The purchase of my Octatrack some 7 months ago was an important equipment purchase for me. $1240 smackers was quite a bit to spend. I still sometimes wonder if I would have better investing my money in other pieces for my elaborate music set up. This little booger seems to always dissuade that thinking. I purchased it because I wanted a machine that could be used as another instrument and tool in song production. The Octatrack is very popular with DJ’s internationally and its a no brainer. The sound output, the effects processing and on the fly sampling makes this device special. I desperately want to use the attributes I mentioned in my song productions. Admittedly, the learning curve on this confusing little box has been at times intimidating and other times damned annoying. I have been through these emotions many times with the thought to sell this cold dark beast. The truth is, I can’t. I am intrigued by it and feel part of an exclusive club.
So I post this to gain the support of my fellow Elektron comrades and enter a plea to the makers. This is not in protest. It is in simple plea. I am fairly certain that if there was an integrated app created for PC, Android, Mac OS and iOS app(s) that interfaced with the Octatrack, Analog 4 or MachineDrum’s OS, would be an incredibly amazing enhancement to the overall structure and end user experience. If done right, it would bridge the gap and make these devices more organic and dynamic.
My Octatrack is a rigid beast with unparalleled musical and rhythmically expressive capabilities; this all contained in a black little sturdy box. It is an unseemingly powerful musical apparatus. I just believe that in its ridiculous engine and components, a larger on screen menu and graphical user interface would make productivity monumental and make this black rectangular box sing.
By the way, if a powerful app was created for all of the platforms mentioned above, that would be great. But since I own Macs and iPads, apps released first in these platforms would be better. I would pay top dollar for a full Octatrack window with a dazzling GUI and advanced file system integration.
Sounds like a computer-based multi-track recorder with control surface integration. The very object personally I came to Elektron to get away from with the likes of computer screens, GUI and uncompromising operating systems designed for office use rather than music creation. Finally a dedicated live performance sampler with no dependency on USB, OS Updates, dongles, bug ridden applications, BSOD, Ctrl Alt Delete, H/W Buffer latency, DAW Playback errors, CPU hogging programmes. How about a music device that has none of that, wait there is, it’s called an Octatrack.
May I suggest if Elektron were to implement it, use low-latency wireless connectivity to tablet, smartphone or PC laptop, etc. It is entirely possible that using a PC could be more efficient. However, I feel that we should try to free ourselves from being tethered to a computer in order to make/perform music.
I would love to see something magical happen with the OT and tablet connected to each other. Something more than just a touchosc template for control (although thats cool too, see Joel’s template), but I could see something more interesting happen with an official Elektron App.
Like what the midicommand did for the md, at least on paper (I never actually got one in my hands when i still had my md), but with touch, audio, and maybe even some project managment stuff as well. Could be cool.
Maybe it even ends up adding a hardware component, like elektron’s own version of “the missing link”. Its the new tm-1 for the OT. Man, I should be getting paid for this shit.
Hello everyone. First, please excuse the mistakes, as English isn’t my mother tongue. Consider a guitar, or bass, or piano, or any other non electronic musical instrument. Their shape and handling though they have certainly evolved along time are more or less set. The keyboard of a piano hasn’t evolved since, well, that might be even before J. S. Bach. Has any of us complained about that when starting to learn an instrument: “Oh I wish the piano keyboard layout would be such and such, I wish, my guitar had 7 strings, etc.” Certainly not. That thing is given and we patiently, progressively learn how to make the most of it. And many individuals have proven that you can always seek deeper and discover new musical worlds with those pieces of hardware centuries old. But it certainly takes patience and dedication. Why would you wish the octatrack, a finely conceived electronic instrument, to be something else than what it is, something that would fit better in the environment you made yourself accustomed to. Why not take it as it is, changing your habits, seizing the opportunity to evolve as a practicioner of music. In every art, the constraints are the source of creativity. The perfect instrument doesn’t exist. You could certainly complain about a poor sound or a poor ergonomy, but the Octatrack doesn’t have either of those. To me the interest of Elektron’s machines is this. They force you abandon your habits and put you in some new and fresh music creation environment. Now, practice, practice, practice, as ever, is the only way.
Or you could study electrical engineering for many years and make up your own perfect one…
But they should not come with updates that bring new features…this way we get the habit to want to discover more of what the machine can do!
But it’s just fine!
I complaint only that a feature (BPM in the name recognized) written on the manual, doesn’t apply for long samples…so in exchange i would like to have a BPM auto recognizing…!! HM!
Besides, the TouchOSC stuff gives you quite a bit of control if thats your thing. If you want to use a computer DAW or a hybrid like Maschine or Spark use those. The OT is it’s own thing
People still use 808 and 909 and to a lesser extent 303 sounds. Why? Because they are classic instruments, not classic “workstations”. The problem with those types of production environments in my opinion (DAWs, Higher end MPCs, Multitracks) is that it will always be hard to impossible for them to become “classics”, their whole selling point is how much different shit it can do and eventually a newer more feature packed product will replace it.
The OT is special because it has a lot of the power of a workstation in a way that feels similar to other instruments like the classic MD or MnM.
This was purely an idea I would love to see Elektron explore.
For the Octatrack user who does not agree and rather explore the device on a singular and exclusive level, well, more power to you.
If our very thoughtful and innovative friends at Elektron created and sold an app that interfaced with our beloved Octatrack, I highly doubt that it would compromise your experimentation and productivity. You would have a choice whether to purchase the app or not. Simple.
I would spend the upward of $50 for an app of this caliber. Please music gods! Answer my prayers.
An app, editor, etc would be a welcome addition to my workflow…sometimes. Sometimes not. At any rate whether using the octatrack traditionally or with its editor, I only see this as being expansive to an already brilliant piece of kit!!!
Would be nice to have 8 output so you can record each track in your DAW or whatever application and then when the session is completed adjust each track with eq etc…
This is the only improvement that I would like to see …
I would go for something that could help manage samples.
Grab and save samples straight out of the buffers. Dangerous from a programming perspective.
Hot keys for slice samples.
Move and find samples for projects.
I can see a large screen helping to manage the file system on the OT. I have a feeling Elektron will come up with a good idea to help us with many of the complaints we have for the machine.
Kind of like the +Drive.
You can sort of emulate this already using an LFO in HOLD mode targeting track volume.[/quote]
True to a degree, but its not the same as a complete on/off switch.
To get that functionality with LFO’s you need to use two… one as square wave to volume, & one controlling square wave speed with random lfo. If only we had 4-5 lfo’s per track I would do this more often.
Also you can also go in manually and trigger hidden one-shots in patterns, but I find it fiddly to do on the fly.
At least there are workarounds of some sort or another.
Another cool idea would be to offer % Chance to randomely nudge micro-timing of trigs, somewhat like the Roland R8, but that would require read ahead abilities in the sequencer maybe.
