Pick up machines conundrum

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#7

thanks everyone! (some)stuff makes a lot more sense now and your pointers have been really helpful. sometimes I wish the manual wasn’t as scattered. It’s all in there though.

what still bugs me is that the tempo, detected by the OT, is always double time (i.e. my 75bpm loop is set to 150bpm) - which is probably due to me not playing very accurate. I know how to work around, but wish I didn’t need to.

It also would be very cool to be able to sequence effects on the pick up track itself which would allow some cool poly rhythm with only one track since sequencer and recorded loop are detached anyway. these trigs could (or would have to) be trigless by default.

I hope elektron is planning on giving the pick ups some more attention again and give them a bit of an overhaul (it should be possible to set the length of slave machines to X0.5 or X0.25 for instance)

maybe I can craft a bit more precise scenario and might have to bug you with more questions then… right know I’m just dabbling and trying to figure out how I could get my set up more “playable”…
cheers again for your help

#8

… oh and also… ELEKTRON? pretty please? wouldn’t that be a great point to introduce threshold based sampling? I can see it’d be difficult to implement in the sequenced environment - but for the pick ups it would be the shizzle …

what you reckon?

#9

sorry for the spam chaps,
I have it now pretty much the way I’d like it to have - however the OT tempo detection seems the biggest hurdle:

I’m using a metronome (old fashioned) set to 76 bpm.
now I record 3 chord stabs with a long reverb tail. 2 bars each
after the end of the sixth bar I press the 2nd record button and playback starts
it’s playing along the metronome nicely and accurate enough for my needs
now I tempo sync to the pickup machine (track+tempo) and the OT (pretty consistently) tempo is set to 102 bpm (+/- 1 beat) depending how accurate I play
for what I’m trying to do, I need to use the pick up sync as I’d like my MD to start after a few runs. funny enough it kicks in exactly when I want it but since it’s set to the wrong tempo it doesn’t make any sense musically. and also if I force the OT to the desired 76bpm it starts to retime my loop completely needlessly (and introduce artefacts)… and of course the sequencer doesnt start in sync unless i start it in sync manually - which I don’t want to rely on)

any ideas? please help. cheers!

EDIT: after practicing to play it tightly alongside the metronome I can get the OT to consistently mis-guess the tempo at exactly 101.5bpm. very annoying. hope anyone can chime in

#10

ok - so finally i narrowed it down to something concrete (and hopefully easier to comment on) - rather than just me exposing that I don’t know what I’m doing:

If I record 6 bars @76bpm the OT recognizes it as 8 bar @~101.5bpm (due to inaccuracy in my playing)
If I record 8 bars @76bpm the OT recognizes it as 16 bar @152bpm

…both are multiples of what I intend to do and I can correct this glitch free AFTER activating pick up sync by going into the audio editor and changing the attributes. can anyone think of a way to avoid this detour?

#11

Korg ESX does threshold based sampling nicely, and that’s a sequenced environment. Not sure why the OT doesn’t have this…I would love to see this in an update.

#12

Not in my experience. If you had the sequencer running when you hit Stop, when you hit Play, any loops you had playing on any Pickup Machine track will resume playing, without you having to add a trig to the Pickup Machine track.[/quote]

my incomprehension carries on:
does this work for you on all pick up machines?
if I hit stop after having the sequencer running and then play again only my master machine would start playing and not my slave machine. is that a bug? or does it work for you?

#13

Not in my experience. If you had the sequencer running when you hit Stop, when you hit Play, any loops you had playing on any Pickup Machine track will resume playing, without you having to add a trig to the Pickup Machine track.[/quote]

my incomprehension carries on:
does this work for you on all pick up machines?
if I hit stop after having the sequencer running and then play again only my master machine would start playing and not my slave machine. is that a bug? or does it work for you?[/quote]
I’ve had bad luck trying to post responses to this thread due to timeout from the website, but I’ll try again…

Yes, both my master and slave pickup machines stop playing when I hit Stop on the sequencer, and both resume playing when I hit Play. I am using OS 1.25. Are you using the same or the 1.25b?

#14

thanks for your response GovernorSilver!
I’m on OS 1.25 too. I followed the instructions in the manual numerous times an am getting an expected result (besides the tempo issues described above).
After syncing to my master loop I hit play and the sequencer starts in nicely after completing the loop.
However - once I hit stop and then play again only my master loop starts and the slave(s) remain silent. I can trig them manually and they start in sync - but not by pressing play. (as indicated by the little symbol which shows a square).

Is there anything I need to prep for the slaves to behave the way you’re seeing it? I wonder what I’m missing. cheers!

#15

thanks for your response GovernorSilver!
I’m on OS 1.25 too. I followed the instructions in the manual numerous times an am getting an expected result (besides the tempo issues described above).
After syncing to my master loop I hit play and the sequencer starts in nicely after completing the loop.
However - once I hit stop and then play again only my master loop starts and the slave(s) remain silent. I can trig them manually and they start in sync - but not by pressing play. (as indicated by the little symbol which shows a square).

Is there anything I need to prep for the slaves to behave the way you’re seeing it? I wonder what I’m missing. cheers!
[/quote]
That is weird. I have never experienced this problem with the slave pickup machine failing to start upon restart of the sequencer. I don’t know what to suggest at this point other than to try creating a fresh new Project. If you still experience the same issue, make sure you are not seeing an error message like “Dub Rec Aborted” or “Rec Mem Full” in the LCD screen.

If that still doesn’t work, report the issue to Elektron support.

#16

Korg ESX does threshold based sampling nicely, and that’s a sequenced environment. Not sure why the OT doesn’t have this…I would love to see this in an update.[/quote]
my old akai s950 did this. was helluva useful if whatever you were trying to sample was the other side of the studio.

1 Like
#17

thanks Governor, I have yet to try with a fresh project (been only trying fresh banks for now). I will get in touch with support if it persists.

here is the outcome of my looper efforts btw. - more or less recorded live:

#18

thanks Governor, I have yet to try with a fresh project (been only trying fresh banks for now). I will get in touch with support if it persists.

here is the outcome of my looper efforts btw. - more or less recorded live:
https://soundcloud.com/tasmansea/novunder[/quote]
I noticed this occurring with my pickup machines as well. I’m on OS 1.25b. I’ll try later today to see if the problem recurs.

#19

thanks for chiming in Lazos,
would be cool if you could report your findings when you get to check again.
it’s driving me nuts as I don’t know what I could be doing wrong
chur!

#20

Yep, so pickup machines continue to behave in this fashion for me (OS 1.25b): Two separate pickup machines synced to the sequencer with programmed beat playing. Stopping and restarting the sequencer results in only the master pickup restarting. I’ll write a support ticket today.

#21

cheers. I have added this to an existing ticket too. they didn’t get back to me yet

#22

Cool, then I’ll hold off on submitting one as I wrote a ticket for another bug mentioned in another thread.

#23

wouldn’t hurt to submit one too no? the one I added it to didn’t get any reply so far

at least they don’t brush it off as user error if you send one too

#24

Fair enough. I’ll do one as well :slight_smile:

#25

just for the record - elektron has gotten back to me and confirmed that these are not user errors. they will try to improve this in the future

#26

Good to hear that they responded to your ticket. Wondering now what will come in the next update - bug fixes and/or something from the ever growing list of feature requests.