unintentionally with armed one shots, or the wrong track.
Quick rec is interesting, I wasn’t using it with MKI because of a shorcut but with MKII, why not.
I think you’re making it out to be harder than it is.
At its core, it’s just a sampler with a fun sequencer. Load a sample into a track and sequencer, it’s not much harder than that. I don’t think the Octatrack is hard, it is flexible and can be very open ended, but you don’t need to know everything about it to have fun.
The hardest part for me to to understand is how, when and where you can sample. Also, learning about all the different trig types and how and when to use them. I don’t know how much else there is to grasp. Probably not much that you need to know to have fun. Everything else that I don’t know I need to know will come when it needs to come.
Just relax and enjoy it. Octatracks difficulty is massively blown out of proportion.
Everyone’s experiences and why we ‘click’ with some gear better or quicker than others varies a lot and there are a bunch of factors involved as to why. If someone says “this is hard,” I don’t see how responding with “no it isn’t” can be seen as helpful. Feels more like bragging. The best advice I’ve seen on the OT here has been to take things in smalls chunks. Learn one small thing at a time to avoid getting overwhelmed by the many possibilities. The OT is very rewarding of the time and effort that’s put into it.
Personally, I got a lot of help from cuckoo and Thavius Beck’s video tutorials, while keeping a printed manual nearby. For me, the manual was much more helpful AFTER someone showed me the basics, but we all learn differently.
I’m late to the party but just one thing, don’t give up. I have an Octatrack for Years and just now, in the last 3 or 4 months I clicked with it and now is the center of my live rig. Keep investing your time in learning it or experimenting with it. I know tons of users have already mentioned tutorials and documentation but just in case you didn’t get please get the octatrack notebook. Is a must have to help on decipher this marvellous piece: https://www.synthdawg.com/product-page/the-octatrack-notebook
hi @Specular-D,
thanks for sharing your music. i will dive into that in my next session.
definitely want to try what youre suggesting about the auto-slice set-up. just practiced playing slices like on cuccoo’s first video and had loads of fun.
pi also would like to try again to acheive your ‘one-button’ set-up. i think im missing something though. maybe because i was using external inputs instead of internal? i’ll have another look into it in the coming weeks…
thank you 
ok thanks
yes. in some ways you are right. said once you get over the hump and used to it all its actually not so hard. i have stopped my whining and blubbering and im too busy having fun to be catastrophising now. but i think its important to stand up for the beginnerers here. for someone who is lost and confused and cant figure out why its not working and nothing makes any sense, it can be pretty crushing to say ‘whats the big deal? its easy!’.
if youre the kind of person thats not phased by reading manuals, and you can digest the ot manual and merlins manual without getting your nickers in a twist, and if you already have experience with the electron work-flow, yeah its probably pretty easy. great! good for you! but then, this thread was not really meant for you. this post was made for people (like my past-self) who are getting really traumatised and confused and need some shameless elektron community pampering. or for those who understand what its like and want to help.
and i know im not the only one. so many give up and sell it.
thanks @chrisedu i havent read that yet. but definitely will.
thanks for sharing your music. i enjoyed it.
yes i think i get the idea. 11:06 it changes, and the whole thing gets chopped up and rearranged, all the yaers at once. is that right?
I think the thing is, it looks like a drum machine, and some people use it that way, and in that case it’s possibly the most user unfriendly, convoluted drum machine ever made. It’s not something you just turn on and jam out on. But it’s a lot more than that, so it’s deceiving.
If you were a total beginner to music gear and went into a recording studio and looked at the console, it seems so vast and impenetrable. What’s an aux? What’s a bus? etc. The OT has some of its own unique terminology and architecture that takes some getting used to, but it’s no more complex than any DAW or big mixer, or a complex synth tbh.
There are some elements of the UI that are really poorly designed imo, but there are also things that are actually nice and intuitive. It’s cool that when you change tracks it stays on whatever page you were on so if you want to quickly change a parameter across all tracks it’s really quick to do. When I started out, I would be on one track and change all of the settings I wanted to change, go to the next track, etc. but when I realized it stays on the same page I figured out that it’s faster to change a single parameter at a time across all tracks and breeze through it that way.
Another little thing I just discovered. In the LFO designer, you click the step buttons and turn the encoder to change values, but then just intuitively without thinking I kept holding the first button and started turning the other knobs and that worked too! There’s a lot of little things like that which are actually pretty slick.
Before I got it when I was watching videos and seeing people typing away at the clacky buttons and maniacally triple smashing the stop button, it all seemed weird, and now I find myself doing those things and it’s actually fun! Partly because the buttons feel so satisfying to press. But also if you’ve ever used a complex piece of software for years and gotten used to all of the keyboard shortcuts to the point that you have total muscle memory and just quickly do things without thinking, the OT is a lot like that imo.
I think there’s a setting to allow just pressing YES to rearm recorder trigs too just to save you some function-clicks
A contrarian opinion regarding templates when learning the Octatrack:
Setting up each project from scratch really helps to learn all of the settings of the OT, and although it’s kind of frustrating and repetitive, I think it helped me to understand how it all works, and how to navigate the menus.
Hey,
I’m really sorry for not getting back sooner, but I saw this Elektron stream last night and the first thing they talk through is the resample method -
Interestingly they mention that you need to go to the Personalise menu and turn on a fast record setting, which might be the thing that enables the one touch recordings.
Definitely recommend watching this if you’re still having issues chasing the resample dreams.
I hope your jams are going well. x
I’ve had an OT for around 7 years. Never really clicked properly. I struggled with composing tracks on hardware for a long long time before I admitted I’m much more efficient with a daw and hardware is best used to enjoy remixing and embellishing those compositions. I’ve been through countless elektron boxes, m8, Roland stuff, push, semi mods, torso s4, Oxi one etc etc looking for the most intuitive, interesting setup to use while the OT sat on the desk watching and waiting.
I’ve spent the last 6 weeks up late with a newborn and I decided to dust it off and have a proper play. I’ve quickly realised that the majority of things I was trying to achieve with the other various combinations I can basically do with this one tool. Quite the revelation. The only question now is what if anything I stick in the inputs. Something small like a Micromonsta 2 to cut through the mix, and maybe a vocal mic and I reckon I’m good for a full set. Sorry it took so long OT.
i like this thread
bring the bass in!!! 12:04
my first studio experience in '89 was using one of these - we went in as a band thta had formed about five mins earlier and my mates mum paid for it and dropped us off, maybe even sat in on the session, anyway we entered for a school competition because we were anout 12 at the time and we won!!