Don’t worry, bro!
Just learn! Do not rush!
Octatrack is multi-instrument.
I’ve spent near half a year before I noticed, that I don’t think about key-combinations, buttons, menus when I’m playing
It really hard work. But you will get big pleasure after long time with octatrack.
Time is only you need.
i realize that my post sort of sounded a bit too intense. The FUN man, the fun aspect of the machine conterbalances the learning curve. The learning is cool, like self-teaching modular synths not like boring piano lessons ; )
SAVE parts, save song, save to new are your fiends.
Avoid staying in grid recording mode at all costs, only go there for step trigs.
It’s not that difficult to learn at least the basic operations. The full potential of this crazy machine is hardly imaginable.
I think your problem is, that you already have a clear idea of what you want the OT to do, but thus you want to much at once.
Be patient my friend 
Try to learn it step by step.
The youtube tutorials helped me most, especially those are really great.
In my opinion the OT is the your best choice to get all the options you mentioned above.
Good luck!
Take your time, keep reading the manual and try and error.
You will never ever regret this once you control it.
(I take the manual on holiday and read it 3 times and make notes etc, sound sick I know but it works for me:)
For me elektron OT is best creative hardware there is, so many power in one box.
What’s your preferred mode, out of curiosity? When I’m not placing trigs I tend to stay in grid mode and just add plocks, move trigs around, etc, but it’s interesting to see other people’s approach.
I echo the advice to focus on one thing at the time on the Octatrack and don’t plan on playing a live gig with the OT until you’ve worked with it at home for at least a month.
You posted a bunch of questions in one post so some questions might not be answered. If not, ask them again, but try to make it a shorter post. I’ll answer this one:
-Probably the simplest problem is that today, the 303 (plugged into input C) was only coming though on my left monitor, until I managed to record a sample of it onto the track, and then it would play in stereo.
What machine were you using on the Track for sampling the 303? Pickup, flex, etc.
How are you getting the raw 303 sound into your monitor (before you sample)? Are you using the Mixer and DIR setting to do that? Or are you using a Thru machine?
What’s your preferred mode, out of curiosity? When I’m not placing trigs I tend to stay in grid mode and just add plocks, move trigs around, etc, but it’s interesting to see other people’s approach.[/quote]
depends on what you’re doing. It’s not that important. What is, is that you get out of danger zone. It’s a very simple but counter-intuitive advice because you want to have access to edits all the time (octa trap) . But i think it’s the short submenues routines that are harmfull; either a 1 button per function system or a burried submenues UI like rack samplers avoid those mistakes. I don’t know if the other elektrons are like that?
The track mute system and the focussing of the edited track can get you into trouble. If you go too fast may end up editing the wrong track. Damaging a sequence is like damaging a modular synth sweetspot, you won’t find it twice.
Mix mode (i think it’s the name) is a cool way to have your mixer while keeping your usual window. And you have solo buttons which i don’t think you have in the full mixer (not sure about that one)
When using external gear that you want to sound on its own (in both channels) definitely use thru machines. You can let it play through as well as sample as you please through other Flex machines.
But in all, this isn’t something you can pick up quickly. Just keep at it. You’ll begin to find ways of working you never thought you’d want / need but the OT has a mind of its own.
Thru machines tho, esp for things like Tempests and 303s
You could also use the DIR setting on the Mixer page to let it play through without taking up a track, if you don’t want any effects on it.
Interesting. Since I got mine, all my frustrations related to electronic music are simply gone. What was difficult and cumbersome before, is now clear and simple. I see the light.
Don’t you?
Just a quick update: I’m actually making a bit of progress!
I’ve managed to sort out how to change input vs sample playback volumes as you move across scenes, and setting one-shot recording triggers was a major breakthrough. You have to be in the recorder setup page in order to set a one-shot recorder trig. This was driving me insane until I figured it out!
I’m still wrestling with getting mono inputs to play through in stereo, though. (once you’ve got the sample, it’ll play back in stereo, but I am having a problem getting it to play on both channels until then)
I was so frustrated with this thing until a few light bulbs went off. Still only at maybe 10%, but I think progress will happen faster from here on out. Definitely stay tuned for more questions, though!
Thanks!
Best thing to hear about the “mind changing” in Octatrack learning curve, and referring to frustration regarding first expectations.
This is the way i understood how to do, but it may no works with other dudes - that can be far further gifted than me 
:
Don’t try to make music with it at the beginning. It has been said before by TrabanT, just a few tracks with one shot samples, and just another one with a longer sample for background : less is more. Don’t read the manual without the machine. Don’t watch tutorials without the machine. Don’t learn another machine at the same time with the OT (what i did and wasted time)
All must be learn with the gear under hands, to memorize. This machine need you to get a kind of “gestural” memory, better than only brain one. “Learn” that bi*ch means “touch” it.
I have it for two months, and just learnt to do quite quickly basic things that was a complete mystery before. (hu, 1 to 2 hours, 2 or three times/week)
The best is having time ( several hours without interruptions ), take notes about usual key combinations.
It’s very interesting to read everyone adventure with this beast, it’s always a singular man/machine story. But it has been said before : don’t give up, and frustrations will disappear step by step. 
unplug the Tempest from the Octatrack at once!!! it sounds wayyyy too good to run it through the OT. it’s like putting a condom on your Tempest…I run mine straight into the mixer. about the only thing i will run through the OT is the Blofeld. i would love to be able to run my analog stuff into the OT but in my opinion, the OT seems to sterilize all of it.
Interesting experience, but sounds like some settings to adjust on the OT. I did the same experience with my AR, and the lady seemed free of any female condoms ! Any other thought on the subject by someone ? But may be a new thread would be useful, if it doesn’t already exist.
