Recorder buffers for looping and live sampling

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#85

Enjoy your new HX stomp! Sending p-locks and MIDI LFOs from the OT to my helix is so much fun. Map a bunch of pedal parameters to one of the expression pedals (I’m guessing the stomp has this as a possibility even if it doesn’t have a physical pedal) and then just send the expression pedal position CC (1-3) from the OT to the helix and it’s like a giant automatable macro control.

Anyway, I don’t like the fussiness and tempo changing nature of pickups so I use flex machines to loop. It’s more complicated and fallible and takes more concentration to get the timing right but it seems to give me more interesting results (loop phasing, odd lengths, etc).

Dirty flex looping:
Set loop in playback setup to on. I have recorders set to quantize play and record to taste (I use Qplay 4, Qrec 4). When I press rec ab, rec cd, or rec src 3 it starts recording my loop on the beat (ONE2). Then I just hit the track samples pitch 0 (C6) button and the rec ab, cd, or src 3 button at the same time to stop recording (quantized) and start playback (unquantized). This doesn’t give me quantized playback start but it’s close enough for my needs and if I want to nudge it to be quantized I can use the trig buttons in track keyboard mode, the track + play command combo, or drop a play trig on the sequencer. I’ve setup my helix to do all this with my feet if I want, but most of the time I just use my hands.

Makes regular looping feel boring!

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#86

:smile:
Thanks for your interesting input, glad we share some approaches. :slight_smile:

And yes, with HX Stomp it ispossible to control 2 expression pedal assignments via midi ! I mainly focused on amp / cab sounds, and I plugged an external exp pedal. I tried OT midi control of a wah, but it was not very reactive, like delayed / smoothed like not handling CCs fast enough…

Interesting idea! Theorically it can be quantized with QPLAY… :thinking:
You trigger rec/sample trig* by hand?

With midi loopback a quantized play free midi track should also do the trick…yes pretty sure. I already could trigger recordings and play free track with play free midi tracks > quantized recordings with various length, played quantized.
Can’t wait to try that again. :slight_smile:

*Btw it’s note depends on track, and it’s not C6. Or you meant in chromatic mode?

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#87

Ah interesting, I haven’t noticed any problems but I’m often controlling things like delay feedback and distortion amounts rather than wah so the smoothness isn’t as much of an issue. But mostly it’s just nice to have solid guitar sounds without plugging in a computer or shaking the apartment with an amp.

I start and stop recording by hand on my flex tracks I designate to “freeform looper” duties if that’s what you mean. Other tracks I use recorder trigs for more structured one or two bar one-shot or continuously re-recording buffers.

Ah midi loopback, you slay me! I wish I could use it but 1) it breaks my midi setup (believe me I’ve tried) and 2) all my midi tracks have one duty or another already. But that’s a really fascinating workaround. Stop tempting me into tearing everything down to rebuild with midi loopback in mind! I have dreams of being able to route MIDI track output directly to the audio tracks internally. Someday perhaps - though the amount of people sending huge arps to audio tracks and thinking their machines were broken from all the midi commands they were pinging wouldn’t be insignificant. :joy:

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What I use now is the track sample pitch 0 (C6) command for starting playback most of the time. Its nice because I just need one button on my midi controller with C6 to the OT’s auto channel and it gives me unquantized trigging of whichever track’s machine I’m on. The problem is that 1) it’s ALWAYS unquantized and 2) it always trigs with a pitch of 0 rather than whatever the pitch setting of the track is at the moment. I could use midi messages C2-G2 which does work with Qplay to quantize playback and makes the pitch of playback reflect what’s in the settings but I would need to burn 8 midi buttons on my controller and have to keep in mind which track I’m working on at the moment. I really wish there was an Audio track Sample Trigger midi command that is automatically routed to the active track via the auto channel.

It’s not too big of a deal though, the sample trigs in tracks keyboard mode (trigs 9-16) or [track + play] do heed the quantization and pitch preset

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#88

Apart for midi tracks, sure it breacks your midi setup? :slightly_smiling_face: :
You can use midi Thru instead of Out with midi loopback.

I see your point with the active track thing, and I forgot C6 notes were not quantized like sample trigs. I made a script to control slices via midi, and the 8 different track notes were puzzling me too.

