"Octabridge" via Ableton

After searching high and low for ways to extract stems for individual tracks in the OT, I saw a couple of people mention this method of automating the process of recording each track of a performance in real-time. @jbone1313 was kind enough to provide me with a project template for Ableton, which I recreated a few times over, tweaking as I went, and I’ve finally put up a blog post running through the whole process for anyone who wants to give it a go!

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Yay. Nice job. I’m so flattered to be mentioned. :grinning:

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Also, Live 11 has some goodies that might help this a lot. I no longer have an Octatrack (for now lol), so I cannot test.

  1. Scene follow actions could simply setting up the follow actions
  2. Comping could help with separating the stems. But, that might not be needed if the scene follow actions handle launching clip recording on the Octatrack input track.

Side note: You might have covered this in your blog post. If so, I apologize. I plan on reading it later.

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You did the heavy lifting mate! Cheers for the points about Live 11 - I haven’t tried it out yet but sounds good!

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Very clever!

Interesting. Just curious, the main Midi recording phase, since that isn’t recording encoders, mutes, or pattern changes, it’s mainly just recording scene and fader changes correct?

Also, I guess it’s using Midi to initiate the mutes through each channel?

If that’s so, you could do this within any DAW that had “clips” (which most do)?

I don’t use Live but have the same problem, wondering if it could be recreated in Logic, or any other DAW for that matter.

Correct on all counts. Pattern changes are actually send via midi as program change messages but ableton doesn’t receive them by design, so pattern changes need to be done by using arrangement mode on the OT.

Other daws seem to lack the additional logic required to automatically play through the clips scene by scene - I didn’t try logic, but I did try bitwig and a few others.

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Thanks for the guide!

For Bitwig wouldn’t ‘Next Action’ do what you need?

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Maybe! I’ll try it out; it’s been ages since I did this originally. Thanks!

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…nice one…!

Thanks @TRAINTRACS and @jbone1313, I have to try this!

If someone wants to try to configure it to record encoder movement it would be great.

Regarding mutes, you always can record the first take with manual mutes and then edit the multitracked recording according to that, don´t you?

I am a new Octatrack owner, and I haven’t read about arranger mode yet. Will this method record pattern changes into Ableton as long as we use arranger mode? That seemed to be the implication on the blog post @TRAINTRACS. Thanks and sorry for the basic question. Like your dnb too, been listening since Roni Size blew up in the mid-nineties.

Unfortunately Ableton does not receive program change messages by design, hence the need to use the arranger.

And big ups mate, glad you like the tunes! :fist_left:

But with the arranger mode, patterns can be switched and recorded, yes? Thanks again.

Yup, that’s right!

I can confirm this works! I’ll be updating the guide with a bigwig setup. Cheers mate!

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Nice. Thanks for doing that, looking forward to see it!

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