Octatrack

Other Gear
41

@hindsight loving mine.
Easy to zip about with great copying functions easy.
The LFOs are brilliant with a step sequencer like one in itself. Two effects or four with a neighbour track are great for evolving modulation with the LFOs. If you dig all that with software then this does that.
I like to seq other gear so it seems king for that over other groove box things .
Yes it’s a lot of money but combines everything else in my studio together.
I don’t need indervidual stems to daw ,the 2nd pair of out puts is enough for me.
Mono sample triggers and note off are already mentioned as weakness .the pitch can sometimes be odd,with lack of speeding faster and real time speed change (untimestreched pitch) can be a bit less forthcoming.i found notes not tuned to C abit of a pain.
It gets great beats every time though.
Love the poly track length options for slow/fast/odd tracks and micro shifting of trigs plus great wave table possibilities.
I’ve got to admit its not so complicated to grasp the features or buttons.
Like everyone proves,it’s flexible, so you can be inspired by dreaming new ways of setting it up.
Editing a sample while on card was frustrating. It seems better to cut long samples in audacity or similar. It took an insane amount of time to truncate long samples ,just deleting tiny edges, which in the past on all other machines is done instantly , but over all editing is good, just some teething problems getting use to it.

42

@Spheric_El cheers mate, sounds good! Downloading the manual now :wink:

43

Yeah, I love it. It CAN BE overwhelming, but that’s only because of the enormous potential. It was my first Elektron too and it really does take a bit to get used to the workflow. I started slow and am gradually integrating new facets of the box into my approach with it. Even with just surface level techniques it is still a great box.


Beyond the manual, you also have great Youtube tutorials. The couple of Cuckoo tutorials are fantastic and I wish they had been made when I was newer to the OT, though I still watched and loved them. He’s far and away the best Youtube ‘personality’ to provide great explanations, but there were a few other channels that are quite fantastic too.

As for the ‘buggy’ comment, I’ve never had an issue with it freezing, though perhaps I’m not pushing it quite as hard as some. I don’t feel ‘buggy’ is a description for the OT anymore than any other tech. I’ve had more issues with my OP1 actually (still love it too though!).

Only you know what you might want, but I love mine :slight_smile:

44

@sellanraa thanks for the feedback. +1 on the @cuckoo tutorials. Theyre ace, been watching them on repeat.

45

Thanks @sellanraa and @hindsite for the mention. I’m gonna make more tutorials in the months to follow. If there’s any particular workflow, issue, problem etc. you would like some tips on, please tag me and tell me. The challenge in making videos for the Octatrack is that there are so many parts involved for understanding the whole picture, so I often wander off, he he… It’s a bit difficult keeping the videos on track, and the explanations easy. But we’ll get there! :slight_smile:

46

Anything to do with pitch might be nice @cuckoo , maybe?

The LFO step designer to pitch is used nice in some factory demos. Maybe some relationships to scale or seeing how you use it?
The pitch is wacky because if I want to tune a melodic sample ,then play in chromatic it plocks over my off set ignoring it .Then pitching down with Rate worked but I had to bust out my guitar tuner as my ears aren’t up to that task.Harmony/melody isn’t my strength but is one of yours so anything that way from you I always appreciate.
Just an idea.
47

Personally, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around parts and really figuring out how to approach more than two scenes. I suppose the scene thing just boils down to tinkering to see what works though, so a tutorial may be pointless. I would also love to hear ideas for how to escape the stagnant tempo controls of the OT, but I think that is just one of its limitations I have to accept :confused:

My vote would probably go to the parts exploration and how it can allow for more flexibility. :). That’d probably be most useful to most people.

And thank YOU Cuckoo. Again, very useful well explained videos.

48

@sellanraa Think of Parts as Kits.

Usually, you would keep the same Kit for a bunch of Patterns that are just the evolution one of the other.
I almost never switch from one part to another on the same Pattern, but one can also do this, depending on his need. Doesn’t feel really good IMO.
You can think of Part as a “good Kit”. So when you destroy it, you can still reload it.

Scenes are used for instant variations (think : mute several tracks, or add an FX, etc.).
Cross fader can then be used to switch gradually from one Scene to another.

You should absolutely read “Merlin’s thoughts on OT” as it’s the best document ever written to explain these concepts.
49

Yeah, I have had an A4 for about 8 months, but I’m honestly not sure how I’d define KITS either :slight_smile: I think sometimes Elektron uses language that is sort of confusing to me.


As for scenes, I get the concept and use them, but my brain starts feeling fried when I start thinking about switching between more than 2 scenes and if you jump from one scene to another in the A slot while your fader is all the way to A, then would that be an immediate jump? If so, how is that different from PARTS?

I’ve read the Merlin thing before, but maybe it could stand to be re-read again. Thank you for the reminder!