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#89

… and:

  1. use a midi processor after midi thru to filter out stuff that’s only meant to be received by the OT itself.
  2. use a midi merge box in front of the midi input if you need the input for other stuff, too

Conclusion: there are always ways to get it going :smiley:

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#90

Tested and approved.

1 Like
#91

With a midi router box like an Iconnect you can just enable a routing that bounces the OT out back to the in while maintaining its normal connection to any other gear… Also you can do things like block certain messages only at the OTs input…

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#92

Thanks for the suggestions - already using an iconnectMIDI4+ for midi processing/merging. I haven’t found an iconfig configuration that works though. How do I set up the port routing/filters to avoid midi feedback loops? And would I need to use up more din ports to get this to work? I’ve already maxed out the 4 ins and 4 outs.

Also, I love this thread - everyone gets so mindblown about the myriad of possibilities with live sampling/resampling/processing on OT. :grinning:

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#93

What model? They do quite a few and I have looked into them before but not sure which models do what functions.

#94

IConnectMidi4+. I have it too, after @Open_Mike recommendation, but I didn’t try it yet.

@pax I use midi loopback a lot and even with a midi cable between in and out I don’t have midi feedback.
Did you have some?
Could describe a problematic setup?

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#95

They’re talking about tle iConnectMidi4+ (aka iCM4+) which I use too. There are other models that add othere functionallities (audio, redundancy, more DIN pairs) but the core functionalities are the same for all models. If you don’t need a audio interface and don’t need redundancy, the iCM4+ is your best bet.

#96

That question cannot be answered if posed like that. The universal answer to this universal question is “don’t create one”. But midi loops can happen, so you try to troubleshoot, find the issue and set up a filter.

Most commonly, apart from looping back physically and you omitting to configure the device correctly, loops happen when you start merging and splitting. All depends on the way your devices work.

If you set QPL = PLEN in the track’s recorder set up the recorder buffer will have play quantized on the 1st beat when the pattern loops. Doesn’t that work with note #60 too?

#97

Ah I forgot, to use the advanced filtering of the iConnectivity products you need to use the legacy iConfig software, they made it legacy before even finishing the “current” Auracle software. They have not implemented control over the midi filter features yet. Besides, for advanced users, the “3-steps-and-you’re-up-and-running” wizard-based Auracle is very frustrating to use. I hate products that are advertised as being super deep, but when you fire the config software up give you a “tell me what your DAW is and we will configure your whole set-up for you” prompt. iConfig is clumsier but once you get past the initial hair-pulling (which OT users are used to anyway) it’ll do (almost) whatever you need. The only thing that it does NOT do and that bothers me quite a bit is filtering out the start/stop/continue messages from the real time event stream.

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#98

I was looking for generalized principles or case studies of how people have done it but I get what you’re saying about one size fits all approach not working. I agree the Auracle is overly simplistic - that’s why I chose their older iconnect4+ hardware because it seemed more flexible with iconfig. I already rely on the filtering and routing options in iconfig and really like it - though I admit it does seem to break my brain a bit every time I use it. I’m sure they’ve gotten lots of unfair flack from users mistaking their user error/ignorance for bugs and I understand why they’re focusing on simpler, less configurable products that address most of the market now.

QPL = PLEN still plays unquantized with midi note 60.

@tnussb @sezare56

I hadn’t thought about using the midi out and midi thru on the Octatrack. Now that I’m getting rid of my launchpad pro I’ll have another midi din input on the ICM4+ to play with so the midi loopback might be a thing yet! I’ve never seen people use it in a more complex midi setup than MIDI cable from the OT midi out to midi in.

