yes. yes you have gone up and down…
woud you throw out a guitar after deciding to play one and only learning it for a month?
the Octatrack is a musical instrument that takes time to learn.
if you dont have the patience to learn it… i dont know what to tell you…
i purchased mine with the assumption that i would take the next 20 years or so to figure it out.
its fucking deep…
give it that respect/time and give yourself that time as well…
ease into it…
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Hey, thanks for sharing this. It reinforces my intention to get to know my Elektron boxes more deeply than I have given some of my other recent synth purchases.
I’ve lately been thinking about whether I have too much stuff to learn all at the same time, which is a good thing to think about, since it will help me save some money, and really hopefully get to know some of my stuff at a much deeper level (OT, A4, M:S) and how to use them all together, before getting back to seeing if I can incorporate their workflow alongside the MPC One or Logic. I bought the OT and A4 knowing that to really get their value back, I would need to focus on them somewhat exclusive to everything else I own, dabbling in combining them with other gear from time to time, but mostly just focusing on them for now.
When it comes to making music with electronic stuff (hardware and computer), I am partly hobbyist, partly enthusiast, partly collector, but fear it is all wrapped up in being a dilettante (Google: “a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.”). I justify my GAS this way, these are my versions of “toys.” I don’t have a big motorboat, or a race car, or ATVs, or other “man stuff.” I don’t care about any of that, although I do have a little cabin and a canoe and a kayak. I also see my little collection as an investment in my retirement. I can be curious about these boxes and keep my mind as sharp as it can be reading, and then re-reading manuals, watching YouTube, and forever learning and relearning how to use what I have.
I think the video by DAWLESS you provided is helpful in terms of remembering it is NOT the machine that makes the music I see on the videos, it is the fact that whomever (e.g. EZBot TrueCuckoo and Loopop) are spending the time to really get to know these machines. I mean, they probably spent more time getting to know the OT in the first week of owning it than I will be able to spend (or force myself to spend) in the first 6 months), which is one of the reasons (aside from their inherent talent and musicality) that they sound so good using them.
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Stop me if I’ve said this already…
I mostly use my OT to sequence and mix a synth or two (with my AR for drums). After a few tracks I began to feel I was missing out, or had the wrong device. I took a break from that process and started playing with the OT: slicing breaks, making grooves out of sampling the bare inputs. It suddenly got really fun.
I’m currently back to making tracks with it. It’s less fun again. But I have this little store of excitement that there’s audio madness just around the corner. Eventually I may blend the two roles.
The joys and frustrations with each phase differ. Using the OT in place of a DAW shows up its tracking/sequencing limits and the quirks of the UI. Using it for sampling shows up different UI quirks and the sampler limits.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of what you can get out of scenes and swapping parts.
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Never seen this, you have the right track in focus?
To view/edit the waveform for a track press the track button then AED, to view/edit the buffer for a recorder press rec1/2/3 and AED (or bank) after first selecting the right track eg T1 for buffer 1.
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Thanks for the comments everyone,
I’m back on track with the OT now, and had a much better session this morning.
I’m definitely keeping it.
Looking back now it’s easy to see that I got hung up on a few things not working how I wanted/expected, when literally hundreds of things were working just fine. Making some changes, was all I needed to do.
One decision that helped tremendously was removing recording trigs all together from my template. It’s easier to use QREC on PLEN, and enable Quick Recording. Then you just make the track active you want, and press record 1/2/3. It always works.
The other change I made was running my monitors from the main outputs on the OT, and using CUE to selectively send whatever I want to my DAW for recording.
Then I went through every setting on my template to double check things, and sure enough I found some FX tracks with a little bit of send, and my B scene with overrides on FX sends and track XLEV. The dumb thing about this is that I had the crossfader about 10% on, and when I moved it fully to the left, then things sounded normal again. So while I thought it couldn’t possibly be me, it was me, and the OT was just doing what it was asked to do.
After all of that I had a clean run using my template and the workflow I was going for (recorded drums, keys, and guitar). I ran into no issues with the clean template (which I made sure to back up 
).
@darenager - Thanks, that good advice. The issue I’m referring to is that when you assign a sample to a recoding buffer (for example save and assign sample, then assign to self) it shows the name of that sample associated to the recording buffer. If you then go to another pattern and record to that same buffer it still shows the name of the sample, and has the content from what you recorded. Although it can be confusing, my guess is that this is intentional, so you can use “Revert saved sample”.
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LOL - That’s too funny, I did the same thing last night! I sampled the core 4 bar loop from Demons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaAe1U8l82M
Added a few alternate drum tracks, and scenes. I’m no DJ, but it was super fun.
I made a few scenes, and was surprised how good it sounded just playing with the cross fader.
