@ghostly606 I think you can get over 5 minutes with 16 bit audio. I don’t know the specifics, but I know you can change the record buffer size and the bit depth between 16 and 24 bit. It’s somewhat of a limitation, but the OP-1 has the six minute limitation, and sometimes it’s nice to be forced to cut things down to size rather than keep going on and on. Different styles of music may work better with shorter/longer tracks however.
@yoof Totally set your trinity up and have a go. If your silver box is plus drive, then you’ll have no worries at all. Otherwise just stick to free banks or do a sysex dump and start fresh. I’m not a computer guy, so I understand if backing things up is a pain. Hopefully you’ve got a plus drive, though. I would say I use the OT as a hub more than a sampler, though not taking away from the sampling capabilities which are immense. The note triggering options (max poly, whatever) are more limited than many hardware sequencers and likely all DAWs, but I like hardware and it’s really easy to set up things like per part program changes that will be recalled everytime you visit the pattern (assuming the channels and external machines are the same). The only real shame if you go down the MIDI road with the OT is that it can’t record parameter slides on MIDI tracks, meaning it will be hard to get smooth value changes without using an LFO. I have, for example, wanted to record smooth pitch bends, but the pitch wheel data is too crude and one cannot slide between pitch A and B with regular or trigless trigs if desired. Small qualm, especially considering you could just sample such a slide when wanted.
@josker The program change channel is completely separate from trig channels. I suppose you could run into trouble if your program change channel was the same as an A4 channel or a channel you’re using for an external synth, but as long as it’s on its own it should work quite simply and without any trigs or anything. If the A4, Rytm, are set to receive program changes on the same channel the OT sends them out, it will automatically make them follow pattern for pattern without any other fuss. And yes, the A4 will be forced to change if the OT pattern length for that pattern location is 64 steps, but if you set the OT to change after 128 steps it will be fine. If the OT was set for 128 steps as the pattern length (in advanced mode) and the A4 was only set for 64, the A4 pattern would play twice while the OT pattern played once. It’s a slight bit of extra work, but just make sure IE pattern G4 was 128 steps on both units and everything should work as intended. Also: maybe you know or not, but if you chain patterns in the A4 (or any Elektron machine- either using the chain function which is Greek to me, or simply holding the pattern button and selecting two patterns before releasing the pattern button) you can live record seamlessly across the two chained patterns to treat them essentially as one 8 bar pattern. I generally prefer to use the advanced scale settings, though.
A comment on that thread quotes the maximum record reserve length as 5 minutes 26 seconds at 24 bit, and 8 minutes and 7 seconds at 16 bit. Usually once I’ve sampled something I’ll save it and load it up from the card thusly leaving the available recording time at max. More experimental or improvisational artists may find this limiting if they are building tracks from the ground up using recording ram that will eat into this maximum time, but it’s not too bad either way. One [undocumented in my public body of work] situation in which I may personally want to leave extra RAM on a track before recording one final performance is for interesting transitions such as placing a recorder trig on step one of the fourth bar of a pattern and a playback trig with the Playback Rate at negative 64 on step nine of the fourth bar for a cool reverse sweep of what has just been recorded. My setup has my other synths going into a mixer with AUX send effects going into inputs A and B and the A4 going into the Rytm (and its analog compressor) then being fed into inputs C and D. These record buffers used for reverse fills can then be set to either the more melodic content of the other synths, or the rhythmic Rytm stuff mixed with the A4. I also have a stereo input on my mixer coming back from the OT CUE outputs so I can run something I have sampled through my AUX effect, which are a Big Sky and an Eventide Timefactor. Just make sure you have CUE Mutes Track set in your preferences, or manually mute CUEd tracks or else there will be feedback.
@josker Just to clarify: it is called the program change channel, which had previously led me to believe it would most practically be used to change an A4 patch with an OT message, for example. The truth is that when nothing else is used on this channel, it very simply causes slave machines to follow the pattern number of the master machine. There might be other Global settings that interfere with this behavior, such as if the A4 individual channels were also set to receive data at a certain MIDI channel, but I’ve always got this turned off as I prefer to use each machine’s dedicated sequencer. There are likely instances where one might want to control an individual track on an Elektron machine, such as using a pad controller or something knobby to have access to multiple pages of parameters at once, but those channels can always be disassociated from MIDI if you intend to use the sequencer bolted onto the machine itself, which I do.
@Lymtronics Thanks for that really useful. I thought you could record that length but my record buffer was full after 4 mins or so. No doubt had the wrong settings for the memory allocation or something.
I still haven't found my ideal setup for the Octatrack yet. I currently have everything running into the OT and use it as a mixer but run out of inputs all too quickly. I would love it if the 4 inputs were stereo or if there were more mono inputs (8 say, seeing as it's an Octatrack!). I have a mixer with two mono sends so might consider hooking everything up to that with AUX sends running into A+B. Just need to experiment huh.
The OT is just too darn flexible!
[Gear list I want to use if anyone has any tips, typically I like to do live jams with lots of tweaking, sample playback limited to the odd field recording or dialogue, guitar or the odd synth line:
I grabbed a limited-edition cassette of Jah Connery’s “Killa Tape” from Bandcamp (Geweih Ritual Documents), and it’s delicious. Not sure what his workflow is, but I love it.
Originally wanted to demo a new fx pedal with the Nord Drum 2 but eventually recorded this track last night. Nothing serious, some testflight, sort of…
There’s a little OP-1 involved in the game too. @josker the ‘horde of the rings’ ringmod/reverb was also used on this track to process the Nord Drum 2 (along with 4 other stompboxes…), though this is not a proper demo… not yet, as I’ll be doing more recordings later this week.
Oooh. It sounds really nice, @Jooga1972 . I’ve been struggling for the longest time not to spam too much elements into each of my tracks, and I admire anyone who manages it Moody and very nice.
Actually, I’ve just been listening to the The Knick soundtrack - I think there’s something similar there. I very much recommend having a listen, Cliff Martinez did a brilliant job:
Oooh. It sounds really nice, @Jooga1972 . I've been struggling for the longest time not to spam too much elements into each of my tracks, and I admire anyone who manages it :) Moody and very nice.
Actually, I've just been listening to the The Knick soundtrack - I think there's something similar there. I very much recommend having a listen, Cliff Martinez did a brilliant job:
Thanks! … maybe a little too intense… but that’s always the thing with these testflights / demos; I tweak and turn every knob within reach… as for tracks making it to albums and or live performances, these days I try to follow the ‘less is more’ path
