OT workflow with recorded loops on flex machines

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Still new to my Octatrack MKII and learning. I couldn’t find a clear answer to my question and at the moment I am loosing the overview of what is connected to a pattern, part or trigs.

Let’s keep it simple:
One track, flex machine. I start manually the recording (set to quantized) of 16 steps by pressing T1 and Rec1 (record from AB), let’s call it melody 1. I have a trigger at step one to play the whole recording and loop it from step 1 to 16.

(I like the flexibility of the flex machine to be able to work with slices and whatever. The simple looping (plus overdub) would be possible with the pickup machine, I understand.)

Now I want to save this recording which is only temporary in the recording buffer. Ideally in a pattern A01. Record melody 2 into another pattern A02. Later come back to melody 1 in pattern A01. And so on. Do this with more tracks and more “melodies”/patterns.

What I found out: In the Rec3-menu there is a way to “save all recordings”. Then the default sample in each track is the saved file. To be able to make a new recording, I have to delete this default sample setting back to the recorder buffers (recorder1 etc.). Put the saved files into sample slots. On the play trig in each track and each pattern I can select these sample slots. - A lot of steps.

Is there an easier/other way to do this for live performing? Am I missing anything here?

Thanks for your hints and advice.

#2

How live are we talking here?

For completely live use I would just build the patterns targeting the recorder buffers as the samples used in the patterns and not worry about saving them, there are 8 recorders so you can have 8 loops in Ram to work with in different patterns…

If you wanted to record you loop and then have it permanently become part of a pattern to be used again and again after power cycles, as soon as the recording is done I would save and “assign to free flex”, and then load that flex slot to a flex machine and build your pattern, repeat with next recording…
For this use you wouldn’t particularly need to ever assign the recorder buffer to a flex machine, as long as your monitoring it from somewhere else, perhaps mixer direct. The buffers are used to play recordings from ram, if your going to save it anyway it’s quite possibly an extra unneeded step…

3 Likes
#3

Just so you know you don’t have to delete them you can just record again. Even if you’ve changed the name of recording1 it doesn’t matter, it’s still a recorder buffer and you can record into it…

Give the OT some time, all sorts of thing are possible and many times have I read about folks in the first month thinking you need to do a lot more things than necessary, and after a while they find that they actually didn’t need to do a lot of that stuff and their desired outcome can happen much more directly with many less steps…
It just takes a bit of learning the ins and outs of the OT for that to become apparent, which happens as time goes on…

3 Likes
#4

Thanks for the explanations. OK, I understand, that I can record to the 8 buffers always. But the possibilities of saving and assigning are still not completely clear to me. I need this to be done for several tracks. Thus, for a full performance I need to record and access more than 8 buffers.

My current idea for my setup is to use 4 Tracks to record instruments, e.g. violin plucked, violin played with bow, voice, other acoustic sounds. 1 Track for stereo samples, 1 or 2 tracks for a thru machine for ohter signals from my Digitakt and Digitone and a neighbour track for additional fx, one master track. I have other synthesizers which I probably sequence from the OT MIDI tracks. The acoustic instruments are played live during the performance.

1 Like
#5

I’m still a little uncertain if you want to loop live, pre-record things to build patterns, or it seems like you want to do both…

There’s 8 recorders so you can always have 8 recordings in ram…
For a looping type scenario where these are captured live you would just start to replace the ones you used first with new ones as you go, unless you need to get back to the first loops later in the performance without re recording them?