50

Well <a href=“https://www.operator-1.com/index.php?p=/profile/hindsite” style=“margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-family: “lucida grande”, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, tahoma, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(1, 115, 198); line-height: 18.2px; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 255);”>@hindsite , I´ll be a little dissonant here. I bought my Octatrack nearly two years ago and I still feel frustrated with the complexity and lack of “fun factor” of trivial things like the pure act of sampling: you have to access a lot of menus, sometimes it doesn´t work as you expect and the timestretch is weird. It´s really annoying how truncated it is to do a so simple thing and, well, maybe the most important thing in a sampler.


The OP-1 and the SP404SX are samplers aeons ahead in terms of simplicity and acessibility (although obviously they lack the sample manipulation deepness). Even the MPC, which is more complex (and I never really liked the workflow), have a simplier sampling functionality.

So I must advise that you´ll need a lot of patience to tame this dark beast, because it can be really annoying.

However, the things that people consider the most difficult in Octatrack I don´t suffer a lot: I like and understood without much difficult the parts/scenes logic. It´s very functional and can be really fun. Indeed, when the OT is good, it is REALLY good, unique and an amazing creative tool. The crossfader is genius and the arpeggiator alone is a good reason to buy the Octatrack if you have some small synths, like @LyingDalai said.
51

@aeoner Great to hear from both sides thanks!

52
Yeah, I have had an A4 for about 8 months, but I'm honestly not sure how I'd define KITS either :) I think sometimes Elektron uses language that is sort of confusing to me.

As for scenes, I get the concept and use them, but my brain starts feeling fried when I start thinking about switching between more than 2 scenes and if you jump from one scene to another in the A slot while your fader is all the way to A, then would that be an immediate jump? If so, how is that different from PARTS?

I've read the Merlin thing before, but maybe it could stand to be re-read again. Thank you for the reminder!

This! I’m in exactly the same boat. Have an A4 but as much as I enjoy it, I still find the architecture of files confusing. This maybe a bit basic for @cuckoo to cover, but maybe it could be woven into a further tutorial in his easy to understand and uniquely enjoyable style. It certainly is a sticking point for alot of people from what I’ve read.

53

It’s nice to know the peeps on this forum would help somebody in need when it’s not even our famed Op-1, of which, cannot be touched in my studio.

I don’t have any questions about this piece of hardware that I recently invested in but if I do I’ll refer to this post first. Cukoo’s tuts have served me too well!!! Hahaha

Personally, I think the learning curve/curse depends on experience and knowledge about music production.

54
Yeah, I have had an A4 for about 8 months, but I'm honestly not sure how I'd define KITS either :) I think sometimes Elektron uses language that is sort of confusing to me.

As for scenes, I get the concept and use them, but my brain starts feeling fried when I start thinking about switching between more than 2 scenes and if you jump from one scene to another in the A slot while your fader is all the way to A, then would that be an immediate jump? If so, how is that different from PARTS?

I've read the Merlin thing before, but maybe it could stand to be re-read again. Thank you for the reminder!

Yes indeed, Elektron language can be confusing, I admit.


When the crossfader is on A and you switch the scene in the A slot, you get immediate jump in the parameters of the current tracks.
When switching Parts however, you have (only) immediate jump between tracks configuration. This means even samples can be change this way, but also the machine assigned to the track !
But no crossfading between Parts obviously.

Scenes + crossafer => gentle touch on the current tracks
Parts => different kits (I call “kit” a bunch of “machines”)

55

Aeoner has a great point about the workflow of actual sampling into the OT. I honestly don’t do that. Either I have temporary live sampling woven into my set that is stored and wiped in the RAM buffer (or whatever it’s called) or I import samples from the computer. I agree it feels very cumbersome to actually sample, edit, and save things all within the OT. A computer is definitely your friend in that context :slight_smile:

56

I do not agree, it just needs practice but I did that quite a few times an now I can slice a long sample (MIDI Sans Frontières stems for example) in 10 minutes max.

Some might prefer a mouse, I think think I’d be quicker with the 7 knobs / Fn button now than I would on a computer.

Really, this machine needs practice at every level.

For who is interested, the workflow is :
  1. Fn+level to get to the start (0-crossing) of the first sample in the sample chain. You can zoom vertically with the D-knob and horizontally with the F-knob.
  2. Add a slice (the menu diving is done only once, after it’s always double hit on Yes button)
  3. Move the end of the slice with Fn + C-knob
  4. Reiterate
You can test you slice with Fn+Yes
You can then adjust start and end point in case there is still clicks.
Always finish slice editing with the end point, so that moving the level knob get you immediately after the end frontier and you can simply add a slice (Double hit on yes button, quickly done)


57

Have to agree that reading Merlins Thoughts on the Octatrack is pretty essential. It helped me greatly. I could never part with the Octatrack. It's the central hub of my set up.