I though a fun exercise might be to use 4 tracks of the OT to make a granular cloud from a pad sample
Layering several granular methods at once to make a cloud of sound
Trig repeat with LFO on start and pan
Timestretch with speed at zero
Delay and dark reverb to increase the grain cloud density, comb filters, pitch shifting to add harmonics
Scenes to tweak the above
Anything else I can cram into 4 tracks?
Working on it tomorrow hopefully
Because each track on the OT is monophonic, any attempts at granular texture have an inherent rhythmic āmachine gunā quality to them. This can be mitigated as mentioned with attack phase / amp ā¦ and trig repeats, however the issue remains. A software granular synth can play multiple overlapping grains to make a cloud. The Octatrack can only sequence a stream of monophonic grains.
depends on the source sound. on drumsā¦ yeah perhapsā¦ but on noisy and textural things it can be great for granular type sounds. simply scanning rapidly through longer samples using custom drawn LFOs that are at a high rate ā¦ while simultaneously modulating aspects of the LFO can lead to some unique places.
i donāt have an OT anymore 
but modulating start/end times of loops of textural material is part of the process to get to the granular like feel of what the OT can do.
these tracks feature noisy textural things using this technique. lotās of background stuff. all the sounds are happening in the OT. just a bunch of samples being mangled.
This sounds great. I know you donāt have an OT but it would be great to get some more technical details.
How long are the loops you are modulating the start endpoints?eg <1 or >1 sec?
Do you turn off time stretch mode? How do you avoid the āclickingā artefacts? Any fx eg reverb?
thanks. it was quite a while ago. i donāt really remember too many details. i tweaked the LFOs in LFO designer for quite a while to get what i needed. iām pretty sure the loops were under 15 seconds in lengthā¦ though couldāve been longerā¦ up to 30 seconds or so. the drums are all one shots.
Modulating start can be clicky.
I donāt use Retrigs but LEN, with PIPO loop mode.
Filter can reduce clicks strength.
Resampling a āgrain trackā with envelope can eliminate clicks.
Itās possible to use one shots rec trigs to record and one shots trigs to play constantly (untill you arm one shots again).
Is there anyway to automate the re-arming of 1-shot trigs eg once every 4 bars so that the buffer keep ālive updatingā when new audio is constantly coming in?
Yes, with a midi track you can mute, sending CC54 (ARM ALL). But if itās constant, no need for one shots.
One shots are good to grab audio sometimes, but you can also arm constantly holding YES (or FN+YES). Put one shots every 4 bars if you wish.
Plays Free tracks can do the job too. You can set them to HOLD and latch them changing to Grid Recording.
You can cheat with delay.
this is so nice, I still didnāt try the live looping mode and certainly Iām missing something
How on earth do you get an LFO to match LEN? I have no idea how to match them to be the same
I donāt remember exact settings but basically if the sample is 1 bar, it can correspond to an lfo speed. Multiply this lfo while dividing LEN.
LEN 128 LFO MULTIPLY = 1
LEN 64 LFO MULTIPLY = 2
LEN 32 LFO MULTIPLY = 4
Etcā¦
An lfo designer TRI can be 8 times faster.
Thanks - but pity you can modulate LFO multi on the OTā¦.