#373

I suppose a good analogy would be Cheat Codes or MLR, both of which have fundamentally changed how I work with both samples and live loops. They do a specific things better than- or different than- anything else. And so I reach for those tools when I want to make that kind of music.

My suspicion is that the Elektron workflow, when aimed at the practice of composition (i.e. the OT), unlocks similar treasure.

(And, dammit, there’s only one way to find out :grimacing:)

1 Like
#374

I think you’ll love it. Endless LFO options + scene crossfader just unlocks this amazing world of improvisation options. I love that I can make something, and then remix it to a whole different thing on the fly.

And it is by no means a MLR or CC replacement, but a lovely addition. But I am curious if you really need it if you have an ER-301. @marcus_fischer might have some insight.

2 Likes
#375

That is on my mind a little bit as well, although the 301 serves a very specific (and weird) purpose in my little 62 HP system. Often its job is to slice and mangle (i.e. make new sounds) with a set of dub loopers and varispeed sample players that are attached to the live buffers. But I do wonder how much crossover exists in the OT/301. I fear that the only way to find out is to jump in. Luckily they hold their value.

1 Like
#376

ah yes of course… i always forget about this one because i find it makes overdubbing a bit confusing, i can never seem to overdub onto the first pickup machine i start (if i’m using pre-made silent files) :frowning:

1 Like
#377

i have a 301 but don’t get along with it too well… every time i use it i feel like i have to re-learn it…and only have it for live gigs… which, especially now, i don’t do too many of… so i’m thinking of selling it. i didn’t get into eurorack to do deep menu diving… i far prefer the Arbhars and Morphagenes of the world to do what i do with the 301…

and, i prefer the OT to the 301 definitely… it’s just heavier to gig with!

2 Likes
#378

That is extremely odd, as it always worked for me, provided that I follow these steps and make sure that there is
neither pitch modulation,
nor pitch change,
no time stretching,
nor startpoint/slice modulation
going on both in the pickup I am overdubbing and its “related” flex track. As far as I remember, OT aborts overdubbing if any of the above happens. I wrote “as far as I remember”, as I am currently away from my OT and can’t verify this.

EDIT: Just for the sake of completeness, the OT also aborts overdubbing if it is following an external MIDI clock sync signal.

1 Like
#379

i think its perfect for this case. I really do not like arranging in the daw unless its very meticulous micro-time scale stuff. If you think of it as a linear session mode box and complete brain for your hardware setup, i don’t think you can do much better for hands on all-in-one music making. I’ll even route midi from ableton to the octatrack and onto my synths sometimes, but mostly its norns/my midi controller to midi in.

anyway, ill sample a short clip of some digitone sequence to the octatrack, reverse it, mess it up, loop it on its own flex track. set my drum machine to a thru track or a flex track, so its constantly recording, that way i can use scenes to mangle the live drum input. reversing and re-pitching them.

i use audio input A as a cue return/ableton audio input. so lately ive been chopping vocals in ableton’s simpler with my launchpad in slice mode, playing them chromatically in regular simpler mode with the pads set to midi notes, then i will sample each chop back into the octatrack, set it to “slots” trig mode, and play the pre-prepared chops along with the rest of my fully sequenced track running midi to my synths and performing scenes and whatnot. its the best. love it

2 Likes
#380

i think the best way to think of this as an endpoint, rather than using ableton as your compositional workstation. use mlr or cheat codes but have that audio going into a flex track. sync with midi from the octatrack. then you can record or just have a thru track running either of those scripts and force them to fit the rest of your arrangement in the OT. i find that much easier (at least in a live composition setting) than recording everything individually in ableton then trying to piece it together afterward. although i do record out form octatrack into ableton with a compressor and limiter for the final mixdown. but no post-editing or arranging in ableton. i cant think of a better way to sync up, record, resample, mangle, and compose with hardware on -the-fly

2 Likes
#381

That sounds like a super-fun workflow! Holy smokes!

1 Like
#382

i’d love to see what you do with it. your instagram is a big source of inspiration for me

2 Likes
#383

Hey folks, just as a heads-up, I’ve just released the 0.3 update for AudioHit (free and open-source) and it’s now capable of batch processing folders containing sub-folders that contain any number of samples.

It can now create a .wav and a .ot file for each sub-folder and if the folder / sub-folder contains more than 64 samples it’ll create multiple .ot and .wav files.
This means it now possible to point AudioHit to a sample pack parent folder and it should go through all the different sub-folders and group samples together so you can have 64 samples per file on the Octatrack (split by slices).

Here’s an example that I created using tonal samples that I recorded off my Korg Monologue.

