OT with pickup machines as looper for DJ setup?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Apologies if this has been asked before, I searched but couldn’t find anything that quite answered my question.

I’m interested in seeing what I can do with the OT to augment my bedroom DJ setup in fun ways (Technics + Xone:22 mixer). I’ve hooked it up to the mixer FX loop and used Thru machines to turn it into an effects box, which is pretty cool – next, I was wondering if its possible to use pickup machines to make it into a looper in the style that you get e.g. on the A&H Xone:DB4 mixer, or standalone units like the Red Soundbite.

What I’d like to be able to do is trigger the OT at any point while the input is audible (passing through the pickup machine) and have it capture e.g. a 4 bar loop from the input with tempo detected automatically, and then start playing back the loop immediately, muting the passed-through input so I don’t end up with double the volume. Ideally this would be as close to “press one button” type operation as possible (I know the OT doesn’t excel there :joy: but anything too complex isn’t suitable for use in the “heat of the moment” really).

The use case would be, for example, when mixing out of a track and you want to extend the end of it, you capture a loop and then mix out of that instead of the actual vinyl. This is just for bedroom use and more out of curiousity so it doesn’t have to be 100% reliable, though if the loop tempo isn’t accurate it’ll be pretty useless.

I had a little play just now but it didn’t seem to be detecting the tempo, and the input sounded distorted even though it was fine on a thru machine. I’m new to Pickup machines though and am a little bit overwhelmed haha.

Thanks!
Tom

#2

Reading the manual it sounds like I might have been confused in thinking that pickup machines could detect the tempo of the loop, sounds like instead it uses the length of the recorded loop (based on pressing record then stop) to determine the tempo? In which case I don’t think it’ll work for my use case, I’m not accurate enough haha

#3

Tempo determined by a 4 bar loop or more (8) should be pretty accurate, more than tap tempo.

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#4

But is this loop length determined by when you press “start recording” and “stop recording”? Or can the OT detect the input tempo automatically?

#5

Not sure if you are using decks with or without software. In the case of using with Traktor (for example), you have a looper within Traktor :slight_smile:
Far more accurate/integrated to these workflow :slight_smile:
With a single button (you would have to script it in Traktor), you can:
Determine loop length
Record
Assign to any 4 softdecks
Play/stop in sync

I am actually using Digitakt slaved to Traktor more or less for the same purpose.

#6

This is just using decks + mixer right now, though I do also have a Pioneer controller, Rekordbox, Traktor etc., and do sometimes play the decks through Traktor using the external input so I can mix with mp3s easily etc.

Can Traktor loop external input (an actual vinyl, not timecode)? The only way I found to do this was to manually tap the tempo and use one of the effects which acts as a looper (I forget the name), but maybe I’m missing something!

Like I say this is all kind of just for fun, if I had a serious need for it I could buy a mixer with this feature or whatever, just interested to see how far I can push things with what I have :slight_smile:

#7

Yes you can :slight_smile:
The looper in Traktor is not part of the effects.
As you can have any deck configured as an input, you can actually loop any deck :slight_smile:
You would have to use “Scratch” to get time code to avoid tap tempo.
Let me know :wink:

#8

Ah nice, somehow I had never discovered the looper. Maybe it’s a new version thing, I haven’t really used it for quite a few years. Thanks for the pointer, I’ll take a look!

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