The Octatrack is amazing

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#62

Oh right, I’ve got a lot of experimenting to do with this thing, as every OT owner does…

Most examples I’ve seen of that involved increasing the retrig amounts like a classic repeater which I actually enjoy a lot from time to time especially if you’re controlling it like that. I was doing that on one of the presets last night it worked very well, I don’t even understand how this thing meshes together sometimes… Half the time it’s beautiful, half the time it’s a mess.

I’m so lazy I don’t feel like opening the manual, but what’s the deal with the “possible amount” of scenes besides the 16 if that’s a thing and how are they related to the set/project/pattern?

#63

Well, your talking to a manual devotee, I’ve read that thing front to back so many times and pdf searched it countless times. I’ve barely watched any tutorials just a few in the first weeks and never looked up anything online besides what I’ve just come across from reading the forum, which certainly adds a lot of perspectives and useful flows, but besides that I’ve learned OT completely from the manual. I highly recommend reading it, if you start by reading the entire thing even if it doesn’t make sense things will begin to absorb, search when needed, read through again every so often, or a least the full section of the particular area your working on at the time. I can’t see it being possible to fully learn the OT without so…

But anyway, scenes are included in the part. Each bank of 16 patterns has 4 parts. 16 banks x 4 parts x 16 scenes = 1024 scenes per project…

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#64

Everything OT does is absolutely logical, the trick is to learn its logic, and then everything it does to sound can be logically understood… Takes quite some time and effort to learn its ways and have them click… There’s no surprises, random things, or behind the scenes things happening, everything happens according to the parameters, the functions they control, and how they interact.

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#65

Mmmm soo many scenes. I read the Digitone and Digitakt manuals front to back but for these first few days I was just too excited beyond page 30 or so. I skipped to the part of live trig recording my guitar and haven’t touched the manual since, of course I’ll be reading it multiple times but for this week I’m experimenting until I hit a brick wall then seeking the solution.

Only thing I need is a few more inputs on my PreSonus Studio 18|24… I have the main outs going into the inputs AB of the OT, and tonight I’m going to setup my Zoom H6 to inputs CD… holy shit the thing is just perfect. Keeps getting better and better. I can sample my entire DAW + all my hardware synths now from two inputs, separately or all at the same time. Currently more of a studio producer so I don’t want to have to keep plugging/unplugging things.

My second Digitone arrives sometime soon as well, so much sampling to be done! I missed the Digitone so much once I sold it I had to get another (it was my first Elektron box after all).

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#66

My AR lives on the AB inputs as I’m constantly sampling, looping, warping, and crossfading between the live, looped, and warped versions, multiple times per any given jam/song. It’s like I have a bunch of drum machines that remix themselves live.

On CD’s I have a mackie1202vlz4’s alternative bus connected. Anything plugged into the mixer I just hit a button and its pulled from the mixer mains and routed through the OT which is set up to monitor the signal so there’s no dropout of audio. Can just push buttons on mixer channels and instantly loop and warp whatever… :smiley: OT mains and cues go into mixer and the cue outs channel is setup to feed aux sends to fx, so any OT track I just cue and it gets effected, and any mixer channel can still be aux’d to fx. There’s a “cue mutes track” option in OT that makes that work great…

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#67

Beside some pure effects Scenes (good or bad ones) for me the Scenes are mainly what their name already imply: fixed configurations for different parts within a “song” (like what’s sounding at what volume etc.pp.). The progression within the song is then done by crossfading from Scene to Scene in whatever order I’m pleased in the moment.

And, yeah, Scene jumps, are also quite useful sometimes (as well as Scene mutes).

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#68

Exactly. A gradual change will work well for certain scenarios like slowly filtering the entire song before a climax, etc.

Quick scene to scene changes can almost be likened to pattern changes, the advantage so far of crossfading between scenes instead of changing patterns or quickly shifting scenes is that it feels a bit more organic, to have the values morph to the end goal, rather than an abrupt change.

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#69

It’s quite some fun to work backwards sometimes.

First build a complete pattern how it should sound on its climax and than afterwards configure multiple scenes which take away/modify elements in stages until you reach a kind of intro configuration/scene.

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#70

Can you explain this please? :wink:

[trigger warning] This video contains extreme Beat abuse.
[/trigger warning]

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#71

Drugs? :thinking: :smile:

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#72

I’ve been thinking to name my OT based project “TrigWarning”. Or maybe “TriglessTrigWarning” now that i think about it.

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#73

OT is amazing, no doubt. Whish the support was so amazing, too :slight_smile: There’s a serious bug with parts since MKII appearance: samples/track settings get mixed up and this bug can easily break live sessions. No signs they want to fix it.

Oh, and whish Elektron finally introduced shortcut for saving at least for parts (like pressing yes + a button by analog series).

1 Like
#74

Can you explain what this possible bug is further? Does it have its own thread?
I’m still hanging on the pre-conditional trigs OS until I know the coast is clear…

#75

There already is a shortcut for saving the part.

#76

Sorry no, only for bringing up the menu.
But once saved the selection stays at “save” so very easy to save afterwards.

#77

Octatrack OS Bug Reports

I tried and confirmed…

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#78

I’m so fascinated by the Octatrack that one didn’t seem like enough. My second OT (mk2 this time) arrived today.

I was getting frustrated by the fact that all my tracks on the OT were “used up” on thru, master, transition trick/longer fixed-length loops, and shorter more experimental variable length flex sampling loops for asynchronous phasing loops. I mean, I love it in this capacity as an on-the-fly external sound manipulator/mixer but It meant I couldn’t dig into the other things the OT was capable of - namely manipulatable compositions using internally stored sounds. I considered getting an AR but I prefer the flexibility of being able to use long stereo samples and the analog synthesis sounds are fine but nothing special to me. So Octatrack dos it is.

The idea is to use one “hub” Octatrack as a glorified DJ mixer/looper that moves and manipulates between two “decks”, one being a small modular going into an A4 mk1 and the other being the “instrument” Octatrack sometimes being fed by my voice and/or guitar. The “instrument” Octatrack would be setup with a bunch of different banks/parts ranging from 808 drum machine to long orchestral bowed sounds and everything between. The hub and instrument OT templates would be an ongoing work in progress but in the end I’d like to have long 2-3 hour sessions where I can just improvise freely without any jarring transition problems.

I’d put the odds at around 60% that it’s just too damn much stuff to keep track of and I just end up going back to a single OT. But that’s why they call it Elektronauts - gotta explore.

10 Likes
#79

What shortcut do you refer to?

#80

[FUNC] + [PART]

In the manual: 10.2.2 PART EDIT

#81

I’ve mentioned it a few times before, but that started happening with my mki (part settings and record settings changing, patterns disappearing or moving to different locations, etc.) after it got cold on a car ride and it turned out to be the CF card. doing a low level reformat on a computer fixed it up and so far it hasn’t happened again, almost 18 months and counting. I forget which software I used to format, there are a few free CF formatting tools around (the OT format and the native format in my OS didn’t do the job) but one if them would freeze up part way through.

Anyway since you’re having similar symptoms it couldn’t hurt to back your card’s contents up and then do a low level format. If stuff that’s already on the cars has gotten corrupted you won’t be able to recover it but it might stop it from happening any more. or maybe your problem is u related, but all you have to lose is 20 or 30 minutes of your time

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