Lately I have been returning back to heavily incorporating chopped breakbeats into my music. I have some classic samplers (sp1200, mpc60 etc) and they sound great but are tedious amount of work to to get breaks set up. I love the sound of the Rytm and all the p-lock possibility however in my experimenting the general workflow is not ideal for this execution.
The best I have come up with is to dedicate one or two tracks to a break, load in pre chopped samples, then use p-locks to change chops. This can work, but it is no where near as fun as playing a break on the mpc.
Anyone have any tips for working with breakbeats in the Rytm?
Also, been tempted by the Octatrack after watching videos like this. This looks like a fun way to easily belt out complex breaks. If you were going to use this approach but wanted the results to loop, could you record a long set of variations, then trigger different 4 bar loops of the recording using p-locks?
My workaround (if Elektron just could add Midi triggering of slices, but they donât, so anyways) is to use one track per slice. You get a max of 8 slices obviously, but you can easily change samples on the OT. I was writing about this in a recent thread with âbatch slicingâ in the title. You donât get mute groups with this approach, but itâs still the best workaround I am aware of.
Edit: oh, Rytm. There you can use 16 mode on a Mpd controller and map velocity to sample start (sample chain) or slot. Slice on the computer, import slices as sample chain or single samples.
^^^ so in your opinion not even the OT is ideal for break chopping without a workaround?
In that regard the MPC and SP1200 may be better and likely will have more punch than the OT. Maybe the most flexible approach is Ableton although I would love to stay OTB.
The OT is great for break chopping if you donât have a problem with using p-locks or those plastic trig buttons to program it. The workaround relates to external control of slices via a drum pad controller.
Got you. Itâs seems that without step sequencing plocks of sample changes, both the AR and OT require significant workarounds to work with breaks. The fader trick is cool - but unless you could capture the times when it worked great and easily repeat them (re sampling seems the only way) it is a parlor trick.
If only the AR could cycle samples with its own pads velocity or LFO then you could have one pad each of bd, sd, hh and record until you got a nice combo. I looked last night and doesnât seem lfo effects sample changes.
Open to any more ideas. But seems the best thing to do would be to save my money and not get an OT, stick to one shots on AR and keep using one of my existing machines or Ableton for arranging sliced breaks.