#99

With the ICM4+ you don’t need to change any cabling for midi loopback. All you need is OT in/out plugged into a din pair in/out on ICM and then in the port routing page in Iconfig you simply enable another routing from the din pair back to the same din pair. If your OT in/out is plugged into ICM din pair 1, you would click on “Din 1” from the port selection on the left and enable the very same “Din 1” as a port destination on the right. This does not interfere with any other midi connections and routing on the ICM, it simply adds another routing from OT out to OT in to whatever routings you’ve already set up…

The filtering on the ICM is available on every port for both input and output. It would be the din pair the OT is connected to’s input that one might want to block certain things from getting back to it. I don’t have any specifics off the top of my head, it would vary by use case. Basically I would just analyse and think thoroughly about the signals that might get back to the OT as I’m programming the midi loop back scenario and make adjustments… Maybe certain CC’s your sending to external gear are getting back to OTs input and doing unexpected things so you block those ones, stuff like that…

With an ICM4+ you never have to recable anything, all you need to connect is the in/out din pair or usb connection and all routing/merging/thru is done in the ICM, no need for using thru port connections on devices as all sources/destinations are available in the routing matrix…
Solid MIDI box the ICM4+…

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#100

All the Iconnects do similarish things with midi but the ICA’s are also audio interfaces, the ICM’s have “Audio Pass Through” which pipes audio over to computer DAWs as a main feature, the Mio’s are strictly MIDI and the ones you’d want to check out for your awesome hardware cave. Having seen your setup I imagine you’d want the 10… Or a few of em maybe… :sweat_smile:

https://www.iconnectivity.com/products/midi/mio10

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#101

So far, I’ve managed record loops with PUM, PUM + FLEX and only FLEX (with one and two tracks). Overdubbing with Flex, mangle loops and so on. Always with RLEN different from MAX. With only the PUM, RLEN works well in MAX (or to capture and save samples only with Recorder Buffers).

The problem is that I have not been able to solve is record a loop with a variable lenght (RLEN = MAX) and mangle it with a FLEX track. I can record the loop in a Recorder Buffer or PUM, with variable lenght, but the loop of the PUM has 512 steps for example (every loop has variable number of steps), so I can’t preconfigure a Flex to mangle it, because in a live performance I don’t know total number of steps.

When I do that I have several problems, the flex is not synchronized with the loop of variable length (when I created the Flex I need to specify the pattern lenght, for example 64 steps, that will almost never match the length of the loop), they do not match the start and final step points when Playback, Feedback, I can’t program trigger locks in the FLEX that match with the lenght of the loop, causing me multiple problems (all because these have different pattern lengths)…

Then: ¿How would you do to record a live loop of variable length (I use instruments, guitar, synthesizers, percussive instuments), and have a Flex with preconfigured parameters such as slices, trigger locks …, if you don’t know the leght of the loop?

Thanks in advance!

#102

What I do is always record pattern length multiples for my main dry loop whether it’s flex or PU, so 64, 128, 256, or 512… For the flex remixes instead of slices I use start points as they target relative points in the loop, for example start point 64 is the middle of the loop, so on a 64 step base loop it targets step 33, for a 128 step loop it targets step 65, etc… This post explains start points:
-Recorder buffers for looping and live sampling

When making the start point remixes for live I make sure to target points right on the beats. For example start point 48 will land you at step 25 of a 64 step pattern which is the exact middle of page 2, right on the beat. Same start point 48 on a 128 step pattern will launch step 49 which is the 1rst step of page 3, right on a beat.

Since start points scale relative with loop size if you record pattern length multiples of 64, 128, 256, etc…, the correct start points on a flex remix will always land on the beginning of beats… These downbeats are usually OK to target from the downbeat steps of the flex remix. By rearranging downbeats to other downbeats you get a pretty safe remix for live feeds. You may have to play a bit differently for general use remixes than you would for something you’d dive into and remix surgically not live, but I’ve feed hundreds of different loops through remix patterns and somehow or another the way I’ve programmed them and how I play into them they all seem to work…

With beats or downbeats I’m meaning step 1, 5, 9, 13, of any pattern page. Maybe steps 3, 7, 11, and 15…

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#103

I think it’s a good idea to use start points instead of slices.
Now imagine that you have a PU reproducing the loop and the sequencer stopped, would it be possible to trig the Flex in sync with the playback of the PU? (sample source = PU) (loop = on, because we want to reproduce entire loop, one shoot on first step) With that I would advance quite a bit in my purpose.

#104

Ok but if you want to hear to whole recording, if you already placed start points it may vary, depending on recording length no?
You also may have to change pattern length / chain them, no ?

I was thinking about lfos on start points. It works well, you can place regular trigs and apply an lfo on start, vary its speed depending on rec length. But you also have to change patter length / chain.
Never tried with a unknow length recording.

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