Slices and crossfader (drums, one more time)

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi

Sorry if this has been answered before, but there’s so much information all over the place, sometimes over 500 posts in the same topic, I can’t just read them all each time I get stuck (and I don’t have a private noob topic)… Some are many years old and I hesitate to bump a 500+ post topic (please tell me if I’m wrong)

So I am trying out how to set up some basic drum stuff to get started quickly like when friends come over and would like to jam, and having them waiting while you set-up drum assignments browing that terabyte of kicks library you have is not ideal. And it would be cool to have some variety of kits to choose from, ready to go. The three most obvious ways I found are:

-setting up a collection of kits as individual hits in parts and banks (precise, but takes time)
-using horizontal chains (a kit per chain) (easy, but needs a lot of planning ahead to have all the individual instrument in the right order)
-using vertical chains (an instrument per chain, all chains in the same order per kit)

The 3 one (vertical) is interesting because we can use the crossfader to change kits instantaneously. This is great fun when playing I found, but for browsing not so much. I started with 64 slices per instrument (thanks to @Tarekith who offers these to download for free, that saved me a LOT of time, really).

My question is: how could we “fix” one of these kits in an easy way? The screen doesn’t give any information as to what slice is playing (how could it), and the crossfader position is not displayed numerically.

To be clear: so with the crossfader I can access 64 kits. I slide around, find one I like and want the pattern to use that kit as default, so I need to fix the slice start points in the part. Sort of defining the crossfader offset for a parameter, batch processing several tracks.

Because I want to continue mangling the individual hits, I’d like to avoid resampling, and I can’t just leave the crossfader where it is because I want to use other scenes too.

Thanks

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#2

That is still the ideal and what we do when merging, otherwise it could’ve been 10s of threads which is even harder to search.

#3

Ok, then could someone please point me to the correct topic please?

#4

At the risk of stating the obvious why not just change the start parameter for each part? You get to see the number of the slice this way.

I might be missing exactly what you want to do so if that is the case forgive me.

#5

I have say 6 chains of 64 slices on 6 tracks. Chain1 =64 kicks, chain2=64 snares etc. Each slice position defines a kit so there are 64 of them. Chain 1 slice 15=909kit kick, chain 2 slice 15 =909kit snare and so on. I set a scene (A) to start=sl1 and another scene (B) to start=sl64 for each of the 6 tracks. When a pattern plays, the crossfader browses through all the kits in realtime. When I reach postion sl=15, the 909 kit plays the pattern. But there’s no visual feedback so I don’t know which is playing.

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#6

I think that’s a job for the
MEGABREAK OF DOOM!

#7

Ok, I found the visual feedback, it’s (of course) in slice mode, we can see which one is playing. Now I would like to freeze this for all tracks so that I can use scenes for other duties.

#8

No time but it doesn’t seem that complicated in fact.
Sample 1 > 64 kicks
Sample 2 > 64 snares
Sample 3 > 64 hh
etc.
Plock each sample, assign crossfader to slice, done.

#9

Hmmm, I think you misread my question :wink: That’s exactly what I’m doing and it works great, no issues. What I’m looking for is a way to “freeze” the current state of scene-dependent parameters so that when I change to other scenes the current slice start will not be changed back to the default sl=1

#10

My point was rather than use the crossfader to select the “kit” why not use the start knob?
Inverse p-lock trick?
Then you can easy see the slice number, of course it won’t allow you to change across multiple tracks simultaneously as crossfader would, but it also give the flexibility of changing different sounds per track independently.

I get what you want to do and there isn’t a way to do it (as far as I can tell) unless you use midi loopback to lock crossfader position but then you are tieing up the scenes which you don’t want to do.

Edit: It is a bit hacky but using combo of cf to select slice, slice view to see which is selected, inverse p-lock trick to fix the p-locks for each step/track (hint use trig copy for speed)

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#11

Yes you can use crossfader to select and change slice number on each track indeed.
I usually use 1 or 2 tracks for drums, but if you use 8 tracks, it can be annoying.

Another solution is to use midi loopback, set all tracks on the same midi channel, and use CC17 to control all tracks.
Control All for OT! Plockable.
Tested, works like a charm.

