So…how do you do it? Individual hits, full beats or mix of it? I’m curious to know 
All of the above, good to have a folder of breaks and organised individual hits. If I’m feeling lazy I just chop a break, if I can be bothered with setting it up I’ll make a drum kit then sample that into the breaks folder. Using a breaks folder is particularly good on lazy days cause you can just put a trig down then go on the slots menu and press func+left/right to quickly try out the next one. Find something that sounds right then chop and arrange
5 Likes
You can also make sliced kits, with Octachainer, OctaEdit or in OT.
In OT an example with hihats only. Record a 64 step pattern with 32 hihats, sample locks, variations (VOL, FILTER, RELEASE, etc), and create a 32 slice grid.
Plock slices and modulate them with lfos, trcs, crossfader…
Drum loops can be sliced, an played by an ramp lfo, so you can vary drastically speed, randomize, and make breaks easily…
Better if slices are perfect, eventually corrected in DAW.
10 Likes
Ah yes - I need to dig deeper into this part than I’ve done this far!
So, how do you guys approach the mixing part of it all? Are you only giving 1 track to the Drums or do you allow for many of them? If you’re mixing as a separate (post) process to the production - how do you ensure that a drum stem is going to work in the mix later on if you’re not mixing it on separate tracks.
Also, how do you ensure you can use the kick for sidechaining in the mix if it’s not on a separate track? Or do you all just mix and finish in OT?!
This is all coming down to how much I want to move into the “commit early” approach 
EDIT: Oh, and sampling/printing the drums with or without external fx added - what’s your approach there?
I think that producing recordings and performing live are two different workflows altogether. I see the Octatrack as a live performance instrument, not as a production workstation. I don’t even bother with those questions and just record the output of the OT as is. Would I want to use the kick for triggering a compressor using it’s sidechain, I’d filter it out and use the result as the trigger.
1 Like
For example, if I want to sample a Pocket Operator Drumkit I play as long as I like on the PO to tweak the sounds. Then I record that into the Octatrack in one take, and slice it up. One file with slice has the benefit for me that i can easily reuse that kit. I take care to always have a similar structure in the this kitfile, so I don’t need to use my braiiiiiinnnnnssssssssss.
5 Likes
Thanks for the input, guys - appreciated!
when I curate my own samples I always want both wet and dry versions of the same samples, particularly for working within OT the wet versions often come in handy to more efficiently and flexibly use the available FX slots, although heavily processed samples (particularly with a lot of stereo information) tend to be a bit less flexible for using as sources for designing completely new sounds
5 Likes
I use it as jam-o-mate and personal honky wonky fun thing.
That means: I program drums and other samples on the audiotracks, and have on a-b a poly synth, and on c and d 2 monos. Or I use the 4 outs of the lxr and put them into the ot. I set up scenes for slideraction and often use the arranger to build tracks. I guess the versatility of the ot is the key. honestly I barely using live sampling on it. It is not only this, but also that, whatever you need and that’s where the fun starts.
2 Likes
Yes, I mostly use dry material, don’t apply fx I can use in OT, but for analog stuff like distortion or filters, it would be interesting to have wet versions.
Anyway you can mangle, apply external fx with CUE, and record again.
1 Like
Great idea - to give drums separate, preconfigured Bank - is mentioned here:
3 Likes
What a great idea. If you had all the tracks set to the same sample slot and different slices you could just switch a sample chain and fly through tons of kits only sacrificing one slot and no tracks, resample and drop it in the side of the project you’re using. Genius
3 Likes