So I have had an Octatrack for about 3 months now, and I’ve hit a wall in learning the machine. I feel like I’m not using it to its potential. I came to the OT after having (and loving) a Digitakt for a couple of years, and I have a good handle on the Elektron workflow. I do not have a specific use for the OT in mind, other than creating melodic or dub-style techno and generally messing around and creating fun percussive grooves out of mangled samples. But so far, everything I’m doing is pretty much my same old tricks that i’d do with the DT, except for a few extras.
I’ve been taking advantage of the sample slicing features, and sample locking different slices to different trigs. I’ve been having fun with the MIDI arpeggiator. I’ve been doing basic parameter transitions using the cross-fader (but nothing too fancy). I’ve played around a lot with the LFO’s and effects, and designed a couple of basic LFO’s. I’ve time-stretched and pitch-shifted, but neither of which ever sounds that good. I’ve found it hard to dial in the effects to make them sound good.
I suspect that the area i’m not getting the full value of is the sampling ability, using recording trigs, looping, resampling, etc. I’ve looked for videos on youtube of people explaining their process with the OT, but most of the videos are tutorials about how to use each feature individually.
If you don’t mind giving some advice to an OT newbie, what do you think is the magic sauce that i’m missing? What would you recommend that I explore? Do you have any suggestions of resources (youtube clips, etc) that illustrate actual workflows? I’ve mounted the bull, but it keeps bucking me off.
Cheers!