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Looking for a special mid routing
#12

Yes, in fact I realise that’s what I need, I just searched for it actually: “control all” like I have on the Digitone.

When I hear that kit 37 is the one I want as default for all scenes for this jam, I could then do a “control all” to set sl start position for all tracks (I never use all 8, I have T8 as master and T7 as transition trick/resample/FlexiPickup. 5 tracks for drums is mostly what I do on the OT, I like to do perc on the DN. (Thinking about a AR though, G.A.S. is lurking again :frowning: )

#13

copy Scenes 1(A) and 9(B) across all the other 2 — 8 and 10 — 16 correspondingly. save it as a template. this is your starting point

#14

Don’t have much to say about drumz on OT, but anyway… Call me crazy, but I sometimes wish we’d just lock all the old topics and start over. :slight_smile: People ask the same questions all the time and there’s people here that respond in not much time, it’s more interesting to talk to people than search by yourself… Just a thought, probably not a popular one, I don’t know…

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#15

Sorry but I did my research, spent at least an hour before I decided to ask here, and I apologized for it. I also help other guys out when I can. This was not out of laziness. If my original question has been asked and answered before, I was unable to find the topic, and politely asked if someone could point me to the thread if there was one. There’s no comprensive FAQ and my name is no disco so I can’t afford a specific I Me Mine thread just for myself.

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#16

In no way was I accusing you of not searching.
Those were just my thoughts I’ve had anyway well before today, not pertaining to you in particular. I acknowledged I didn’t know if it’d be a popular thought, and I though you might agree even. My point was personally I don’t care if people ask the same questions.

And really you can do or at least try whatever, If you wanted a Pinup’s advanced OT questions I’m not so sure it would be shut down. I’m pretty sure just “Adavanced OT Questions” would stick around. Lots of people learn from and appreciate the noob question thread, it’s been acknowledged by a lot of other users, it has over 9,000 views…

Anyway sorry to be off topic, carry on. :slightly_smiling_face:

#17

500+ posts in a thread with an undefined subject is not an efficient way to find an answer to a specific question so I’m not going to start one and don’t think that would be reasonable.

Anyway, I don’t think I formulated my question well enough, my bad. But we got there anyway: it’s the missing “control all” function that comes close enough in terms of efficiency, if we can’t “freeze” (like: save in new scene) a parameter set that was modded by the crossfader. Unless I missed the topic where “freeze parameters” has been discussed.

#18

I stumbled upon a weindness in the process (not sure if we can call this a bug or a feature though): when we set the start=sl point with the crossfader, stop somewhere in the middle and then adjust manually the start=sl value in an attempt to match that position, the sl value starts counting from the current position. If that position is, say, 15, then sl=2 will be sl 16, not 2 as I expected.

(I’m NOT p-locking here, because I want this new value to apply to all non-plocked trigs so that it becomes default)

#19

In your initial post you haven’t mentioned slot mode, which seems also quite a valid variant to start drum jamming quickly. All you need to do is to make a kind of template project where the slot lists are filled with variations of drum sounds. Just organize them in blocks of, for example, 8 samples each being its own kit. This way you can use the trig keys like a standard drum machine. IMHO a quite direct and hassle-free option to use - even for someone who never touched an OT before (if you let someone else jam on it).

Pros:

  • easy to switch between kits (just press page to get to the next 16 samples)
  • records on a single track with sound locks
  • mix and match whatever sounds you want
  • drum machine like usage
  • noob friendly
  • no need to start with 64 kits (2-3 kits may already be enough to start)

Cons:

  • not as many possibilities as sample chains
  • initial set up may take longer (not really sure about that)
  • ???
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#20

Yes indeed, when in slot mode it’s easy to set up a custom kit by tweaking the slice start param’s of each sample to taste.

One of the great advantages of using chains is that you can have a huge amount of samples readily available. I load them in statics, right now have some 50Mb of samples loaded for instant access without using up any RAM. That’s 320 samples on 5 tracks in 5 static machines using up 5 slots. When I crossfade the samples while playing, the OT doesn’t choke at all, I expected trouble it just works fine, even if I do it high speed. I’m discovering chains, I find it an amazing tool!

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