Octatrack Tips & Tricks (OT Tips)

[Kacper]

Original Post

Not sure if this is a bug or a tip but you can use reverb and delay together…

1. Use dark reverb on FX2 , set all your parameters.
2. While still on FX2 just copy that page, once copied, select FX2 to none(just remove it) this one is important as having two reverbs will create some wired unpleasant pops…
3. Go to FX1 and paste the previously copied page, you won’t see anything but you will hear the reverb.
4. Go to FX2 and choose delay.

Not sure how well the machine is optimised to handle these two effects, maybe it’s fine… I don’t know.

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Moderator edit - to avoid two threads filling up with identical discussion on this …

reply on the thread linked below please

in all likelihood, this may now be fixed as you’ve drawn attention to it

Reverb on FX1 slot hack

Hey, I was suggested to create a topic to talk about limitations and discuss this hack/ bug in general. The idea is that you can copy an FX2 page with dark reverb and paste it into FX1 page, you won’t see any of the reverb settings after pasting ( in fact it will be a blank page) it but you can clearly hear the reverb which makes FX2 free to use for the delay. There are some caveats tho, having two reverbs can cause some artefacts, so it’s important to remove the reverb from FX2 after copying…

[mrcrappypantson]

You can arm individual one shot trigs in grid record mode by clicking them. I didn’t see this when I searched the manual but may have missed it. It was fun in use on a hi hat pattern so I thought I’d share.

[sezare56]

You can arm individual one shot trigs in grid record mode by clicking them

In fact it arms all one shot trigs of the track. Clicking on one suffice to arm the others. Maybe safer to use YES or FN+YES.

[mrcrappypantson]

I could have sworn it was only arming the trigs clicked on. I’ll have to double check.

[sezare56]

To stop the sequencer without stopping recordings, press PLAY (pause). You can stop recordings by pressing STOP afterwards.

Usefull for a “long” internal recording, to stop the sequencer and continue to record fx tails at the end.

(Probably written somewhere?)

[Microtribe]

Does that work for recorder buffers recording any source? Or just internal (T -8, cue, main).

[sezare56]

Yes, I edited, it was an example.

[thetechnobear]

Is there a shortcut for ARM ALL? (for one-shots)
Ive disabled stop-stop, as Im so used to using this for reset transport/ all -notes-off , so this led to losing recorder buffers contents (by unwanted re-recording) … so i wanted this to be more explicit.
similarly, Ive disable yes/no, and use f+yes/no.

those that have had OT longer, have you disabled these? or are you just more careful with how you hit play/stop…

[dave_angel]

With the rec light on pressing yes arms one shots on the track. And with the rec light off pressing yes arms one shots across all tracks

[sezare56]

Roxanne…
you don’t have to put on the red light,
(if you want to arm them all)

those that have had OT longer, have you disabled these? or are you just more careful with how you hit play/stop…

Double stop also send all set Control Change.
I used it for Arm All but I may disable it as I don’t use it anymore.
I may use Fn+Yes too because last time I armed by error.

Arm All also arm track recorders one shots.

Arm don’t arm track recorder one shots if you’re not in the rec setup.

[jb]

humanisation/round robin trick I just thought of

1. get a snare, put it every 2-4 steps. slightly vary the volume of each one. not too drastically. 1/2 track scale.
   2.record the track with a recorder trig, 64 steps
   3.save to slot and put sample on the track, turn on slices
   4.slice into separate snare hits leaving small slightly different amounts of space at the start of the sample. bigger gaps=drunker hits
   5.random LFO to slice number
   6.clear pattern and play away

haven’t tried it yet but no reason it shouldn’t work

[tnussb]

Yes, this works great. I’m using this method since I got my OT for various use cases:

1. sample accurate micro-timing (much finer than the few possibilities given by microtiming itself)
2. slowly moving swing (using a very lowspeed triangle LFO)
3. drunken drummer (as in your example - using a random LFO)
4. for specific probabilities not possible with trig conditions: for example use 64 slices, but only 17 containing really a sample, but the rest silence (17/64 chance)
5. phasing effects: using two tracks each playing a different slice with start points just a few samples apart (great to modify live in the AED by moving one of the start points around).

Of course, the probability use case as hinted at in (4) doesn’t need that much empty slices. It’s enough when the last slice is empty (for example slice 18), but the LFO uses the complete range of 0-63. This way it will trigger in most cases the last slice (again 17/64 chance that the sample will play - but uses much less memory).

[sezare56]

Interesting! Personally I usually prefer steady things, but too much sounds triggered at the same time can be problematic!

I recently used the opposite : different ends for tuned slices for tuned sampling!
If I want to make a tuned synth with incoming signal, whatever the tempo is, I use different slices, all placed at the beginning of the sample (yes, possible).

Ex : C = 674 samples, G 450 samples.
Slice mode.
Change LEN=TIME for octaves up (128 / 64 / 32 / 16 / 8 / 4 / 2 / 1

Weird example, crossover between incoming signal and realtime sampling, pitch determined by slices.

Number of samples.

[tnussb]

Nice! I wonder if the slice length is in all cases enough to get a strong fundamental to appear (almost?) independently from the incoming signal …

[sezare56]

I’m not sure to understand what you mean.
The 1st line of the table corresponds to A frequency.
Below around 27.5 hz, the sound is more a short looped sample, above the note is more and more recognizable.
Max A frequency is 440 Hz. 880 Hz with pitch +12.

Caveats : recording has to be longer that the slices, so you musn’t stop it too quicky.
Rec trigs with 1 step LEN do the job.

[tnussb]

That’s clear to me. What I meant is: I wonder how strong the influence of the incoming signal is on the amplitude/volume of the outcome, let’s say an A at 440 Hz. IMHO this should vary heavily depending on what frequencies are in the incoming signal, isn’t it?

BTW: great tip about the slices all starting at zero. This should also work with the sample accurate microtiming with slices all ending at the same position. So for the microtiming to work it should be enough to have a sample recorded only once with some silence in front of it. This reducing the memory required to a minimum. I’ll have to try it when there is some spare time …

[sezare56]

This should also work with the sample accurate microtiming with slices all ending at the same position.

For that purpose, if you want to use a template and copy paste samples to replace and make a new one, same end is not practical I think.

Template idea : 64 slices, slice 32 being the reference. Slices below start before, slices above after. For a new sample, select slice 32 and paste your sample.

[tnussb]

same end is not practical I think.

Just tried the “all slice ends at the same very last position” and it worked nicely. It saves quite some memory, because the complete chain requires only the size of the sample + the size of the silence in front of it. It works flawlessly.

But, as you already guessed, it is really not practical when working only with the OT (without a computer generating the slice spec file). It already starts with the damn editor where you cannot move the start of a slice without moving the endpoint automatically with it …

Offtopic: When I turned on the OT this morning it took me quite a while to find out why there was no audio coming out to my headphones. I checked everything. Mixer settings, track volumes and so on. Turned out the headphones were disconnected (yes, one of these days) …

[sezare56]

Useful tip if you want to use your headphones : connect them to the appropriate output!