Triggering slices with midi notes?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#61

Don’t wish to sound patronising or beyond error myself, but are y’all sure you are getting the right slices triggered with such small time delays between messages
The best way to test is possibly sliceA sliceA sliceB sliceB then repeat
What I found was that the note delay was necessary to allow the correct slice cc to be implemented, I had it at around 60ms when I did it in max map months ago, I also found it was not necessary to submit the note off messages (from memory)
I have a plethora of other platforms and devices to try it on but I thought it seemed fairly conclusive it was an OT bottleneck
I’d be delighted if I got something wrong, but it was very basic stuff, so I’d be surprised

Fwiw
When the delay was too short the previous slice would sound, so the A A B B A A B B pattern should highlight that clearly

Edit: ignore comment about note off, that was related to another matter !

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#62

@avantronica that’s the same behavior I’m finding

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#63

Just retried this, the plot slightly thickens and worries me about my end a little
I tried with a delay of 60ms between cc and noteon/off
Pretty much it played A B C as expected
However triggering A B C repeatedly
Sometimes I’d get A A C sounding
When going from C to A repeatedly it’d usually be okay
But on two occasions when I 'played ’ C B A C B A (these are slices)
I got C B A B B A which makes no sense whatsoever-

Makes me suspicious that other issues are at hand or the OT sw is just plain buggy

Need to look into this on iOS for comparison

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#64

@avantronica, jamrod

About the 60ms note offset: Yes, confirmed, slices really do get played more consistently when playing A B C D orders. But how to explain that trigger-behaviour for D C B A orders (or decrements in slice number) is also consistent (in my setup), when using a note delay of only 1ms?
What i also find noteworthy: the second hit on a pad always plays the intended slice, no matter if the pad increments or decrements slice number.

Unfortunately, 60ms latency (even 20ms) becomes impractical for pad bashing, which i believe some people here were wishing for, and which i was trying to enable with my slim Pd patch (which has a specific latency of about 3-4ms, when running on iOs, with an iRig - manageable, when battering pads), but i’ve given up for the moment…

The only way i see right now would be to send the OT a zero-velocity note 1ms before the actual note. This might prime the OT to play the actual sounding note with the correct slice value, but i doubt it will work just like that…

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#65

update:

  • using a 70ms delay in my Pd patch, i get fully consistent results for ABCD as well as DCBA. Directly jumping A to D or D to A will sometimes result in “glides” as mentioned above by someone, but this effect fully disappears at a delay of 80ms.

  • a delay of 70ms in my Pd patch (running on: iphone 4 / iRig midi interface / / iOS 7.1 / MobMuPlat version 1.55) still results in slightly faster pad response than using the so-called “20ms” delay in richiegusto’s patch. Im guessing maxforlive/ableton has a lot more inherent latency than we suspect (i use a RME fireface400 for MIDI). Unfortunately, even the slightly faster response in my patch is still rather hard to use for real-time midi pad performance.

  • the upwards/downwards problem might be due to the OT working with lowest value priority (this is confirmed by the manual for track number and midi channels, see p. 123).

  • “ghost-midi-notes” did not manage to do the trick. at least not in the simple way i envisioned in my post above, as the note needs to be at more than 0 velocity. could maybe work with an Amp Level CC set to zero, but i doubt this CC will react any quicker than CC17.

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OT + ND2 | tips & tricks
Octatrack Tips & Tricks (OT Tips)
#66

So I’m guessing this never got resolved.

It’s a shame, because I was thinking how sweet it would be to be able to plug in a trigger finger or similar and do some live finger drumming with retriggering on the xy pad.

Would also be nice to have an alternative mode to trigger all the samples in the slots.

Surely if the trigger buttons can be reconfigured, midi note handling could. It already works in and alternate way when you switch to a midi track.

#67

Yeah, lame that this was never addressed. Part of why I sold my OT.

#68

Of course the polyphony issue would be a bummer, but I think it would be possible to create a poly machine similar to a neighbor, which would pick up the extra notes, or even alternate at the cost of giving up one or more tracks… kind of like how the poly mode rotates notes on the sidstation. Which considering the nature of the machines, might allow different effects or other settings depending on which channel it went through.