Doing it not live you can just record one at a time and then save and assign to free flex and build your patterns. Or you could make 8, save all recordings, build patterns, like you said. Just do this process once and then it’s done from then on. Probably more ways I’m sure…

If your wanting to somehow combine live looping with permanent saving of the files in a live situation, well, it can be done, but I don’t really see the point unless it’s imperative you make the loops live and not beforehand and that also throughout the entire performance you need more than 8 accessible at any time and don’t want to rerecord the loops…

I don’t know, hopefully I’m not adding unessecaary confusion, but I can’t tell if you want to do live looping or just build a project out of looping at home to be saved as files and brought out to perform without making the recordings/loops live…

I do live looping bye the way, so I’m used to making many loops and redoing them for new jams…
I rarely use more than 4 recorder buffers at once, so that’s where I’m at and trying to understand what you want to do…

1 Like
#7

Everything what I described I would like to do live. I play and record live several loops on different instruments or in different styles. I prefer different tracks for that. I build up songs or parts of a song. I build up other parts and other songs. I want to switch back to previous parts of a song or even a whole song at a later point during my live performance. For a night at a club this might be unusual - I don’t know. I am working with dancers, at dance events and events with impro theatre actors where I improvise live a kind of a soundtrack. I would like to recall different parts which I played earlier.

I started working with a Boss RC-505. I can easily record on the 5 tracks and save everything to one of the 99 memory slots. Recall it even from another sequencer via program change message. I was quite dissapointed by the lack of flexibility of the fx for the single tracks. For each track track fx only off or on. Or directly record all fx. I like the power and flexibility of the Octatrack. It feels more like a precise music instrument for me as a musician.

It’s still a process to build the right setup for me and learn to work with all advantages and limitations of each of the tools. There are also a lot of open questions of my workflow. Probably my ideas of making music will also change with more live experience.

1 Like
#8

I’m thinking of getting the Rc-505 to use for loopoing with the octatrack. I was thinking i could just run it in to a Thru Machine and then do FX trigs on the Octa

1 Like
#9

Right on, I haven’t ever needed to save loops in my workflow so it hasn’t come up.
Just trying to figure out what your up to as often folks are convinced they need to be saving buffers as samples, loading flex machines with the new samples, and making patterns, just for looping, which is unnecessary… If you do want more than 8 and need to return to them then yes, you will have to save as you perform…

There’s various ways to do so, I’m sure you’ll land on something…
I’ll have a look back later and think about it a bit but as of right now it’s a workflow I’ve never tried to streamline to see what would be the most direct, lease button press method…

Sounds cool what your up to with dancers and improv theatre, I love the OT for live improv jams, I bet you will too! :smiley:

#10

I don’t know if it helps but I am pretty sure you can assign empty flex slots to a trig lock. If you set up your patterns beforehand you can have a pattern that is a copy of the current pattern but trigging the next empty slot instead of a record buffer. Then use save and assign to empty flex and then switch to that to seamlessly free a record buffer for some other recording.

5 Likes
#11

Haha, something along those lines has been brewing in my mind, but I was going to save saying anything until I could test things… Nice one… :slight_smile: I’m sure that will be helpful maybe combined with other tactics… :smile:

2 Likes
#12

Greatest ideas I find here. My mind is step behind yours (due to time zone :smile:), blown out.
Locking empy slots, great. Saving and assigning samples don’t stop sequencer. Change pattern to hear what’s there, cool.

2 Likes
#13

Thank everybody for the advice. I will check everything when I find the time and I will report. At the moment I am busy with other things and on my way to vacation.

2 Likes
#14

I want to do longer (sequenced) recordings with flex machines. ( > 64)

I know recorders ignore pattern multipler.

So what I want to do is sequence from an external sequencer ( squarp pyramid) via midi.
So far I can do this if I use rlen = max, and use trig = HOLD and then send c3 (60) for as long as I want the recording - that works a treat.

But I’d actually prefer to send a start and stop recording , say using trig = one, or one2
And whilst c3 (60) , I can’t find the right note/cc to stop the recording :slight_smile:

Also is anyone else using an external sequencer to do this? Is it reliable?

Edit : figured it out
For some reason combo rec(60) does not work as expected with one2 but INAB rec (61) does - and this is fine for my needs :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#15

I think I noticed that once with external midi, but I didn’t insist on it and used AB/CD/SRC3 instead. Further tests would be needed to confirm an another bug…

#16

:thinking: doesn’t seem to work if SRC3 is not activated (–). Anybody can confirm?

1 Like