I’ve been converting a couple of one-shot sample packs that I have using AudioHit and it really has a big impact on how I use the Octatrack.
It seems that loading these concatenated files into the Flex machines works better and prevents clicks when playing different slices but at least AudioHit does a good job auto-trimming each sample to save RAM.

18 Likes
#384

Wait - so this program will create pre-sliced (via the .ot file) sample chains up with up to 64 samples per chain… automatically?! That’s amazing. I created a project in my OT with 4 tracks (+4 neighbor tracks) using four sample chains. I’ve been wanting to create more sample chains like this, but haven’t had the time. Thank you for sharing this. I’m excited to give it a try. I assume it’s better to use this with one-shots (like drum hits & such)? Check that – after looking at the github page, yes, that is the intended use case. This is so cool. I love the merging of programming practice with music projects. Cheers

#386

Yeah, it concats multiple wav files into a single .wav and automatically creates the .ot slice file for it. It’s very similar to OctaChainer but it works as a command line utility and it’s a bit more straight forward (since it only works with wav / 44.1 / 16 / mono files for now). Another difference is that AudioHit also auto-trim and fade the samples so there’s no wasted space / RAM.

It’s definitely designed to use with one shots, specially drum hits and tonal one shots. Tonal one-shots are specially nice since you can select a slice and play it chromatically.

2 Likes
#387

Most of the tips here are pretty high level, so I’m not sure if this will appeal, but I’ll post just in case. Here, I go through the entire process, from sampling to composition to a live performance of the song. I start the early work on the MPC One, but mostly focus on the Octatrack, including going through setting up scenes, retriggers, toying with the envelope of the Thru machines, etc. Hope it’s helpful.

22 Likes
#388

@jayhosking This was fantastic!

eye-balls gear, ponders second round of purge

2 Likes
#389

Hi @IcaroFerre Thanks for creating this script, it will surely ameliorate my workflow with the Octatrack (I own a license for OctaEdit but creating chains via command line sounds easier)

Just wondering if you could add a feature in a next release perhaps… could this script optionally choose N random samples in a given folder and sub-folders and the create its chain with them instead of creating a large amount of chains ? I have folders containing sometimes hundreds or thousands of oneshot samples and I don’t necessarily want Audiohits to create a chain for all of them.

This is something I normally do with Automator on Mac (I can share the script if anybody wants it, I also have something creating random chains for the ER-301), my script lists all the samples contained in a folder and then copy 64 samples of these in a new folder, then I create a chain in OctaEdit but the Automator process is a bit slow, not very efficient. But Audiohits might improve this workflow. Do you think it’s possible ?

Thanks!

#390

here’s a noob question… but something that struck me as odd given how most other gear i’ve owned worked, or even elektron’s other devices that i own… and that is how a PROJECT is handled, specific to patterns and sounds assigned to them.

in a lot of other gear… a good example being elektron’s own digitone or analog rytm… every pattern can be a new set of of sounds, or a new kit… so i tend to look at those devices where some sort of broad “project” is really a vast set of different patterns and sounds… and i only make a new one when i’ve run out of patterns …

but with the OT, it seems a PROJECT is much more limited. i was surprised to find that every pattern in a project has to use the exact same 8 sounds all assigned to the same machines… thus, for me, i read PROJECT almost more like PATTERN… and my projects rarely have more than one pattern in them…

so basically every time i turn it on to make something new, i have to make a new project… which i’m not used to doing as per the above other gear references where i can just switch to an empty pattern and create something totally unrelated to all the other patterns.

am i understanding the OT correctly in this way? or am i missing something major?

again, i’ve only had it for a couple of months… so still learning the file handling aspect…

thanks

#391

You’re welcome! Yeah, I think a random file selector wouldn’t be too difficult to add. I’m trying not to add too many specific features to it (mostly because it makes it hard to maintain all of them on the long term) but this one seems to be fairly easy to implement and I can see it being quite cool.
Any rules or ideas on how these random files should be picked or should it be just pure random?

1 Like
#392

Basically the sounds assigned to the machines and tracks are shared amongst patterns assigned to the same Part. In other words, the 16 patterns in a bank can be assigned to one of the 4 parts. If they’re all assigned to the same part then they’ll all use the same sounds.
These 4 parts are shared between patterns of the same bank but not between banks, so you can have 4 parts per bank.

What I usually do is I assign 4 patterns per bank to each of the 4 parts. This makes it to each group of 4 patterns share the same sounds but if I want to move on to a different music idea I can just go to the next group of 4 patterns (which are assigned to a different part) or to a different bank (which has completely different 4 parts).

Hope this makes sense.

5 Likes
#393

ahh, yes, Parts… thanks… i haven’t looked into those yet as they came across as slightly confusing on my first read through the manual… but that does sound like a way to work, yea…