Pickup machines - whats the big deal?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Ever since getting the OT, and grasping the main concepts behind it, I have been wondering - What’s all this buzz about the pickup machines? I don’t really understand their huge appeal compared to using recorder trigs and flex machines.

The only situation where I can see a pickup machine being useful is when starting a composition/performance, as it allows for setting the OTs tempo in an organic way (ie. capturing the first loop). What am I not getting?

Compared to all the Steve Reich madness that one can do with recorder and playback trigs and resampling the tracks + master, surely the pickup machine is way inferior?

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Why do people not like Pickup Machines?
#2

overdub.

organic tempo.

can’t think of anything else - i’m with you. flex does the trick

#3

midi hands free, midi remote doubling of length, midi reversing, simplicity of i/o setup, no trigs, the joys of unsolicited music genre advice “Abort Dub” (or whatever it is) :wink:

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#4

Yup.

And double yup.

I start everything with pickup machines.

I use the OT like a multitrack looper (basically replicating my old love, the EHX 45000) to grap loops in a spontatenous improvisational style. I always start with piano improvisation, so it being hands free and getting straight into recording stuff and getting ideas bouncing about is important.

Its also much fun to get evolving loops going on by controlling the overdub decay.

For me, the beauty of the OT is that its not a either/or proposition. I get a familiar, immediate looping workflow and can then take those loops and micromanage them to death. Rinse and repeat.

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#5

Haven’t got my OT yet (it’s on its way to me), but one of the things I’m looking forward to trying is the pickup machine! Even just the overdub capabilities seem to make it worth it! I’ve been using loopers for quite some time. Used to have an EHX 2880 and then moved to a Boss RC-505, and slowly building up loops is part of what I love to do in my live sets.
Not sure the OT will be able to replace the Boss, but maybe for simpler sets, it will do the trick. The OT sure seems to have a lot more sound mangling tools on board than the Boss, so probably I’ll try to set the thing up so I can loop on the Boss and then resample into the OT and do the fun stuff there. But still, if all I need is one track for looping, I will try to do everything in the OT.

#6

So how are you guys triggering the pickup machine to do the initial recording, etc? That was one of my goals for the OT, but setting it up is already not intuitive (maybe if you do it very frequently) and seems like one needs to get a midi pedal to become second nature… am I missing something?

#7

I only recently started using a midi pedal, it makes it easier but its not necessary. I found the pickup machines confusing at first, so here’s how I do it with only the OT and the two audio record buttons (I’ll call them REC [1] and REC [2]):

In Recording Setup 1 of your pickup machine:
Set your inputs, set RLEN to Max, TRIG to ONE2, LOOP to ON

in Recording Setup 2 of your pickup machine:
set FIN to 0.063, FOUT to 0.063, QREC to OFF, QPL to PLEN

Now when you press REC [1] you start recording, pressing REC [1] again ends the loop and immediately starts overdubbing (useful for capturing effects tails, or, in my case, sustained piano notes).

Alternately, if you hit REC [1] to start your loop then hit REC [2] you end the loop and enter playback.

When your loop is playing:

  • Hitting REC [1] once enters overdub, hitting it again erases and replaces audio
  • Hitting REC [2] starts and stops your loop

When your loop is stopped:

  • Hitting REC [1] starts a new loop
  • Hitting REC [2] starts and stops your loop

I always use these settings, it has become like second nature and works great for my workflow.

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#8

I watched the Cuckoo tutorial of using the OT as a looper. I spent all day basically experimenting using it as a DJ tool to basically remix LIVE. It was fun but I can see what some are talking about when you want to get down with the trigs. Using it as I was though, there is NO time for all that. My problem I was kinda hitting was it was a little tough for me to keep it in sync with the CDJs. I would record then hit playback and it would basically be on time but was not perfect.
I’m away from it right now. When I get back to it I will post my real question, which I definitely have a few. Reading some of the stuff above I will try those settings and I am a little bit fuzzy on using it with MIDI. I will keep trying though.

#9

With one-shot trigs, you can arm you record trigs by just hit yes.
This way, you sample while keeping the sync.
You just have to set a Flex machine to playback your sample in real time and voilà.
Simplest way to launch sampling IMO.

Setting a 1-shot recording trig = Fn+A, then Fn+1

Pay attention to set your recording track (Fn+B) to e.g. 64 steps instead of default “Max”.

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#10

WORD!

I’m gonna try that tomorrow.

I’ll get back to you.

#11

I’ve played a bit with the pickup machines and they seem quite usable. For me setting up the loop length beforehand (QREC to a specified amount of steps) and QPL off worked best so I can jam along something I’ve already programmed in the OT and don’t have to think about pushing too many buttons. But it’s cool that the OT let’s you use the pickup machine in different ways. For now, my only gripes with their implementation of a looper is the bad visual feedback it gives about what it’s doing. You need to rely on those tiny icons on the side of the screen, which is not ideal, but apart from that I kind of like how they did it.
I think it can work well if you use it as a single channel looper but for multi-track looping a dedicated device is still the best choice.

