There are some nice pad sounds that I have on my ultranova. normally I would play and record chords in ableton. If I am sampling is there one chord that I can sample that will allow me to alter the pitch after in the OT to get to the other chords I want or do I need to sample lets say one bars worth of each individual chord?
I am getting quite competent now controlling the OT in terms of sampling but never sampled before so not sure how to do this intonation wise.
Whichever chord you sample, when you play it back with pitch shift all the notes in the chord get transposed by the same amount, so the chord āshapeā stays the same. That may or not be what you want - I canāt tell from your question what are the āother chordsā that you want.
So record both a major and a minor, at least 
As PeterHanes pointed out, it depends on what chords you are using. If you donāt need the thirds of the chords you might be able to get more mileage when they get transposed.
i use the midi sequencer all the time to sample the chord progression i want. will that work for you?
Chord sample chain is what you want to create.
Decide on the chords you will be using. Lets say your chord progression consist of a major chord, minor 7th, major 7th and a diminish chord.
Sample a major chord, minor 7th, major 7th and a diminish chord in the key of your song. I also usually sample a inversion.
Youāll end up with 8 samples. Make it into a sample chain and slice it into 8 slices. Now you can use the start and pitch params from the playback page to play each type of the chord in different pitch anywhere in the pattern. Having a set of inversion chord will give you more natural sounding chords since you donāt have to pitch up or down too much.
Ok I have a 4 bar midi track with the chords set on 1/9 for each bar. what len setting do I put in so it for example starts on trig one and plays the chord to and inclusive of trig 8, then stops and trig 9 starts over. the manual doesnt really say much but its a more musical question leaving len on inf doesnt seem right to do.
the chain is set to play cMaj/cmin/5th/7th/maj 7th/min 7th/dim/inversion
any chance of some help on my last comment about the midi note len please.
ok i eventually changed to a different pad patch on the ultranova and the ot was set up right it just was not so audible in the chord changes.
Try playing with the āholdā and āreleaseā params on the Amp page. Those are equivalent to āsustainā and āreleaseā params of ADSR.
Depending on the values of those params, you can tailor how much of the sample gets played.
Right. I usually build chord structures using sample chains of a 5th and a 4th intervals. No 3rds. Then, using 2 tracks, I combine them for more complex textures. Two 5ths, three seminotes apart, form a minor 7, and four notes apart a major 7. 4th and 5th at the same intervals a straight minor, and something esoteric (min9?), respectively. I often surprise myself with this method, and it feels more like putting the OT to work as a synthesizer. You do have to sacrifice another track, but in return are free to weak the two harmonic components differently for a multitimbral feel.
Oh and to OP, set LEN to INF before dropping the trigs if you plan on legato chords.
Best pads coming out of my OT, though, has been MIDI loopback, fast arps and LOTS of delay.
Ok lots of great ideas here in your responses.
here is a Ultranova patch ive created with OT.
I am getting the mechanics right now in sampling and saving but is the chain to short to be of any use?
when i play a chord on the UN they sound lush and long, which might suggest I am sampling incorrectly but I am a newbie to sampling so having to learn both using the OT and learn sampling too and chuck in a dose of music theory too.
sample chain C Maj/Min/Maj7/Min7/Dim/Aug/Dom/Inv
https://soundcloud.com/pb21uk/unpadchordchainc070f
here is the ultranova just pressing c chord by hand and leaving it to evolve.
https://soundcloud.com/pb21uk/unc
so can a chain of 8 chord types sound the same or do i need to change my method.
ive changed it so each chord get 1 bar and it sounds much better when it plays, so I am assuming here that if i create a new pattern with the other 4 chord types that i can play 1 pattern then play the other and grab the sample. what i am not sure about is I have been using a trig to start the recorder which is fine for 4 bars but not sure how to get it to do that with 2 patterns worth.
check this thread and read up on tempo multipliersā¦
http://www.elektronauts.com/t/one-trig-midi-chords/12873/108658
if you set scale to āper trackā you can set the midi track you are using to trig you chords to play at a multiple (or fraction) of the main tempo. So for example if you set it to 1/4 your midi track will last 4 x as long as your project tempoā¦i.e it will take 16 bars for the pattern to play out not 4.
