hope you are all safe and spending some time with your machines in home isolation.
I m pretty new to the octatrack and i m moving my already preproduced tracks from ableton onto it.
So what i would like to do is import my stems, slice them into patterns pretty much just have the octatrack play them back. But i would like some things to be automated when it comes to pattern playback.
Let s say i have broken up my track into 8 patterns. I would like the octatrack to play pattern 1, then automatically switch to pattern 2, then automatically to pattern 3 but when on pattern 3 it should start looping the pattern until i manually trigger pattern 4 from where on it will keep on automatically switching to the next patterns 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Is this somehow possible or do i have to get into the arranger for this? I m asking as the arranger doesnt seem to be the most user friendly part of this thing.
you’re welcome! yeah dont think it could be possible without it. but like everything in the OT, once you understand the arranger it’s very easy to set up
The arranger is actually pretty straight forward to use once you’ve spent a little time with it. I, too, tried to work around it but I shouldn’t have. I’ve had a much harder time understanding the different recording modes/buffers/trigs.
It’s actually really cool that you can enter and exit arranger mode during playback to achieve exactly the scenario you described. Use arranger mode to get to pattern three, then exit arranger mode to stay in pattern 3 indefinitely. Reactivating arranger mode will pick up where you left it and continue with the arrangement.
Edit: I just really wished there were more arrangements per project.
You can also set up pattern chains without the arranger - by holding down consecutive patterns - you just have to keep hold of the previous one as you add patterns to the chain. The current pattern and those that follow will light in different LED colors.
In your example it would loop back to pattern 1 after playing 2 and 3 so while it’s on 3 you hold pattern+3 alone to make it stay there.
Then you can do the same to move on to 4 5 6 when you’re ready.
As already quite a few suggested: don’t shy away to use the arranger. It won’t take much time to get into it and it is the most sophisticated “song mode” available on an Elektron device empowering all kind of tricks.
Example: Ever wanted to loop, say, page 3 of a 4 page pattern while editing (so you don’t need to wait until the playhead comes around)? Guess what tool comes for rescue …
Amazing. Thanks a lot. Been playing around with it since yesterday and it works perfectly. I have done this with a track of mine now where i randomly assigned the stems to the tracks but now i spend quite some time in the arrangement. Is it still possible for me to swap out the stems and change the order how they are assigned to the tracks while keeping all the slicing i have made intact?
