I’ve hashed through my workflow in other threads.
avantronica’s comment sums it all up quite nicely. 
[quote=““Pale Sickly Trevor””]
I’ve been using mine in my darkwave/noise/industrial project. Here’s how I work it:
OT sequences everything. Some songs have long samples which are chopped and used as backing tracks. Some songs OT is the drum machine. Some songs are pure MIDI output with a sample or two looping.
OT is racked alongside a Moog Slim Phatty in a custom shallow rack I built. Phatty is used for basslines and arps mainly. I run an Electribe EM-1 for lo-fi percussion. For leads & pads I have an ESQ-1 which is also sequenced by the OT.
Everything is run thru a small A&H ZEDFX mixer. I use the AUX sends to send signal to the OT at times… for vocal loops, live sampling and tweaking, FX on the synths or vox, etc. I like having the flexibility to send whatever I like to the OT.
The OT is fun, especially now that the arranger works. If I added anything, it’d be a simple MIDI sequencer (like MMT-8/MPC or something) so I could get some more complex chords and compositions going. But I like how small our setup is.
[/quote]
Pics?
midi clock, sampler, sequencer, some effects, mixer
I generally have my final mix going into the OT and if I want to record something I will usually route master track out to a recorder (no DAW).
I record anything into my Octatrack that benefits from either being brutally assaulted and mangled through the Octatrack’s effects and sequencer, or to just release a voice or two from another machine that could benefit more from it. When I do pair the Tempest with the Octatrack, for example, I could very well sample a loop or two from the Tempest just to free up more voices to use its synth parts instead.
But really, I like to keep it all within the Octatrack if I can, and so far, it hasn’t been working out so well, since the music I make has a lot of harmonics and compositional elements going on. If I just want to change a C to a D in a running sequence, I need to change the composition in the original sequence (in the Tempest, for example) and then re-record it.
Not a good way to work, and not a fault within the Octatrack, but a result of the kind of music I make.