I haven’t noticed and sterilisation of sounds when fed through the OT. It’s one of those subjective debates and not relevant for this thread.
Re: left channel on mixer DIR input - unfortunately this is how it currently works. It doesn’t (like most traditional mixers) split a left channel signal into both speakers when going via DIR. Hopefully an update might fix this. Until then your only option is to feed it duplicate signal on the right channel or use a Thru machine.
I’ve grown to love the machine myself after 8 months of practice. The first few months were slow but each session brings more and more familiarity & confidence.
This forum is also a BIG source of help and inspiration.
One love. 
I’ve had my OT for just under 3 years and I’m still learning things.
The turning point for me was to get really f’n simple and grow my experience from there.
When I say simple, I mean no sampling, no scenes, no nothing except a kick on track 1, snare on 2 etc…then I proceeded to build a real simple track.
As I worked on the track and got to points where I wanted to do more, I picked up the manual and learned more.
Years later I consider myself to be quite proficient with the machine.
However, it took a while to get there. Once you get there though, the machine is a beast and you likely wont need anything else. Except for a Rytm and A4
And one more comment: you don’t have to know, understand or use every feature of the OT.
I rarely if ever use parts. I did for the science lab, but not for my normal day to day “production”
I prefer to fill the sample slots with every sample under the sun and use the SLOTs mode to build my tracks. In this way, I’m not limited to 7 or 8 tracks. Other people work differently and that’s the beauty of the machine.
Nice tip re: slots
That’s the key. The ‘problem’ with the OT is that it’s so flexible that you can quickly get overwhelmed either by how it works or by those thoughts about what you should do with all the freedom.
Every now and then I start with a clean, new, simple project, then it gradually becomes more complex, more complex and a bit weird, I would also like to add this and that, before I return to a new clean project with simple setup, that basically does all I wanted. If you know what the OT can do and what you want it to do, it’s quick and easy to get you there.
… and it’s important to decide what features are most important for you before setting things up, because of the track limit.
I’ll repeat the importance of the thru machine for what you’re after. It seems like the dir settings in the mixer page treat the inputs as stereo pairs. Thru machines allow you to set whether the inputs are treated independently (a, b), as a stereo pair (a b) or as two separate mono sources (a+b). A single letter (be it a,b,c, or d) is what you’d be after for this. Your sampling source on the recorder page can then either be the input (which would not be heard without the thru track), the track with the thru machine (say track 7, set under source three), or the main output if you want to capture everything (also under source three). Another nice thing about monitoring with a thru machine in addition to being able to designate an input individually is that you can put effects on a live input. If you like the effect you are using but don’t want to sample it and turn it static and are sampling the pure input, you can hold the effect page buttons under the screen and press the Rec (copy) button to copy the effect type and settings then move to a track with the recorded sample, hold the effect button there and press the Stop (paste) button to copy the same effect to the sampled sound.
If you are using the track recorders to automatically sample an input with a recorder trig, remember that the recorders have their own tracks each with a sequencer. Placing a recorder trig on step one of track one (making sure it is active- fully red or fully yellow for one shot) then pressing play with a synced tempest will record the tempest output in sync with the sequencer for the length (labeled in number of sequencer steps-16 for one bar, 64 for four bars…- or max) on track one. You then need to make sure track one or another track has a flex machine assigned to it with the R1 buffer selected from the flex list, or the saved sample if that’s how you want to roll. BE SURE TO SELECT THR CORRECT INPUT ON THE RECORDER SETUP PAGE. This is achieved by holding the recorder trig step on the sequencer and pressing the 1 or 2 input or source 3 which can be any track or the master output. This of course is different from manual sampling, but it seems like in your setup you’d want to migrate to trig recording anyway.
I don’t necessarily agree with those advising you to use the OT without other gear to learn it first. It’s a very versatile machine with several sets examples and I think you’ll connect with it better if you just practice what you want to ultimately achieve. Just don’t expect to make your best track right away, although you never know. I’ve had mine since the beginning and still change up the way I use it with other gear, but the one constant for a couple years has been that it’s at the heart of my rig. It does sampling well, it does midi well, and it provides effects on input sources well.
Oh yeah… I don’t think the cross fader can be used to affect the mixer settings, but it will definitely work with thru machines.
Example:
Tempest stereo > a/b inputs
303 > c input
Track 7 is set up as a thru machine with a/b set as stereo and c as mono
Track one is set up as a flex machine with r1 buffer as source
Track two is flex with r2 as source
Recorder track one has he input set as a/b with a 64 length trig on step one
Recorder track two has the input as c with 64 length trig on step one
Scene A on the fader has the levels of tracks one and two (with the freshly recorded music) set to zero and track seven (the thru machine) set to max or wherever you want it.
Scene B is the opposite,msu moving the slider will choose what you and the audience hear, choosing between the pure sound and whatever fuckery you’ve done on the samples.
A NOTE:
Red recorder trigs are always active and will erase what has previously been recorded each time the sequencer passes them by. Either get rid of them during a good pass, or hood shift and add recorder trigs that are yellow and only record once each time they are activated (solid yellow when they are active,my flashing when they are not). These one shot recorder trigs stay on the grid and can be re-armed with a click of the step they exist on, or other shortcuts that I can’t remember now and only seem to come up when I don’t want them to.
ANOTHER NOTE:
If you are working on a one bar pattern and want to extend it by using shift plus the bottom-right page screen, all notes are copied to fill the new bars. This is nice for some things like beats or whatever you don’t want to reprogram, but also applies to recorder trigs. Your recorder trig on step one will be copied to step one on any additional bars until manually removed, which might lesve you scratching your head.
Hope I’ve been helpful. There are many ways to use the OT and you just have to find out what works best for you. It can be a little daunting at first, but is very rewarding once you understand even just the basic functions that pertain to your usage. Good luck.