Pickup madness

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

So - trying to use the pick up machine. I want to record an external in A from my medusa. I set

IN A
RLEN MAX
TRIG ONE
LOOP ON
QREC PLEN

It records, it loops, but there is this super annoying little delay happening. Like a second off beat even if I play really on the beat, so the only way out is to play 1 second offbeat and then it matches the rhythm perfectly. What could be going on? Is it time stretching it almost to the beat and skewing it just a second off. When I record right on the beat, it play just 1 second before what I wanted it to play :sad:

edit: I am not super familiar with pickup machine yet, still feel alien to me.

#2

I’d try QPLAY set accordingly to QREC.
You can start from scratch with a new bank.

I guess Medusa is synced to OT?
I there a tempo change.

If you don’t need overdub, and want to mangle the recording, use Flex.

#3

The medusa is not synced, I play live. I like the overdub so that the end of the loop bleep at the beginning of the recording.

Yeah I’ll start from scratch, might as well! I do get confused after a while.

#4

Ok so, I have another sample playing on one track, which is 17.1 seconds, which might be not helping my whole calculation.

I am on 84bpm, with 48steps, with a 1/2 multiplier. I want my pickup machine or whatever recording to be in sync with the first sample, which is 17.1 second, so whatever I play or record has to be that length.

Again when I try to record right on top of what is playing there is a drifting, is it because I can only record 16 sec - do I have to change that in the project audio setting?

#5

It sounds like this could be what’s happening.

You can go into CONTROL>MEMORY and change your RESERVE LENGTH up above 17.1 seconds. Or turn DYNAMIC RECORDERS to YES and that will allow you to use more memory.

1 Like
#6

hum ok I’m starting to get it.

I did make the reserve length to be 32second, but then I was hoping that the recording would be completely in sync with the length of my track (42beat at 82bpm * 2) but it is not, I have to manually start and stop it so that it works with the beat.

If my recorded material was less than the 64 beat then I could have a pickup machine recording something in sync with what is playing, but letting the length to MAX, I have to stop it manually right?

EDIT

Alright, almost there, but the pickup machine is now changing my BPM if I record only what I need :S But it record only what I need, so that’s a good start. Can I make it that the pickup machine doesn’t change the bpm of the track and simply continue looping what I’ve recorded? Or do I need to use a flex machine instead?

EDIT 2:
Is this still relevant:

which seems to indicate that PickUp Machine do not keep on the beat and stretch your recording… Is the pickup machine not working like a looper ?

#7

They apparently tried to, but OT inherited from MD UW Ram machines : a recorder machine, and a recording buffer play machine.

OT has a recorder per track, and initially only Flex were able to play recordings. They added Pickups, with linked recorder and recording play behavior.

Pickup machines are still dependent on track recorders and recorder buffers, but can be regarded as an alternate way of controlling them. As soon as a Pickup machine is assigned to a track, it is hard-linked to the both the track recorder and the recorder buffer of that trac

Main caveats for me : tempo changes if the recording length is not defined or stopped before, even with QREC!
If you record multiples of QREC different from power of 2 values : 1, 2, 4, 8, etc is ok, but 3, 5, 6, 7, etc times will change tempo.

Unwanted tempo changes, timestreched (always active) = unusable looper.

These tempo changes happen even with slaved Pickups (Master being first Pickup recorded).

That said, a Pickup can be used for overdub with a defined length, and it can be swapped to a Flex (even with pre-set trigs). I may use them that way only.

#8

Ah ok, I understand why I was so confused - I was really expecting it to be like a normal looper. I tried a bit with the Flex machine, but wasn’t super smooth either. For now I can create the sequence on the Medusa and sync it to the OT so that it plays exactly what I want it to play… I’ll explore more the flex machine.