I received this Octatrack mk2 from one of my patrons. This is an insanely generous gift, and I can’t thank him enough! This is definitely A lot of people I’ve talked to about the Octatrack have said that it’s a weird machine, and I’m slowly starting to understand what they meant!
Man, the octatrack is so fun to explore. It feels like an open ended puzzle game with how the FX slots are limited and the different machines take up an entire track, but can be swapped out with parts and read “music sheet” from different patterns. All that without even mentioning the slider. This track is very minimalistic, using only one sample of a piano melody being played one note at a time. Two tracks are playing the same sample an octave apart, from different start points, in different directions, all while a third track resamples internally and plays an octave lower than that again. All I’m doing is reversing the play directions, changing what part of the sample is being looped, restarting the internal resampling and messing with a few FX parameters.
All audio is coming from the Octatrack, with a preamp plugin called Phoenix and multiband expander called Maximus added in post. Everything was done in one take.
Octatrack Sketch #2 Scenes Are Hard (May 13th 2020)
Digitakt muscle memory is working against me.
With even less uninterrupted time to sit with the Octatrack, I’m spending every little break reading the manual or tips and tricks threads. There’s so much to take in, and I spent this track trying to get more familiar with scenes. It feels very different from the Digitakt and Digitone’s control-all followed by pattern reload, especially since scene “presets” can be loaded up instantly. I’ve also watched a few Octatrack performances, and one trick I thought was really cool was switching the currently active scene with another to get this instant jump in FX, as opposed to fading smoothly to another scene with the fader. Trouble is, when I’m working with scenes, I can’t pay attention to track mutes as much as I would like!
All audio is coming from the Octatrack, with a preamp plugin called Phoenix and multiband expander called Maximus added in post. Everything was done in one take.
Great job on the octa! I bet you’re a quick learner, looking forward to take part of your journey, thanks for sharing, you’re a huge inspiration, obvious.
Octatrack Sketch #3 Chill Piano Trip Hop (May 17th 2020)
I couldn’t come up with a clever title for this track. It was originally a project I started working on on the Digitakt, but I received the Octatrack before I could finish it. Needless to say, I spent all my free time with the Octatrack instead of the work in progress :P.
For the piano in this track, I made a 36 second long meandering piano progression in FL Studio specifically to slice up and rearrange into something new on hardware. I rendered the left hand (chords) and right hand (lead melody) separately so I could mix and match and stumble into new and interesting progressions.
The drums were literally sampled from the old Digitakt project into the Octatrack. I thought I would rearrange the original drum loop from scratch on the Octatrack, but not being able to copy-paste or p-lock multiple trigs at the same time is such a huge quality of life upgrade on the Digitakt.
I had a LOT of fun playing around with scenes and the fader! Handling those, and track mutes is overwhelming but very satisfying
All audio is coming from the Octatrack, with a preamp plugin called Phoenix and multiband expander called Maximus added in post. Everything was done in one take.
I’m having a hard time figuring out my favorite way to use the Octatrack. It can do so many different things, though only a few of them at a time. This time I tried creating a longer piano loop in FL Studio and then chopping it up on the Octatrack. It still feels like I’m underutilizing it! For the piano I’m using Akoustik Piano by Native Instruments, and the drums are made using drum loops I made on the Digitakt in the past year, and the horns are from East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra.
All audio is coming from the Octatrack, with a preamp plugin called Phoenix and multiband expander called Maximus added in post. Everything was done in one take.
You know you could use Cue sends to output e.g. bass and kick track separately, and ease post production, right?
Anyway, I do like what you’re doing to these old piano notes ^^
The Octatrack is a weird puzzle. It sits somewhere between the speedy Digitakt and a comprehensive DAW. I’m very happy with the results I get out of it, but it takes a lot of time to get there. I haven’t figured out my favorite way of using it yet, and it’s such an odd problem to have!
This track started out as a Digitakt & Octatrack combo, but there was too much stuff for me to keep track of. I ended up sampling the drums into the Octatrack and rendered short piano snippets in FL Studio to arrange and mangle on the Octatrack.
This is my first attempt at using all three of my Elektron boxes together! The Digitakt handles the drums and piano, the Digitone does all the melodic stuff, and the Octatrack filters, distorts, compresses and widens stuff. And then I use the crossfader
The Octatrack doesn’t play any samples. Instead I use it as an FX box where I fade between scenes that modulate filter cutoff and reverb send and panning and tons of other stuff with LFOs. Track 1 on the OT is a thru-track affecting the Digitakt, along with a neighbour track for extra FX options. Track 3 and 4 are the same, but for the Digitone. Track 5 however is live sampling the Digitone and playing back the sample at double speed and reversing the play direction to stop it from trying to play audio that hasn’t been recorded yet. It is only heard when using the crossfader.
Also I like to set up and tear down my gear every time I make music. Using all 3 boxes at once takes a ton of time to set up! I should maybe look into a more permanent solution
Everything was recorded in one take and I added some light FX in post: a preamp plugin called Phoenix and a multiband expander called Maximus.
My entry for Soma Laboratory’s 4th contest https://www.facebook.com/somasynths/posts/897079064133025. The contest was all about making a track using a sample pack they provided. I picked a handful of them, normalized them, then transferred them over to the Digitakt.
All audio is coming from the Digitakt, with a preamp plugin (Phoenix) and a multiband expander (Maximus) added in post. Everything was recorded in one take.
Octatrack Digitakt Sketch #1 Great Combo (June 18th 2020)
The Octatrack and Digitakt go very well together! Digitakt is the master and is playing the drums, bass and lead piano melody, while the Octatrack is playing the main piano sample and compressing the hell out of the Digitakt’s audio.
The Octatrack is still difficult to wrap my head around. A new project is so daunting compared to a new project on the Digitakt or Digitone because everything is up to you. Things aren’t curated and carefully put together for your convenience, you do that part yourself! I am getting more comfortable with it, but I think I’m gonna have to start making templates. Setting up so much stuff from scratch for every project takes a long time.
All audio is coming from the Octatrack and Digitakt, with a preamp plugin called Phoenix and a multiband expander called Maximus added in post. The whole track was recorded in one take.
V nice (as always)! Where are you based? You have a lovely 90s Bristol trip hop vibe running throughout all of your tracks. As a former Bristolian myself and a lover of boom bap, I really dig this stuff in a nostalgic, take-me-back kind of way. Keep making music!
