Your favourite way to mangle sounds on OT

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#21

Most of my scenes are set to filter thru machines and “lock” the master delay for different timed beat-repeats with different high and lo pass filtering on the delayed audio

But I think people underrate the chorus (same idea applies to flanger and phaser) & the lofi effect’s amplitude modulation

But the real interesting thing to me, especially when synthesizing my own percussion sounds from either just sculpted noise bursts or short transients from field recordings of mine, are using the EQ along with 3 band eq or filter for support/fine tuning the frequencies. It’s the best for crafting new textures from organic sorts of samples imho

And I put a compressor on everything. If there was a 3rd fx slot, each one would have a comp, in addition to master track 8’s comp

Comb filter is also good for the Karplus strong string synthesis. I just wish the Octa has audio rate lfos or another way to fm pitch, filter freq, or am levels like you can with Digitakt samples to add extra grit and harmonics

Max Marco has some really good tips for things like this:

And if you want to do shallow water/strymon deco/generation loss style tape warble, you can try using lfos like this:

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#22

Hotknobbing

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#23

I really like the sound of this. I’ve used found sounds or field recordings too for percussion in the past.

Often I’ll record a long stereo file with many sounds in, and I used to set up slices in ableton by detecting transients and then I could play each slice with a keyboard to create percussion.

What would be the way to do that here? I assume OT can’t slice by transient, so would it be a case of slicing the percussion sounds manually and then moving through the slices with different trigs?

Interested to know more.

1 Like
#24

Very simple but I enjoy plocking gate triggers on THRU machines. Even if it’s just to break up something like pulsar on a beat. I suppose I could have a flex on next track with NEI conditions to play a reverse snippet when the THRU cuts out. Anyway simple.

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#25

You can use “create slice grid” and have the slices automatically “align markers to zero crosses”, which I find is usually pretty accurate. And the manually adjusting, if necessary is very quick and intuitive

Holding “Func” while scrolling through and creating your own slice points snaps to the next zero amplitude crossing as well

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#26

Also making a small loop and scrolling it through the sample can result in some great sounds. I have to remember how I do that on the OT, but it should not be that difficult.

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#27

One thing about slice points: I find 64 to be far too many choices unless you are looking for something incredibly percussive. I like to just set like 8, move into slice playback mode on the trigs, and then tailor them so I get a couple that really work.

#28

Speaking of which, I was looking into the OT and I wonder:

Is it really true that per track, one can only choose two effects? Meaning, if I add - for example - a filter envelope and a reverb, I can’t add a delay?

And, although it is possible to make one track a “master track”, that would just affect all tracks in the same amount (comparable to just hooking up a stereo effects pedal to the output). Much unlike on the A4, where I can route any amount of chorus, reverb or delay to any track?

#29

Correct.
Neighbour machines exist to facilitate FX chains.

Correct.
Although using the cue inputs it is possible to set up one track as a send FX track. Then you have complete control over how much of each other track goes to your send effect.

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#30

And dont forget… its a stereo sampler… so you can add your fx, resample, add more fx, resample again and again ad infinitum.

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#31

Thanks a lot! :slight_smile: Yes, I am considering that, but I really like the (my? synth-based) workflow on the Digitakt with filter envelope, base-with filter, delay and reverb … and for stereo, I can just use two tracks. Let’s say, I like to work with sounds instead of loops?

#32

On OT you have to think differently, it has other strengths, like plocking fx, assign them to crossfader, resampling in realtime with pitch or reverse, with feedback…

You can make drums liquid with it…:content:

6 Likes
#33

Also important to note is that you can’t have both delay and reverb on the same track — they can only be put on the second fx channel.
Obviously you can use a neighbor track to get both.

#34

In fact you can, with this hack :
Reverb on FX1 slot hack

2 Likes
#35

Hi sezare, I tried that tip but as the rec trigger start recording let’s say on step 5, the playback of the flex machine playng since let’s say step 2 gets interrupted. It seems flex refuse to playback a sampled non yet completely recorded…
Any clue?

#36

I’ve made lots of loop chains from looped synth phrases.

These are about 2 bars each loop, 64 loops per chain. So each start point gets you a unique loop.
What I like doing with these is starting them on weird steps, like step 4, or 7, and then use trigless locks on subsequent steps to automate fx, pitch, LFO depth, etc.

It’s kind of the opposite of slicing, as there is less resolution when using the sample start point (1 of the 64 slices is a whole new loop, not a tiny slice of a single loop), but it has made me lean on trigless locks and *conditional trigless locks as well, reimagining my use of the other steps. Mangling in less obvious, less glitchy sounding ways. Which has really helped me push the sequencing on all of my Elektrons.

3 Likes
#37

Microtime the play trig slightly later than the record trig. I don’t know if it will solve this, but even with a single rec/play pair it helps a lot with reliability.

#38

thank you for answering Supercolor, but I’m afraid it’s not that the issue.
I think you can’t change the content of a buffer while a flex is playing itself. Sigh…
But at that point maybe I’m missing something in sezare’s technique, since I cant’ figure why to trigger a recording in the same place of the play trig

#39

Because it allows you to mangle the recorded sound in real time. You can P-lock the steps and affect the sound in crazy ways. For instance if the input is a guitar, you could just keep playing a single note and have it pitched at +12 on the 3rd step, reversed on the 5th step with a crazy comb filter, etc. Add to this some LFO and probabilities and it is Alice in Wonderland on steroids.

PS: Sezare is on another planet, you should not try to reproduce its tricks at home. Actually his videos should have a warning sticker on them :wink:

3 Likes
#40

ahah thanks but I think I can achieve that stuff with trigless shit, why to re-trigger recordings?
Maybe I’m dumb :sweat_smile: