Recorder buffers for looping and live sampling

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#24

Forgot, another way to make these slice remixes is to use live record in slice mode…
No need to slice, slice mode wil use start points when slic is turned off.

Need to set quantized trig to direct in the audio attributes for the recorder buffer, and adjust amp settings…
This is where atk:1, hld:2.000, rel: 45 come in… This will play a short slice. I’d probably leave atk at 1 to minimize clicks, but hld and rel can be lengthened to taste for longer slices…

A little fiddlly as you only access 1/4 of the recordings slices per row of trigs (page), you use the page button to get to the rest… Not as bad if you just add a few hits per pattern cycle, and let it roll several times while switching the slice pages and adding a few more hits here and there…

:slight_smile:

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#25

After only 4 years with the Octatrack I had my live sampling to pre sliced recorder buffer and playing back in f#cked up ways epiphany last night. Pretty much everything I ran into the inputs somehow ended up being musically interesting. The OT really is the gift that keeps on giving. We really hit it off big time last night and we shall never be without each other.

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#26

Absolutely, I was one of the first to have one and even after all this time can still think of new ways to use it, it is more like an open ended audio processing and manipulation platform than ‘just’ a dynamic performance sampler. And as you say about yourself, I don’t feel that I have more than scratched the surface of its capabilities either, there are still things that it does that I have not used because the things that I have used are still providing enough possibilities.

Great to read your experiences and approaches Mike!

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#27

I see them too. I also see them with modular and a lot of software. So i want to learn everything at once and make a masterpiece album at the same time. Too much offerings can be overwhelming when being unpatient.
I always appreciate your writings. Good reminder of ot’s power

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#28

@darenager @Unifono
I know I’m not literally the only one that’s seen what an Octatrack can do, it was more a funny way to describe the feeling I have… :smiley: . But thanks for chiming in…

I answer lots of basic OT questions and observe formum activities, and many people sell the OT before being able to just loop 4 bars or do some other thing, or have it for years but not know it can record longer than 16 seconds. I often read from people who have had it a few years and don’t think it can do something it easily does, yet alone are chewing up and spitting out flex audio…

I don’t want to imply that I’m more advanced than anyone, in fact I’m sure there’s much more advanced OTists out there than me, I just point peolple to the ways of the flex!

@Hans_Olo, Yes!

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#29

Sometimes I feel like the OT poster boy and don’t want to talk about it, then somebody asks something and gets me going again. Oh well, I feel like a geek but I love talking Octatrack… Haha… :joy:

Also to be noted is that Elektron came up with the Octatrack so they’re awesome, but if some other people came up with it I would be just as obsessed with their audio warping device, because I’m obsessed with what it does, not who made it. But Elektron did make it so they are awesome… Haha…

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#30

I referred to myself to PeterHanes the other day as a “live OT theory research publicist”… Haha
Once again I will humbly state that from reading my replies you might imagine I’ve gone to town on this stuff and have a crazy mega programmed OT, it’s more like I’ve tested and tried a few times the techniques and I’m telling people of what I’ve seen is possible, which is what I’m working on too. I definitely do have some good tricks programmed in, but I don’t have so many variations of them and certainly need to come up with more for a set. Some of what I say are my own goals for the future, but I’ve tested the concepts and proved it’ll work, just got to program them… Haha…
We’re in this together…

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#31

Thank you for these tips @Open_Mike. It’s taken me more than six months to get my head around the OT sampling workflow(live and manual), but now I am reaping the benefits. This was perfect timing because I’ve been excited about making more experimental sounds (not just straight forward sequenced beats)…and these words helped a bunch.

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#32

Hey, no problem, I was starting to feel a bit lonely as a looper on the board a month or two ago, there’s a few around but not so many. Now I feel like there quite a few more looping OTists around, it’s nice… :slight_smile:

I deleted the posts but on a thread about a year ago I kept saying stuff like:
“Where have all my loopers gone, gone to Ableton one by one” and stuff, and no one would reply…
Haha…

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#33

Hi to all!

Here another space traveler of the limits of the understanding and the conscience!
It’s a pleasure to meet people like you who, like me, want to improvise live with instruments and the OT, live looping, environments, rhythms, gadgets and gossip, modify it live, mold it, how it is molded and creates every moment … .
Not long ago I have the OT, but I’ve had an MD, several loopers (now a dittox4) and I’ve used Ableton live with an experimental improvised music band. Also synthesizers and several pots, although mainly I improvise with the guitar since I started playing.
I am reading all your posts about OT and learning a lot, because my main motivation is the pickup machines + flex + the OT potential to mold and transform the result live.
Thanks for all your contributions, tricks, configurations, … They will really be very useful for me.
At the moment I am struggling and stuck with my biggest problem with the loopers, recording and doing a live loop of environmental sounds, drones, envelopes, without the problem of pop / click / phase / or whatever one wants to call it. If the sound is continuous, I can not get the end-to-start transition to be clean. Surely you can, that’s why I bought the OT mainly and it frustrates me a bit, but reading your comments you encourage me knowing that you did it, therefore there is a way to do it.
It’s my first post, so, nice to meet you and read you. (and Sorry for my English)

3 Likes
#34

Hi. Welcome.

How long are your loops?
Do you use Pickups?
Overdub?
Fade in / out?

#35

hi sezare56!
Thanks for the help. I’ve only tried with PUM. I had already read that thread (Clickup Machines) like four or five times :slight_smile: and I have read it again just in case, but the only solution that seems to be is to use a flex machine configured with start points with plocks and retouching the Amp in the flex ( I have not tried it yet because I lack knowledge about flex), but I do not see a general solution without flex (and I still have to study how to do what you said with the flex). But I do not see an agreement on whether it is better to use qrec or qplay with a concrete value, or Qlen = max or at a specific value of steps. The truth is that, without considering the flex, I have not found a 100% effective method of making a continuous environmental loop. I would like to work more with Len = max, so that the improvisation takes the tempo without having to pay attention to a fixed length or pattern. I’ve tried Qrec, Qplay and Qlen in different combinations, usually Plen and Max, but none solves the problem. I have tried the fade in out, and only with fade in or only with fade out too (0.063 and other values). Always with Once2. the length of the loop for the tests was a few seconds, less than 20s, sometimes maybe 8 or 10 seconds. I have tried recording the Thru instead of the AB CD, but no method has ever worked for me. Doing overdub on the starting point is how many times I get the continuous sound without clicks or pops but it is almost a probability questión, two goes well and two wrong. Do start points with PLocks with a flex that reproduces the buffer of the PUM as you say solves the problem? If you say yes, I study thoroughly how I should do that (I do not understand how you can generate a pre-established fade in out effect with a plock when you do not know the length of the loop yet, but that’s more of a theme of my ignorance about the OT) although in my opinion, it should not be necessary something so elaborate to make an environmental loop without noise and to play and improvise on it. Surely I leave something along the way :). I have read many of your comments on other threads, very good contributions, thank you for sharing your knowledge!

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#36

Hi I know this is an old convo but it’s an extremely useful one. And my "issue " is related.

So I play bass, and I live loop@mangle my bass groove. I monitor off the outboard mixer. I have set up a flexmachine on track1, assigned recorder1 to it, set a couple of recording trigs and the corresponding track trigs, delayed by 1/384, and each trig has some p-locks like pitch. Keeping it simple for the moment. So, that works great.

What I want now, is that when I have some cool groove running, I can put the bass down and pick up say a guitar and jam along. But, if I stop playing bass, the track1 recorder doesn’t record anymore audio so the flex has nothing to read from => silence. My idea: set up a pickup machine on say, T5, and have the T1 recorder record both A B (my mixer send comes in here) and SRC3 set to T5. The goal: when I am done with random improvising, I record the last 16 or whatever beats in the pickup, which will then start looping and the output would then be recorded in the T1 recorder via src3=T5. That doesn’t work: I only hear the dry PUM T5 output. I see however the internal input monitoring leds of T1 indicating the signal is being received: it just doesn’t record. I must be missing something (or maybe is there a better way to do this?)

#38

Have you armed the recorder trig for both AB and SRC3 on track 1? Hold the recorder trig and make sure both are highlighted.

Another way would be to set SRC3 to CUE, set up an input machine for AB (remember to place a playback trig on step 1) and on your bass track and the thru machine set them to cue (probably want cue mutes track turned off in personalize menu for ease of use for now)

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#39

Yep, I knew I missed something! That was it. Didn’t know I had to arm them manually (was always wondering why I get these arm all -disarm all messages but delaying the manual-delving for this functionality…my bad. Thanks many!

Will take a look at that. I use cue to loopback to the mixer where I can patch it to my outboard effects. I handle the dry-wet ratio on the mixer or the fx units themselves so I have “cue mutes track” turned on.

Thanks for sorting this out! Will study this arm-disarm stuff a bit after lunch…

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#40

Just a last one on this particular topic (I browsed for “signal flow” but didn’t find the answer ): it seems that the output level of a track is post-send in the above-mentioned scenario, am I correct or is this also an option I missed (I can live with this, just good to know if there’s an pre-send option available deep down in the set-up menus).

To clarify what I mean: in the scenario we just discussed, I feed T1’s recorder (SRC3) with the output of T5; when I set the level of T5 to zero, that doesn’t affect the input level of T1-SRC3, so the default send is pre-fader, if I use mixer-talk. And I didn’t find a way to adjust the input of T1-SRC3 anywhere :frowning:

#41

Why don’t you use a flex to record the bass loop?
Do you use a foot controller?

As I do similar things, for me the best way for the moment is to keep on recording the loop with a rec trig and change pattern, playing that recording. That way you decide to keep your recording at the end of the loop, once you’re satisfied.

#42

Level doesn’t change recording level. Amp Vol do.

#43

One would expect the track output as patched into SRC3 of a recorder to be affected by the track level of the track whose output we’re recording. Oh well, not a big deal. Would have been easier than managing the levels in the Amp section, wouldn’t it?

Yes, I use a foot-controller. I have noticed you prefer flex machines and their recorders over pick-up machines, I still don’t really understand why you find PUM’s are inferior to flex machines for looping but then again, I’m a OT newbie, just having the OT only since a month ago… For me, this works. I just hit start-rec somewhere and stop-rec somewhere else and it starts looping, that simplicity suits me.

#44

It would have been cool if Elektron had released a signal-flow chart. I’m spending quite some time reverse engineering!

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