Made me again realize how much there is to the OT, and that I would regret selling it.
FWIW - I love the “Rotate position to start” tool, and I even like the sound it makes if you do it while the sample is playing
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IMHO it is better to save and assign to free flex/static, this way you can keep using the buffer(s) without losing anything. Save to self is useful if only working in simple projects where the buffers won’t need to be reused - remember by not assigning recorders to self you always have 8 buffers available, memory permitting.
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Me too, it is unique to OT AFAIK, and makes it easy to line up loops to the “one” or shift them etc.
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Really interesting thread this, thanks and would be glad to hear more from your journey. I had an Octatrack and sent it back within a week or so cause it scared the **** out of me. But I will get another one one day and reading what you have experienced when learning the OT makes me believe I can do this too
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This is what helped me the most after I got mine. Gives me time to get my hands ready to play the guitar. Once I figured this out I was set. Good to hear.
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Welcome to the OT experience whenever I feel my OT is malfunctioning, I repeat this one like a mantra to myself.
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Had another good session with the OT.
I’ve spent a good deal of time tuning my template, and it’s paying off.
It was very easy to make a short daily track.
My current workflow with my template is this:
- Make a beat, because it’s better than playing over a metronome
- Record stuff, mostly guitar, 8 tracks
- Save everything. I use numbers for names, and have them saved to the project folder.
- Bounce to 4 tracks, 1&2, 3&4, etc. and assign those to the static list.
- Load the bounced tracks to static machines (to save mem) each with a neighbor, and mess with effects.
- Use the arranger to automate mutes and repeats
- Record the whole thing (last night I did this by sending the audio to my DAW, but I think I can do also do this on the OT, and then just copy over the wav)
FWIW - The arranger is great! I was pleasantly surprised how clean and easy it is.
Scenes are also crazy powerful now that I’m making several of them. That’s next on my list, to populate my template with useful scenes. I want the first AB set to be clear, as I know from experience how easy it is to bump the crossfader and wonder why things sound weird.
I keep messing with “DJ” style stuff too just for the heck of it, it’s a fun diversion to grab a few loops and mess with them.
One major benefit that I realized is that the OT has no perceptible lag, which makes it really nice for recording guitar. While I can run my guitar into my MBP, it’s a lot of tinkering to get direct monitoring, and latency compensation dialed in. On the OT, I don’t have to mess with any of that, and it just works.
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Thanks for the very helpful workflow notes.
In addition to making my own scenes by just messing around, I am learning alot about how to make scenes by using presets created by others who have put a lot of time into them to see what parameter changes sound really cool. I bought three of the sound packs from Elektron a few days ago and transferred them over to the OT. The ones by Loopmasters have some really creative and deeply programmed scenes, which are giving me a lot of ideas about how I want to create and then use (jumping around quickly between) various scenes.
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I’m not going to change the title to “on the way out” , but I did decide to sell my OT today.
Amazing machine! However, ultimately I felt that it just wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t leveraging what it can do in my studio setup.
I had a lot of fun with it, with some great highs and some low lows too
I didn’t have it long (a little over a month), but I feel I got to see what the OT was all about in my own way (surely not calling myself a master or anything!).
More power to those that that rock an OT!
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Not surprised, I was expecting you would have sold it:grinning:
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Nice rug! Great photos!
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Adding an update.
After I sold my OT I got an MPC Live 2, and have had it for a few weeks.
For what I was trying to do, the MPC has been a better fit.
I have the MPC fully integrated into my studio setup, the ability to send audio/midi/clock over USB to the MPC software made this pretty easy.
The ability to unplug the power, and USB cable, and then take it with me is awesome. I found this portability to be far more valuable than I anticipated. Maybe it’s just the “honey moon” period, but being able to go outside when it’s nice, is refreshing. Yes, it’s kind of big and clunky, but that hasn’t stopped me from taking it with me.
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I’m new to MPCs so would you mind expanding on what it does well compared to the OT?
Sure. There is a whole thread where many people weigh in on that topic (Octatrack vs Mpc), but I can tell you my recent and personal comparison of both.
My main use case was that I needed something to record guitar that I could take with me. I wanted something where I can add drums, bass, synth, vocals, etc. and I wanted it to be fun to explore.
What I found with the MPC is that the sampling was easier, esp for longer recordings.
It was easier to record a few mins of guitar, play it back, and record over it.
The OT can do this too, but it had more steps and complexity. While “complexity” sounds bad, it’s that complexity that also makes the OT an endless device, so it really depends on what you are doing.
Overall the MPC is more approachable and straight forward than the OT for what I was doing.
Does that help?
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Makes sense, thanks. I’ve been loving the Octatrack for a while now but ordered an MPC One just to see what’s on the other side.