#69

You mean triggering slices by MIDI? Yes, we have been asking for MIDI access to slice functionality for years now, in just about every OT wishlist/feature request thread.

Alternatively, have you investigated sample chaining or chromatic trigs?

#70

Possible to trigger slices with a midi keyboard (or pad) and a midi processor plus (midi solutions) or MEP4 Yamaha, Arduino, Mipipal…
Trigger a c3 with any note.
Trigger a cc corresponding to a midi note and slice number.
Done.

#71

I don’t think you read the full thread(s). The problem is more complicated than just triggering the slice. See MichaelHo’s posts above.

The OT receives the CC first. There has to be a (approximately 80ms) delay between the CC and the Note. This causes skipped/wrong slices when finger-drumming.

#72

the digitech pmc-10 sends a message when you press and a different one when you release a pad.
Don’t know if that is a workaround?

#73

Completely blown away by this talent. Some strong MPC stuff…

So seeing this and looking at my Octatrack:

Planning to buy a Beatstep for triggering a sliced beat. However, this tread made me wondering if this is possible. I don’t mean chromatic or poly slice triggering. Just triggering the slices.

I assume this is possible using trig mode on the specific audio track and just hitting the pads to trigger the various slices using midi notes?

#74

you need to read the whole thread again :confused:

#75

Such a shame there hasn’t been an update to implement this yet, or a good workaround discovered for this largely requested feature. :disappointed:

Seems like a no-brainer that would really make Elektron a lot more $$$ by making this machine far more valuable to folks who like to actually “play” their music into machines (with varying velocity and micro-timing errors) to retain a human feel… ie. keyboardists, finger drummers, midi kit drummers, midi guitar players, etc… Hell, even Analog Keys owners could use the AK as a midi keyboard to lay in notes for a loop and then pop back out of midi mode. And the OT’s unquantized sequencer would be so ideal combined with this too!
Oh well. Anyhow…

My question is… In “Slice Trig Mode” when you press a trig button, does the sample slice continue to play when you take your finger off the trig? Is there a mode within this mode that allows for it to stop when not being pressed? If not, does pressing it again retrigger the slice, or stop its playback?

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#76

I had a thought on this, using scenes & the crossfader CC rather than directly sending the start parameter. I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had the chance to try it out on my OT yet - maybe someone else would like to give this a shot?

Here’s the recipe:

  • Set scene A start param to lower end of desired range
  • Set scene B start param to upper end of desired range
  • Set up MIDI processor to convert note to crossfader CC value + sample trig note
  • Send MIDI processor some notes

You’d probably have to use slices to get useful results but it seems like this might do the trick… anyone care to try?

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#77

If you have loop set to on, the slice will loop. If loop is set to off or auto, the slice won’t loop.

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#78

If you have loop set to on, the slice will loop. If loop is set to off or auto, the slice won’t loop.
[/quote]
Sorry. Miscommunication on my part. I’m refering to a long single note in a chain of multisamples, not a loop. I have many multisample chains of pianos, etc. and wanted to know how they would behave if played. :slight_smile: Thanks, though.

#79

You definitely want to use slice mode, otherwise the start time being modulated as you swing the crossfader over will put you out of time (i think).
That sounds like a lot of work, and at the end you will find that the octatrack doesn’t lock your slices in record mode if you are using the crossfader to change them.
It is great fun changing slices with the crossfader, though. Setting up a couple tracks with sliced loops and setting up scenes to change to different combinations is so fun you can get stuck on one pattern for hours :slight_smile:
There are many posts on these techniques if you dig in the forum.

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#80

If you have loop set to on, the slice will loop. If loop is set to off or auto, the slice won’t loop.
[/quote]
Sorry. Miscommunication on my part. I’m refering to a long single note in a chain of multisamples, not a loop. I have many multisample chains of pianos, etc. and wanted to know how they would behave if played. :slight_smile: Thanks, though.[/quote]
It doesn’t matter if the sample is a chain of loops or a chain of single shots, if you go to the playback setup menu (function + playback) and you turn loop to on, the sample will loop.

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