Question about performing with long stem samples as backing tracks

Long time lurker. First time poster. I decided to use the octatrack as the brain for my live setup and I have my head wrapped around most of it, but there is one scenario that I just can’t seem to figure out. Say I have 2 backing tracks for 2 songs. I have song 1 set up in bank1 and song 2 set up in bank 2. I have both of them loaded into track 1 using static machines. I have a 1 shot trig at the beginning of the 1st pattern on bank 1 for song 1 and another one at the beginning of pattern 1 on bank 2 for song2. My goal is to hard cut from one to the other rather than trying to do a transition. I have transitions baked into the stems.

I would expect that when bank 2 patter 1 starts playing, it would automatically stop playing the song 1 stem from the previous bank, but what’s strange is that the stem from bank 1 keeps playing, and the new one doesn’t trigger. Well it sounds like it tries to, but the stem for Song 1 glitches slightly and then keeps playing instead of stopping to let the new sample start.

What am I doing wrong here? I have spent countless hours trying to figure it out, and I’m just baffled. I really want to avoid manually trigging all the song stems for this set using the track button-play combo. I want to have all these events completely automated when the bank switches happen.

Thanks ahead of time!
-Eliot

Have you tried the setting “Silence Tracks” in Control> Sequencer in the project options?

You know - I didn’t know about that setting until just now, but I just tried it and the same problem occurs except that Song 1 stops completely. Song 2 does not trigger lol.

Hmm… Ok I haven’t tried what you are describing specifically but thought that might be worth a shot. Only other thing I can think is to check the pattern settings (funtion+edit with record off> Starts silent, plays free etc)

Just tried that too. Still not working. Seems like I may have found a bug haha. So annoying. The weirdest thing is that song1 doesn’t mute right away. It kind of glitches pitch wise so there is a bit of it in the first second of the new pattern.

Sounds related to hug I was looking into the other day:


I was switching parts but switching banks switches parts too so…

Try p-locking the samples rather than using the default slots. (As a workaround.) That seems to ‘persuade’ it to use new sample rather than just a keep playing the old one

I don’t know actually - rereading your scenario it is very different but seeing as it’s also a case of a track failing to trig with it’s new assigned sample it might be worth trying the plock approach. Good luck and report back if you get a chance

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Man! I tried all the suggestions here and I am getting the same issue. Funny little additional note. As an experiment thinking it might have been caused by the speed of my CF card, I loaded Song 1 into a flex slot and then a random sample in place of Song 2 on another flex slot of the same machine. Same exact problem.

Then, I tried changing the trigs to normal from one-shot, and it does the switch to the new song, but the weird little pitchy tail of Song 1 is still audible when song 2 triggers. This is driving me nuts!!! If I could just get this to work I could get on with getting ready for this show lol.

Anyone have any other ideas?

I tried your scenario earlier. I didn’t get any issues. I did find that it was easy to lose track of the ARMED state when working with long samples trigged by one shots. probably just my lack of practice with them (although it did make me think it would be great to have a small ‘armed’ indicator somewhere on screen - maybe there is one ? If not it would be a great ‘humble feature request’ even just a pixel like the midi indicators)

Anyway - it did occur to me that there’s quite a but more detail you could supply. There always is with the OT as there are so many settings and configurations possible. But it would help other people to try to replicate the issue.

I’m not with the OT now but from why I remember I would have like to know:

Are you changing patterns within the timespan of each bank/backing track?
If so are there further uses of one shots before you change banks?
How long are these backing tracks in use before changing to next bank? Are they retriggered?
I’m assuming the long backing samples are on the same track within each bank but I don’t think you’ve mentioned tracks…
If you could simplify and replicate the issue in its own project it might be easier to communicate the setup and for someone else try it out.

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So just to let everyone know what I found out. I contacted Elektron support and it turns out that switching banks does NOT reset the one-shot trig state for a given track. If I hit the “yes” button before making the switch, the transition happens. The only problem I’m dealing with now is that the weird tail of the previous song that sounds pitchy and strange is still audible when the new song starts. Whats even more strange is that when I tried to replicate the problem in a completely blank project, I was able to get exactly the result that I wanted, so it seems that there is some setting inside that particular project that I can’t find and don’t know how to fix. I guess I’m just going to migrate my stuff into a new project and hope for the best?

Any ideas you guys may have re: why the previous song would keep playing for a split second into the new bank - I would be very interested to hear.

Thanks for the tips. Funny with this machine - so many possible things, but it’s SO powerful so it’s worth dealing with the quirks.

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You could try shortening the release parameter in the amp page from the first pattern and see if that affects it.

Funny you should mention that. That was actually the first thing I tried, but it didn’t do anything haha. Any other ideas?

Does this behaviour happen when the arranger is in use? You say you want it all automated so I’m assuming it’s via the arranger?

Ok, you’ll hate this but it’s an option.

Trig lock the second ‘song’ sample on the same track and same bank as ‘song’ 1 .

Then when song2 is playing transition to bank 2.

I don’t plan to use the arranger. The whole point of setting it up this way is to be able to re-do the track order of the set on the fly much like a dj set. As for trig locking song2 on song1’s bank, that is an option, but it takes away any ability to spontaneously pick whether I’m going to song 2 or song 6. Know what I mean?

Errr ok. Well To try and help I just opened a fresh project, made zero changes and did what you’ve done at the top.

It switched perfect and on the beat, trig one.

Have you got some weird trig length setting in the chain behaviour page? Project setup.

Are you using plays free? If so make sure trig quantise is set right.emphasized text

Have you out of curiosity set a new project with two files on different banks to see if it does it?

are you using track fx or are the samples already mixed and processed?

If no extra processing specific to the samples/songs then you could just hit FUNC and up/down to spontaneously choose files?