OT Sampler help with field recordings

Hello,
I have a week off and am in the mountains of North Carolina. I am usually pretty busy these days and am trying to use some of this R&R time to learn more about my Octatrack. I know how to use Static Machines and Flex (somewhat because they get mentioned in the sampling part of the manual).

While hiking with my wife yesterday I decided to capture some found sounds on an iPhone app. I have great audio of a river, waterfall, leaves crunching, birds and other stuff. I want to try and make some sort of track with a ll of these sounds.
I can get the audio into input A B, the Octatrack shows that there is audio coming in, I can hear the audio. I have even got the Octatrack to sample a loop of the audio. I just can’t find the loop afterwards.

I have the manual open on my computer and am still befuddled.

Can anybody recommend any specific tutorial videos?

I am really wanting to learn how to work this way because I also have recordings of my modular synth on my iPad, etc. Seems like a neat way to work and it is different from how I am used to making music.

I fully expect growing pains on the OT but could really use a shove in the right direction.

THANKS

Also, I have looked at some youtube tutorials and a lot are a bit older. So, I was wondering if any newer ones that utilize OS 1.25b are available?

I will keep looking on my own and if I find a tutorial that just helps everything click then I will post it here to maybe help someone else out in the future.

short answer: how about downloading the files from your recorder to your computer, then copying them to the octatrack’s audio pool?

one of the things that is sometimes confusing to newer OT users is the track/machine/recording relationship :slight_smile:

best way to think about it is that each track is actually dual function, playing and recording

if you set up your track recorder, it should be in the recording buffer, you can then save that recording buffer to a static slot if you want to keep it

there are actually quite a few different ways to do it but as an example…

say you set a track recorder on track 2 to record input AB, then on track 2 you set it to flex machine R2+RECORDING2\

track 2 should play whatever you record dynamically, function+bank is one way to open the audio editor where you can then save the sample (and assign to free static slot for example)

hope that makes sense

At worse I will do the computer routine robotunes.

Subq, thanks for your answer. I will dive back into it this evening and let you know how it goes.

I can post exact step-by-step if you need it. I personally would sample straight into the OT instead of going to computer and then into the OT, unless of course you wanted to use the samples on the computer for some reason.

Nice… I live in Knoxville. My wife & I are looking to moving to the Asheville area next year.

Keep with the Octatrack… you’ll love it & it’s worth every minute of investment.

alex

Subq,
I have found the recording, got it to play back once and can’t get it to repeat the process. If you could write down the steps, I would be so grateful.

Alex,
COOL! I love Asheville, I am about an hour west of Asheville but I am going there tomorrow. We are going to take the Moog Factory Tour…

ok, I’m going to write them off the top of my head, I am constantly sampling thru machines so I will just tell you that method, obviously, there are different ways to sample

In this case, I will use track 1 as a thru machine with input AB so that I can hear everything coming in those inputs…I have track 2 playback the recording buffer live and then save that sample from there.

track 1, set it up as thru machine and under playback set INAB to A B
also, I like to place a trig on 1 so that it automatically starts track 1, in grid record mode drop trig on the 1 and press play (you can start the track manually without doing that of course)

now, you should hear anything you have plugged into AB playing over the OT, the AB lights will light up accordingly to the audio signal

next, set the track recorder up on track 1, hold function and press record A…B, this should bring up page 1 of recorder setup, set INAB and INCD to - and SRC3 to T1, you can use TRIG ONE2 so you can manually start/stop recording, RLEN is how many steps, set that to whatever you want and MAX will go as long as there is memory if you have that set up in preferences, LOOP ON is fine, now hold function and press record C…D, FIN and OUT to 0.0653 will clip any pops at the beginning and end of recording, EXIT/NO and your recorder is set up

next on track 2, I set it to flex machine, R1+RECORDING1, what this will do is play the recording buffer of track1, don’t forget to drop a trig on the 1 so that it just starts playing automatically when that trig is hit, like above you can technically start tracks manually and just have them continue playing

you should now see a little play icon below T on track 1 and F on track 2, you should also be hearing any sound coming in from input AB on track 1

to record is simple, hold down T1 and press MIDI, that starts the recording, another hit on MIDI would stop it, when you do that you should see a little + in front of the play icon, this means it is recording…if you instead set to sample the inputs directly you can hold T1 and hit the source you want AB for example

track 2 should start playing back the recording as soon as the trig hits on 1, keep in mind it will start at the beginning every trig

to save that recording you can hold track 2 and hit bank, that should bring up a waveform of the recording, hit effect2 which is FILE, scroll to save and assign sample, it allows you to change name, then select assign to free static, this will drop the sample into a static slot

you may now select that sample and do what you like with it…hopefully I got everything, I’m going off the top of my head and muscle memory…also, keep in mind there are several different ways to go about it…for example, you could set your recorder to sample directly from inputs AB instead of the track, that is done on the recorder setup under INAB, INCD and SRC2…you could use one-time recorder trigs, etc etc…

one of these days I will get some video going, could do it in video in less than a minute heh…there are shortcuts and faster/different ways to do individual things…I just wanted to give you one path that should get you going as far as sampling straight to the OT for later use

such a long post for something simple…
the short of it is…

select the track, hold function and press record a…b for page 1 settings of the recorder and function+record c…d for page 2 settings of the recorder

to manually initiate recording, hold the track and press the source you want to record from, A…B, C…D or MIDI

you should see a + symbol in the LCD under the track number, you should see lights on A…B and/or C…D if it getting audio

that records into a buffer, under flex machines, you can save that buffer however you like

I tried late last night, I got it to loop the recording. I was too tired to dig in further but I will later today.

Thanks for the help subq!

samples are initially held in the recorder buffer of whichever track you used to sample. you can find the buffers in the first 8 flex slots. there are various ways to save the sample after that. if you have the buffer assigned to a track, hold the track button and hit bank/edit to open the audio editor, then go the file page to save+assign the sample.

in this case tho, I would actually suggest transferring them via computer to avoid another iphone d/a conversion. it’s also much easier to organize your file structure from the computer, as you can only save recordings to one of two places on the OT…

These videos seem like they would be useful:




Thanks for all of the help!

There were a few bad things in real life that just happened so I didn’t get to finish working on this yet. I will keep at it. I will have time on Sunday and Monday.