Using a daw alongside OT

crypticresonance · 2015-01-23T11:44:38.000Z

Hi!

How do you usually work with the OT and a DAW alongside? I feel that laying out arrangements and automation visually in a DAW is a great thing, but otherwise the OT is more inspiring. And DAW is ok in the studio, but I wouldn’t take it to a live act. So somehow I would like best of both worlds.
Your thoughts?

nfim · 2015-01-23T14:29:45.000Z

The way I’m doing it is:

2 of the soundcard outs are going to inputs C/D of the OT. Inputs AB are connected to the send of a small mixer so I can choose what it’s listening to (currently MS20, and field recorder/mic). Ideas start on the octatrack, with the option of resampling soft synths or other sounds from my DAW via C/D inputs. Then once a set of ideas is ready for arranging and mixing, I bounce the tracks from the OT to Ableton and move to working in the box, until the OT is needed again for more sampling madness.

I’d feel a little constrained if all I had was the octatrack for making full tracks on, since I like to add guitars and vocals and stuff later in a more linear manner, so combining the crazy power of the OT with the flexibility of Ableton is really working for me.

Haven’t really had the need to explore midi sync between them yet but it’s something I plan on looking into…

crypticresonance · 2015-01-23T17:06:40.000Z

Thanks for your answer! But you don’t want to move back to the OT for performance, right?

What I am trying to do is control the OT in a similar way as I’d live, expect it is automated by the daw.
I mirror patterns e.g. 1-8 to 9-16, but set the tracks to plays free, with the HOLD option. That makes it possible to just represent track mutes in the DAW which I can rearrange. I can’t use literal track mutes/unmutes because the are just instant on/off messages, how would I rearrange easily…
Unfortunately I cannot do the same with MIDI tracks (and I have some sound modueles which I normally sequence via the OT), so what I can do is to record the MIDI into DAW as short clips, then drive the modules directly with MIDI, again then I can rearrange freely. (I lose here the ability to set LFO, arp parameters dynamically, at least not the same way as the OT does it)`
So this basically works, I can record, or use the arrangement as a plan on what I want to do live.

A little complicated though, especially the track duplicating, and the midi clip recording part. Manageable, but… Maybe there is an easier why to what I am doing?

Thanks!

giftown · 2015-01-23T17:07:39.000Z

I’ve actually been playing around with some Octatrack tricks in Logic Pro X.

One is I’m sending a midi channel from the OT at a softsynth (Retro synth) but I’m running it through a Chord Trigger Midi FX.

I’ve lined up 17 chords in a specific key in Chord Trigger to be fired by a single note input. I picked notes which would span all 17 midi triggers in midi mode (trig keys plus the [pattern page] button). Since shifting up an octave on the Octatrack would misalign them, I programmed it so that I have octave 1 on OT trigger octave 1 in the chord trigger BUT you have to keep the numbers odd so octave 3 on the OT triggers octave 2, 5 triggers 3 and 7 triggers 4. This gives me a good range of octaves for my chord triggers, keeps them consistant and I can use the transpose feature in chord trigger to reach higher and lower octaves if I must.

The result is a very easy and elektron suited way to create chord progressions using just one midi channel. You can mess around with the OT arpeggiator and do some neat stuff as well.

Other then that I use another track in Logic with my cue from the OT running into the Channel EQ Analyzer. I can then cue a track on the OT and instantly scope out it’s frequency range, allowing me to do all my EQ work in the box. I also have the tuner on that channel to help me quickly tune samples.

crypticresonance · 2015-01-24T11:07:54.000Z

Neat!
I am sure that I will use the spectrum analyzer & tuner for this purpose. Actually this had occurred to me before, but I had other things to attend to so I’ve forgotten it, thanks for letting more light into my head!