Pickup Machine as Slave

Here’s my wild idea:

Give users a choice on whether additional pickup machines are slaves.

I have not had any issues with master pickup machines that couldn’t be fixed by more RTFM/asking on the forums.

Slave pickup machines OTOH are buggy, so if I wanted to use two pickup machine tracks, I’d rather both of them be “master” than one be slave to the other. I would gladly give up the length multiplier - never got much use out of the 2nd pickup machine having 2x or 4x the length of the first. anyway - to have the 2nd pickup machine be its own master instead of a slave. There is a master clock in the OT anyway, so I don’t see the need to sync the 2nd pickup machine directly to the first when both are being controlled by the master clock.

Most of the complaints are about the slave pickup machine, not the master. I was using a Line 6 DL-4 as my looper before I got the Octatrack. The DL4 has no such thing as a “slave looper” so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not using a slave pickup machine. Then again, I’ve never been as sophisticated a looping musician as oldgearguy. I did own an Echoplex Digital Pro briefly, but it was much for my brain. Having just said that, I just have been nuts to pick up an Octatrack… While the OT is not the looping machine we were all hoping it to be, it’s still changed the way I make music in a fundamental way. I’m not really a “build up a song, track by track” kind of looping musician, and I’m not a “Fripp soundscape” type looping player either - I like to get more into the muck about with the audio after it’s sampled aspect than continuing to loop and loop and loop…

As for your flex machine question, I don’t think it is possible to overdub like you can on the pickup machine.

I’m a bit frustrated right now. I spent a good long while trying to fix/diagnose/calibrate my brand new midi foot peddle that I bought to do some live looping. But I kept getting the ‘dub aborted’ message. Yes the OT is slaved. Why shouldn’t it be?

Can someone point me to the place in the manual where it says the OT is unable to do pickup machines when slaved?

A quick search on this site finds a bunch of posts similar to this one:

Really bummed I made the assumption that a $1300 piece of kit that advertises itself as a looping powerhouse doesn’t work as advertised when slaved.

That was posted in 2014. Since then there has been no fix nor documentation updates nor more descriptive error messages…

Are my expectations unreasonable? Is there an official Elektron position/plan for this?

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Can’t you set Octatrack as master ?
It’s possible to overdub with Flex machines.

I gave up on using slave pickup machines a while ago.

I just use one pickup machine in the OT - which guarantees that it will be the master pickup machine (not to be confused with the OT in its entirety being master or slave), and if I need more loops, I use Flex Machines instead. It does take a bit more effort and patience to learn how to loop with a Flex machine instead of a Pickup Machine, but it’s worth it. I do admit that I did say in the past that I thought overdubbing on Flex machines was not possible, but it could be I was using recorder trigs on the Flex machines - every time the recorder trig trigged sampling, the new recording would wipe out the previous one.

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@colaba
At first I didn’t like Pickups that were changing OT’s tempo sequencer and prefered Recorder + Flex. More possibilities with one track.
Since I tried quantize Rec, I changed my mind about Pickups, as you can use their recordings with Flex and use them as you want.

I had a RC505 before, best looper I know for simple 5 tracks stereo recording with different lengths up to 3 hours for each track !
I kept Ot only, the craziest looper in the world.

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Hi guys:) trying to rap my head around the best way for me to do things. I’m sorry if my questions have already been answered (probably has) but I have been reading online and the manual for a couple of days.

As I’m using another sequencer as master I’ve been live looping synths with the flex machines using a thru machine to monitor the synths while playing.

I thought I could not overdub on the same track using flex but I now read that it is possible. I’m not sure how though…

But basically is there any other advantages to using pick up machines over the way I’m doing it when I’m not interested in octatrack changing tempo to fit the loop.

Also if I were to use the pick up playing over a loop that already has the preferred tempo, does the octatrack understand the tempo correctly when for example playing pads or other synthy stuff without much tempo information in the playing?

Sorry if I’m not making much sense. Hope you can bear with me:)

If you use QREC (quantize record) in Recording Setup 2, Pickup won’t change tempo (QPLAY maybe needed too).
Otherwise Tempo is calculated with bar numbers (1-2-4-8-16…) or sub divisions, between rec start / stop, with 80-160 bpm range.

Are you sure OT can’t be master in your setup ? Even for overdub with Flex OT master is better for loop recordings.

Main advantages of Pickups can be the monitoring in Recording Setup 2, multiply, loop length for slave loops…

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Thank you for explaining:) I’m definitely going to give OT as a master a go. The trouble with the setup is that i’m not always using it but I could just switch back and forth.

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Wait, this is suddenly very relevant to my interests. How do you overdub in a single Flex Machine?

Record inputs AB or CD and SRC3 with corresponding track number (SRC3=T1-T8).

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Thanks for the reply! I tested this out and I think the feedback issues are too limiting for what I’m trying to do, but it’s certainly an interesting option.

Can you explain this in more detail? What feedback issues?

I’ve got a very particular usage case, so your mileage may vary here.

I’m using the OT and flex machines to loop my bass playing. Pickup machines don’t work for my needs because of the lack of sequencing options.

I’m manually managing the sampling with a footswitch and with the HOLD mode enabled rather than a recording trig.

When I go to overdub, I immediately get hit with strong feedback. I’ve seen this discussed in other threads, and it’s something that can be managed with record trigs, but I haven’t found a way to fix it using manual sampling, although I confess I haven’t tested it too much.

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You shouldn’t have feedback.
Anoying things are monitoring, and the sound getting bad if you use filter, and record more than 15/20 times.

If you’re not slaved you can record with a Pickup, and mangle its recording in realtime with a Flex.
T1 > Pickup
T2 > Flex playing Recording 1

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Could you try doing this with just headphones, no speaker?

I’m assuming you’re talking about feedback as in shrill tones coming out of a speaker. Let’s make sure your speaker is not the problem here.

just stumbled upon this and immediately went to try it out. :slight_smile:

Though when I overdub on the Pickup machine on T1, the Flex machine on T2 (playing back Recording Buffer 1) stops playback for the duration of the overdub on T1. Any advice?

EDIT: actually it seems to stop playback on the Flex track when I conclude the overdub on the pickup track (by pressing Rec1 again…QREC is quantised to PLEN…so when the quantised overdub turns off, the flex track playback stops with it)

Also, re looping & overdubbing on Flex machines alone (recording Input AB + SRC3 self), any ideas on how to control the volume of the recording coming through on REC3/SRC?

Merci!!

You have to disable timestrech, don’t use pitch up and reverse at the beginning of Flex playback.
I just made a test, a +1/384 microtiming seemed necessary on the 1st step.

Could you elaborate?

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Amazing!! You are the man for all things OT forensics :)), thank you !!!

Re the second question, when I loop through Flex entirely, the signal coming in from Input AB is lower than the signal coming in from the resampling lane (REC3). So every time I overdub, the re-recorded loop will be significantly louder than the new layer. What is more, the track as such plays back fine in terms of gain staging, but when rerecorded over REC3 it’s basically way too hot and clipping. I did play around with the track volume and gain (Vol under Amp) and that “fixed it”, I just wonder if there’s a way to control the gain staging of REC3 similar to the way I can adjust the gain staging for inputs AB and CD on the Mixer page. Because currently my response to the problem is to lower the volume of the track in the mix (rather than lower the gain on the “resampling input” / REC3…but not sure if the latter is even possible).

If you record a track with SRC3 = T1-T8, recording level depends on VOL and Fx, but track LEVEL doesn’t change recording level.
Don’t hesitate to ask more next year! :content:

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