Arpeggiator question

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi all,

I’ve been using my Octatrack to sequence my Minibrute; in particular with the Octatrack’s arpeggiator.

Question: is it possible to have the arpeggiator repeat a note before moving to the next note? I want to do some italo disco type basslines, along the lines of: (playing 16th notes) C1 C1 C3 C3 C1 C1 C3 C3 etc. Other arpeggiators I’ve used have a ‘repeat’ function, but I can’t find it in the Octatrack.

The simple approach is to trig lock the note for each step, but that’s no fun!

Any suggestions? I guess in lieu of a repeat function I could run the arp at half speed and use a delay to get the repeated notes.

#2

Go to arp setup page where you can set offsets for each of the arp steps, by semitones. Can also force the resulting notes to be in a specific key.

#3

Thanks JSZ Had been trying to do it from the midi ‘note’ setup page.

I’d looked at that page and hadn’t realized you could set note pitch with the ‘level’ encoder. Do you know if it’s possible to randomize the arp sequence? I know you can do a similar with the lfo > note routing.

#4

Had never thought about this but to my knowledge the sequence can not be randomized. You can however set up a randomized LFO and route to “tran” parameter. Set depth and speed of LFO to taste.

#5

Gotcha. Set arp length to 1, route LFO to transpose or something. The limitation here is you don’t get the benefit of restricting notes to be in a particular key.

Something for a future update perhaps :slight_smile:

#6

Actually you can force them to a key, just stayed up far too late messing with this. It does not matter what your arp length is, you just route the LFO to “arp tran” parameter, choose your desired key from the arp setup page and off you go. Modulate the first LFO with the second one, make LFO3 change arp types or whatever, stack more tracks all playing the same MIDI channel (or not) with different arp lengths, randomize new LFOs etc.

Thanks for making me try this out!! (I’ll be sorry in the morning when the kids wake me up)

edit: And now I want customizable scales for the arp in addition to the basic major/minor keys.

#7

I have a minibrute ,great synth. I think the way I might go about doing this would be to use the arp on both the Minibrute and the OT. Try setting the Minibrute arp to “on” and set the length division to half what you set the OT to. Basically you would have the OT playing 1/8 notes and the Minibrute playing 1/16, so the Minibrute plays two notes for every one note the OT plays. You could also play around with the timing of the Minibrute live for some extra rhythmic effects.