this is my first post in this very inspiring forum. I am curious how you sample loops with the Octratrack. Maybe you can give me helpful advice.
Here is my situation:
I made a lot of 4 Bar Patterns in the Monomachine, most of them have three instrument tracks/stems which use the track delay. Each one is combined with as individual reverb effect on the neighbour track.
Now I want to sample all those patterns with the Octratrack. I want to rebuilt the patterns as close to the original as possible and then re-combinate and remix them to larger compositions with the fantastic octatrack audio mangling weapons.
My approach is to sample each instrument stem loop separatly to get full freedom for remixing the patterns.
But what shall I do with the delay and reverb?
Sampling wet loops would be convenient but has two big downsides for me:
The effect tails would be cut off.
The effects and modulations does not sound so alive, always repeating exactly the same after 4 bars.
I can´t remix the effect settings later.
So my first idea is to sample dry loops and rebuilt the monomachine effects with the octatrack effects.
But here I see downsides as well:
On one octatrack track I can only have delay or reverb, not both. But I want both effects combined and I don`t want to use another track as a neighbour effect track here. I want to use 7 Tracks for instrument loops to get a more rich arrangement and use track 8 as the master.
Sometimes I find myself unable to achieve a very similar sounding effect chain on the Octatrack like on the Monomachine. Especially when I use complex ping pong delays with LFO modulation. That is possibly my fault not the octatrack`s.
My solution is to sample my monomachine loops semi-dry. Meaning:
When the monomachine effect is an integral part of the sound design, then I sample wet.
When I can rebuilt the effect easily with the octatrack, then I better sample the monomachine dry and add the octratrack effect instead. That gives me the possibility to modulate the effect in the remix, making the room bigger or smaller…
What would you do? Is my whole approach of reconstructing monomachine patterns on the octatrack a silly idea?
I have to add here,that I always prefer to work with one self contained box. That is why I want to transfer my complete Monomachine Projects as audio loops to the Octatrack.
I am very curious to learn about your thoughts and ideas!
You appear to be very familiar with the capabilities of the OT, so you really have to examine for yourself the trade off between your desire to use only one box at a time and the limitations that this approach brings.
Why don’t you try using the different approaches (including using the MM and OT simultaneously) and see which works best for you in practice?
You are right, I have to try and find out whether I am happy with the workflow and the result in one box.
Combining both machines will be an exciting project later sometimes.
All in all I am very pleased with the balance of complexity and limitations that the Octatrack provides for me. Such a great concept for an instrument.
i asked myself that question very often.
most of the time i sample the loops wet.
i´ve got a lot of nice effects and i just have to use them because
i try to avoid OT effects as much as possible.
to keep modulations/tweaking more alive i record much longer samples
and let them run on static machines.
sometimes if needed i record the effect tails so i can let them run on a following pattern.
in some cases i used 3 patterns. a start pattern where the effect is coming in, a loop pattern with the effects on and an end pattern with the effect fading out.
the thing with the reverb: when i use it as an “effect” for one track i record it directly, when i want to add room on the whole mix i add it later via cue output.
the arranger can help to keep control of tracks (i guess)
Hey, those are very good hints. I especially like the idea to record effect tails. Gives me the option to do fancy things that are impossible on a synthesizer - for example reverse tails. I realize now that I can’t have a solution that fits for all kind of loops. Have to use different approaches to capture special effects like your sampling method in three stages or recording long patterns.
what I would do is record the stems dry and another set wet and set them up as sample chains or just loops.gives you the choice of one or the other. even going between the two with scenes
I tend to use dry loops but using the tails of reverb or delay off wet loops can be used for interesting effects.ie reverse reverb. pitched down delay tails
I’ve used wet loops and like the way it turned out. In a daw i will premix, filtering out low end, compressing, eq et and add delays and reverb. So in the ot i just have to get volumes and panning right. A little delay will sometimes help the reverb “spread over” the cut.
But i now have the studio mode/cue thing going with a dedicated reverb pedal so i don’t bounce with reverb unless maybe a snare.
Yeah i mean it’s not an exact science. Sometimes it works better than others. Sometimes i can hear the space anyways but it still works in the context. Also depends on the musical style. I tend to do glitchier things in the octatrack so i might be more lenient than if i was producing more acoustic stuff on my computer.
I usually sample loops dry but not always and I’ll add that if sampling a wet loop with delay or reverb I usually sample after some cycles so that the tails from the end of the loop are captured at the beginning and you get a clean loop… For those loops I’ll fade them into the mix…