This was fun.
At first I tried the A4, with no luck on getting the hang of the arrangement editor.
The octatracks arrangement editor on the other hand…
Track 1: 1/2 speed. Kick made by a perfect sine wave from AdventureKid
Track 2: 1/1 speed. Hats made by a nes noise wave from AdventureKid
Track 3: 1/1 speed. Percussion made by a metallic noise wave thing from MarsMelons called HERK
Track 4: 1/4 speed. Bass made by a perfect square wave from AdventureKid
Track 5: 1/2 speed. Lead 1 made by a saw wave thing from AdventureKid called vgame_0119
Track 6: 1/4 speed. Lead 2 made by a square wave thing from AdventureKid called c604_0032
Track 7: 1/1 speed. Arp thing made by a wave from MarsMelons called ANSE
Track 8: 1/4 speed. Snare made by a nes noise wave from AdventureKid
All tracks are 64 steps long.
Pattern master lenght 256 steps 1/1 speed.
The arrangement editor is making the main trick possible; making one pattern become four.
By calculating four different starting points (OF) in this 256 steps long pattern and always keeping them 64 steps long (LEN) you’ll get four patterns, because of the tracks running in half or quarter speed they run for 128 or 256 master steps.
OF__LEN
000 64 pattern one
064 64 pattern two
128 64 pattern three
192 64 pattern four
Yes, the tracks running half or quarter speed will have fewer steps/trigs per “pattern”, but there is a workaround for that.
The obvious way: By pressing and holding a trig while tapping the left or right arrow key, will enter the micro timing menu, now, by pressing the up arrow you can set how many times the trig will repeat inside that step, from one to eight repeats. I sometimes find this way cynical sounding, because of it’s non-flexible way of setting parameters to the individual repeats. But I found a workaround on that also.
The LFO-way: by setting up a square or saw lfo controlling the amp volume, you can get ultra fast or whatever type of repeat sounding effects, exept now they can be controlled to your liking with attack, release, lfo amount and lfo speed. A really nice and expressive way of creating non-existing steps.
Most of you probably know these tricks already, so this post is to the users who didn’t.
I had fun and learned a lot on this mission.
drum&bass or something…tried to use the performance macros and mutes of the A4 to archive structure. played in one-take as songmode of the A4 is sadly usable, far too basic.
track1 - some soundlocks and stringlike sound, only one note played near the beginning.
track2 - bass, LFO on the volume, played some notes in the second half to vary it
track3 - chordlike sound and some soundlocked open hats
track4 - drums-kick,hats,snare. arp on 3 to get doubletime on the hats
macros: mostly for filtering each track, modifying the amp-env of some sounds, enabling the pitchup in the middle.
Track 1: Arpeggiated Synth
Track 2: FM Bass line
Track 3: Compression for FM Bass line
Track 4: Hi-Hats
Track 5: Bass Drum and Hats
Track 6: Reverb for Track 5 Drums
This track was created using the Elektron Octatrack, and single cycle waveforms that I manually sampled from my Yamaha DX-11. Audio mangling recorded live in one take.
Here’s the playlist with all the submissions, apart from catchin, his track is set to ‘private’ so I can’t add it to a public playlist. So please also listen to his track (link).
Two tracks don’t strictly meet the brief, Squelcher by Pselodux exceeds the 3 minute time limit, and MnM Detritus by Amanita_X/BLOKE was not written for this project, but I left them in as they’re worth listening to. If you feel they should not be included, don’t vote for them
Message me with your vote, based on which track has the best variation, and which one just sounds the best to you! Of course I will keep the votes anonymous. I’ll tally up the votes in a week, or once everyone has voted.
Overall a great competition with nice results and a good theme, Zillamatic! For myself I wouldn’t have bothered pushing one pattern very far. Really good exercise!