EDIT. Set your Master Length accordingly ā¦in this case 16 bars x 16 steps = 256.
now each of your trig keys in the pattern rather than being 1/16 duration will be 1 x 1/4 beats. If you want to say have your 8 chord progression play for a total of 16 bars (2 bars each chord) you would place your chord trigs every eighth trig. giving you 2 chords per bar.
as some one mentioned above set your note length to inf and set your sample length up to accommodate the 16 bars at your project tempo. eg if your project tempo is 120 bpm ( 120 x 1/4 beats per minute) then 1 x 1/4 beat lasts 60 / 120 = 0.5 or half a secondā¦so 1 bar ( 4 beats) lasts 2 seconds. 16 bars lasts 32 secs.
see reserve recordings in the manual to see how to set up your track recorders for taking longer samples.
when youāve made your nice long chain and sliced it you need to set your playback track to the same tempo multiplier as the midi track you used to trig your chordsā¦i.e 1/4 in this case.
have fun !
From the manual:
RESERVE RECORDINGS chooses which track recorders that can be assigned a certain amount of dedicated sample time. This setting in combination with the RESERVE LENGTH setting basically decides the size of the track recorder memory.
ā¢ R1ā¦R1-R8 selects the track recorders that will be affected by the RESERVE LENGTH setting. Track recorders outside the selected track recorder range
39
PROJECTS
ā¢
will have not have any track recorder memory allocated, making it impossible for them to sample unless DYNAMIC RECORDERS is set to YES. These track recorders will then use the Flex RAM memory when sampling.
ā¢ NONE will add all track recorder memory to the Flex RAM memory, making the total amount of available RAM, which is 85.5 MB, consist of only Flex RAM. As no track recorder memory will be available to the track recorders, sampling will be not be possible unless DYNAMIC RECORDERS is set to YES. The track recorders will then utilize the available Flex RAM memory when sampling. When NONE is selected the RESERVE LENGTH setting will have no effect at all.
RESERVE LENGTH makes it possible to reserve sample time to the track recorders chosen by the RESERVE RECORDINGS setting. These track recorders will always be able to sample the amount of seconds set here. When selecting the reserved sample time, the equivalent in sequencer steps based on the current Octatrack BPM, as well as the amount of RAM the reserved time will occupy, is shown in the upper left corner of the LCD screen. The black bar in the lower right corner of the LCD will also change according to size of the reserved track recorder memory . The more track recorders affected and the more sampling time reserved, the less Flex RAM will become available for Flex samples. This works the other way around as well. Less reserved sampling time means more Flex RAM will be available. If DYNAMIC RECORDERS is set to YES and the reserved sampling time is exceeded when sampling, the track recorders will start using the available Flex RAM memory.
that is extremely helpful @ zeropoint.
just going to read the link and try out those ideas.
a short reply by me but big in thanks.
These threads are gold. Some brill tips above, Iām waiting for my OT to arrive, reading those tips on length is like having breakfast in the garden on a Sunny day.
Yes I was hoping to get to practice these ideas but since I posted 2 ssd drives failed so been pulling my hair out with the pc diagnostic instead.
I suppose the big question is āDid it arriveā?
Ive set the scale mode to per track
my audio tracks t1 to t4 are set to 64/64 1x.
my one midi track is 64x64 1/4 (master says 0016 1x)
t7 is triggering my jdxi but it rotates around the first 4 trigs never reaching the 8th as I had imagined in the setup instructiuons.
So not sure what len should be or what I have done wrong
maybe someone could shove me in the right direction.
IF the master is set to 0016ā¦ then it will force reset of all tracks every sixteen āticksā ā¦
If the midi track is set to quarter speed (requiring 4 āticksā from the master clock to advance 1 step) then with 64 steps you should set the master to 64x4=256ā¦