PickUp Machine Sampling using Flex

Hi there, I finally went mad after those PickUp machines so I set-up one using Flex.

Now I can finally jam without worrying about weird tempo changes, or needing to count if I am close enough to 256 beats or not, or sample quantized 12 bar loops (which PU’s can’t do).

I am no video producer and that would have taken up even more of my time, so I wrote the whole thing down in a pdf I uploaded here:

https://www.elektronauts.com/files/478

Thanks @sezare56 and @Open_Mike for their kindness in introducing us newbies to this machine extraordinaire :wink:

Have fun and make some music!

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Nice one! Thank you!

(Minor repeated typo: length, not lenght!)

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Very cool and very timely. I just got a Soleman pedal and was thinking about this very subject. Looks like it could be just what I needed.

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Ooops, sorry yes english is not my native tongue and I was in a hurry, this took quite some time figuring out, testing and putting it on paper…

Btw overdubbing works nicely too, I’ll upload an edit this evening, got some other stuff to do right now.

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Corrected. That english “th” is definitely difficult to apprehend for non-native speakers!
(I made a minor change to the text as well, btw)

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I know! It is a super common minor error, and it is therefore almost never corrected. Like “network packages” instead of “network packets”, and the “life environment” vs the “live environment”, <3

But that’s nothing compared to the challenges of an English speaker like me learning Deutsch, trying to say Streichholzschächtelchen or Neuschwanstein!

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I spotted a few other errors, but still perfectly readable so don’t worry about it, FWIW I thought you was a native English speaker @pinup57 your English is great!

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That looks like a very cool device, lots of power and a small footprint… I’ll take a look at the manual, it might suit me for my guitar pedalboard!

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ditto

: )

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This is cool and useful. I Will try it out asap.Thanks!!!

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Just try to say “Oachkatzlschwoaf” (Eichhörnchenschwanz/squirrel tail) … :smiley:

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Omg lol!
I feel their pain!

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Couldn’t watch it til the end… man you made me suffer!!

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:rofl:

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After more experimenting with this set-up I’d add some observations:

  • this is definitely the way to go for longer Pick-up-style recording. When using scale mode = per track and the midi track1 scale set to 16/16 you can reliably pick up quantized recordings of any length without having to worry about the dreaded tempo change, or undefeatable time-stretch**.

-There is however one caveat: because the midi message “stop recording” makes a roundtrip (out and back into the OT, in my case re-routed via a midi-interface where I filter out all unnecessary stuff ) the recording might be just a millisecond or two longuer than wanted. This results in a bit of drift over time, because the sample is not periodically retriggered like the Pick-up machines seem to do internally. That’s why for longer recordings this is OK, but for short loops it’s better to use a PUM.
To resync the loop either arm the audio track’s one-shot manually or hit footswitch2 again.
I’m still trying to find a way to automatically retrigger at the corresponding length, but I don’t think that is possible beyond 256 beats unless we mess around with tempo multipliers but then again, I’m a musician, not a calculator :wink:

The whole idea is that you can record first, decide later. With Pick-up machines either you decide beforehand, or, if you don’t you are stuck with limited possibilities and a fair chance you get the tempo change chaos.

** The Pick-up machines seem to be “elastic” Beats are a bit “floating around”, sometimes perfectly timed, but the next beat can be several ms late in the same loop. I suspect the time stretching to be responsible. They are not as tight as the flex machines.

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OT Master clock?

I’ll read other things later! :wink:

I might revisit PUM’s at some point, but it’s gonna be awhile… I found them to be an exercise in frustration :slight_smile:

Which is the very reason I started this Flexi-pickup machine hack :wink:

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Yep, tell me what you think about it. So far it’s working for me…

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