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#12

:white_check_mark:

Boom … my thoughts exactly, there really ought to be (yep, Another option) to have a mode for Pickup machines where the display is overlaid by Supersize Icon Feedback of some description

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#13

It actually took me a while to figure out that the icon showing what the pickup machine was doing was in the tabs on the side, I was expecting it to be where the main transport states are shown…
I think pickup machines were a bit of an afterthought addition (they were in fact added with later firmware revisions), and maybe that’s one of the reasons the interface is a bit of a compromise.
Still, I need to play a couple of gigs with it until I can really say if it works for me or not.

#14

papernoise!

Hope you’re liking the OT. Some things may be UI hell for you with this thing. Even still, I’ve been so ‘absorbed’ it’s hard to find module design time (really, it’s more the other way around, unfortunately :slight_smile: )

Just a bit ago I started playing around with the pup machines. I crashed the OT when I went to hit ‘multiply’ (Track + MIDI button). I wonder if this is a common thing to avoid or maybe I did something weird.

But my time with the pickup machine so far I actually still prefer flex track and one shot rec trigs. I can see the use if you want to create many overdubs which is why I started experimenting. I haven’t really looked into overdubbing with flex machines. I know you can set source of FLEX to CUE and then use CUE to send stuff to the FLEX… I haven’t actually tried cueing itself… hmmm… off to the OT, Batman!

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#15

@rabidelephant great to find you here as well! You know it’s funny, I was expecting this to be really complicated to get into, but everything kind of feels pretty intuitive to me after you practice a bit. I still have to dive a bit more into the pickup machine, right now I’m pretty absorbed prepping a project on the OT that mainly uses flex and static machines to play back field recs and some internal resampling to slice things up a bit

#16

@papernoise I agree! I heard tons of horror stories about the OT and how hard it is to use. I do think the UI could use improvement in some areas (like the one you mention above) but if you understand how complicated the device really is, the UI is only a matter of practise.

The pup machines I’ve ditched. They are faster to scratch stuff out but they are limited. I did try the CUE overdubbing thing on a one-shot rec trig’d FLEX track last night. You can ‘CUE itself’ and any other tracks you want to be included.

Track levels threw me off for a bit but after some experimenting, I’ve found you want the recording FLEX track track level set to 127, all AMP VOLs of all tracks set to 0, and when you set the levels of your mix, just make sure you set the CUE levels to match track level. If you do this, then it all works out very nicely as a more powerful looping machine. So that’s going to be really nice for me. I believe it will replace my ‘holding tank loop’ track (which is a one-shot trig ‘transition trick’ as they call it here) with increased functionality.

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#17

Hi, just dropping by

I use flex and pickup machines with simultaneous CUE and EXT recording, and for the level matter, I have no problem if sticking with LEVEL=108 on every track but the pickup/flexRec track that I set to 127. I don’t need to adjust the Cue volumes (where is this option?? I didn’t have to search for it :smile: )

I do the mixing with the VOL parameter on each track and never change the LEVEL.

Don’t know if it can help :slight_smile: )

I’d be interested to know how to overdub with a flex track, because if it’s possible, then I got no need for pickup machines anymore (and their scene-lock bug)

cheers

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#18

You ‘CUE’ (this is like arming them) the tracks you want recorded to the FLEX track recorder. I use one shot rec trigs and press Track + YES to trigger when I want to sample the armed tracks.

The thing I was missing was the whole CUE thing and that you can actually CUE arm the actual FLEX track recorder itself to allow for overdubbing! It will sample itself which I think is pretty damn wicked. I’ve heard some folks using two tracks where one is pointing to the same recording buffer but with this, not required!

Make sure to set SRC 3 in your recorder FLEX track to ‘CUE.’

One nice side benefit is that I’ve been using CUE extensively with headphones and this doesn’t disrupt that workflow and extends it even. You ‘cue’ (before you arm the rec trig!) and can set the actual record levels with the CUE level (hold CUE + Level knob) before you hit record… and it doesn’t change what’s currently coming through the speakers. You can premix the overdub how you wish through the headphones first before triggering the record.

The only (and it’s minor for me) thing is that if you have one of those armed tracks playing through the mains and you record it in on another track, you have to remember to turn it off… Once the rec buffer finishes and loops again, then you’d have 2x the same sound. I’m going to see if I can’t find a better workflow for that (I’m sure there is one - just a matter of more experimentation and play).

You also want to make sure if you’re overdubbing to keep the record FLEX track cue’d. I’ve made some mistakes forgetting to cue that track (which has a ton of layers of prerecorded material on it), then I add in a single HH or something… loop repeats, I get 1 HH track and that’s it :frowning:

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#19

You can over dub on a flex by setting the source 3 to track the flex is on.
If your flex is on Track 4, and your recording inputs A B, set the source 3 to t4.

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#20

Of course !!!
Nice one mate :slight_smile: