OT crossfader suggestions

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi guys

Relative OT noob here (6 months in maybe?), long time lurker, first time poster. Am loving the OT, havent scratched too deep beneath the surface with the cross fader yet tho and am keen to put it to use. Does anybody have any suggestions as to how they implement it in their process (performing, jamming or whatever) other than the beat repeat/freeze delay thing (which is fun but gets/sounds tired very quickly)? I think i remember seeing a post on this topic ages ago but cant find it here now that im looking for it. Any suggestions welcome!
N.B- am also only now getting into live-sampling my MD and synths into the OT, with a view to mangle/chop up etc on the fly- if theres any suggestions as to how to include the crossfader in this process also that would be ace

Thanks!

#2

Welcome.
Matter of taste, just experiment all parameters on 1 sliced loop.

My favorite plocked parameters :
Filter Base / Width / Q / Env / Decay
Amp Release, Vol
Playback/SRC Pitch, Start, Length (Time mode), Rate, Retrig
Delay Send, Feedback
Reverb Mix, Decay
Lofi Dist SRR BRR
…

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#3

You liar, we all know you love to p-lock the comb filter parameters too!

:grin:

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#4

awesome, thanks sezare i’ll give those a shot. ive had some good results playing around with those Lofi settings before, and reverb too.
as an aside- ive found that retrig isnt working at all on any of the plocks that i put down on the tracks with the incoming audio- i.e, i can manipulate the audio in other ways, but re-trig is refusing to work, tho strangely it is instead nudging slightly the timing of those trigs… this happens regardless of the rtrg and rtim settings… was going to post this as a separate topic but it was too much of a headache for me to try and explain…!

#5

Here I use the crossfader as a compositional tool, muting and unmuting certain groups of tracks. I also use it to affect rate and delay of certain tracks.

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#6

Some settings here (Retrig, Comb filters, reverb crossfader abuse)

Reverb on FX1 slot hack

And here (increasing Retrig vol)

Noob questions

@dobermate yes about comb filters, mostly feedback, the trickiest thing is that you have to compensate the Low Pass tune down with the Fine tune.

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#7

thanks- some really nice sounds here, very interesting!

#8

cheers sezare, sounds cool- will definitely think more about comb filters in the future. the re-trig i usually have no issues at all with implemementing, its only when p-locking it to a track that is receiving live input to a buffer that its not working. i can affect the audio in that track in other ways (e.g change pitch, start points etc) but retrig only very occasionally works. im sure its something simple that im overlooking, but for now its really starting to bug me! im probably not explaining it very well tbh…

#9

That’s another subject indeed. Try with short LEN(TIME), short recordings (several rec trigs of 1 or 2 steps), eventually microtiming…

#10

cool, will look into those, altho the fact that it works some of the time is whats bugging me the most… anyhow as you say, its another subject entirely. thanks for your help :slight_smile:

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#11

…use…
…a scenes as snapshots…1-8
…b scenes for slider actions…9-16

link ur actions mind to dedicated trackmachines…always think in 8’s…so…1-8…9-16…
scene slider actions always relate better that way…if u make it a fixed rule/habbit…

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#12

For a long while I just used Scene B, keeping A muted. Then I treated all my scenes like a dry/wet slider. It helped keep things simple at first.
However I like using a lot of neighbor tracks, so my scenes can do a lot of things at once.
Trk1 Thru (for ARdrums) loFi - Comb
Trk2 Neighbor Flange - delay (no freeze)
Trk3 Neighbor Filter - delay (freeze)
Trk4 Neighbor DJ EQ - dark verb

I did start using the Merlin technique.
Takes a long time for me to get the results I like, but it really transforms patterns

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#13

hi reeloy, thanks for your reply. could you elaborate, im not sure i follow

#14

thanks, they are some solid suggestions. ive mostly stayed away from using Thru/Neighbour machines so far as i thought that would be squandering the few tracks i have available to me, but re-evaluating how i want to use the OT and actually an approach like this makes sense.

whats the Merlin technique? skimmimg through the Merlin doc (‘Some Thoughts on the Octatrack’) and can’t see much on the subject of Scenes, aside from a page or so explaining them as a concept

#15

…16 scenes…is a lot of options…to use the slider…that always moves/morphs ur sonic content fam a to b side…

so splitting these options in snapshots versus truu slider action is good thought…

leave a1 free…and invent some snapshots…where all stuff is tweaked somehow…
now u can always press a (left end of the slider) choose another slot than the blank a1…and bang all is tweaked…and bang…back whenever u want…a2 to a8 can be any tweakshot u like…

and 9 to 16…well…make them real endposition to arrive destinations via real slide use…

if u then even stick to related machine slots 1 to 8 always realated to the changes u fixed in the individual scene spots, than u can’t get lost in all the options so fast…and have a solid foundation for all the slider action all over ur projects…

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#16

Just off the top of my head it was something like this.
Create a scene on 1 for scene A.
Copy that scene to 16, then alter it a bit. Copy that scene to 2, alter it a bit.
Copy that to scene 15, and so on.
This allows you to slowly morph a pattern into completely different territory, and back again.
Usually find some happy accidents too.

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#17
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#18

Check page 23, 7.5 Scene Stacking

A Polished Version of Merlins Guide

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#19

If you know you way around ableton and use it in your setup with some free max 4 live devices scenes can control literally anything External effects, performance macros, midi etc…

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#20

thanks!- im pretty sure this is the thread that i had previously read and was looking for but couldnt find

1 Like