Hold stop and press play several times : the pattern will be played at the beginning each time you press play. Works with MD and A4, and other Elektrons I guess…
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oh man. didn’t know that as well
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omg it works! it is officially possible to solo a track on the OT! well, today is a red letter day to be sure. doesn’t get better than this.
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well in fact it does get better than this. Use Cue and another Track Trig button to then also Solo another track alongside the currently Soloed track.
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Took me three years to even have the thought to use solo, I’m sure there’s more little nuggets hiding in front of our faces. I still have barely explored most of the fx too…
I had “OT solo?” go through my mind for like a week, and I even was seeing a green light in my head but I couldn’t envision where it would be because the track lights already go green, it was the trigs…
The funny part is if someone would have asked on the forum I would’ve looked it up and found the answer in a second, it went through my mind for like a week before I looked it up for myself… 
I learn tons about the OT by answering questions here…
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i’ve started exploring the OT effects whilst doing song production sessions. it’s all about the sound. previously i presumed that recording and applying effects via Ableton was a better quality and workflow, however to my delight it is not. recording synth parts direct to the Octatrack, applying OT effects then resampling and saving the synth part actually sounds a lot better in most scenarios.
although sometimes i do put the synth parts through a guitar preamp/overdrive pedal, also an Electro-Harmonix Electric Stereo Mistress, on the way to the OT, but not often.
and so by adopting this new workflow i am exploring the OT effects more and more. Sometimes the Compressor needs a lot less of the Ratio parameter and easing off with the Threshold to avoid harshness. And the Lo Fi effect has two absolutely cool parameters for progressive stuttering effect - “amf” and “amd” … somehow they are interrelated in the way they work.
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I need work on compressors… I’m almost kinda nervous to leave the one on the OT on because I never feel comfortable that I’m using good settings… I’ve gotten more comfortable with the Rytm’s compressor though…
Love using the crossfader to bring in the fx with their mix parameters, and maybe morph some of their other parameters on the way, but I barely leave my comfort zone of filter, delay, dark reverb, comb filter, the ones I know most…
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I mostly use those, and compressor :
Usually to use it, starting from default setting, I set ratio to max, decrease threshold until sound decrease, add gain, decrease ratio to taste, mix to taste.
Rms set to max for a mix track with several instruments, from what I understood.
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Do you find settings that you can leave it on most of the time or do you turn it off when your making a new mix and then reapply with new settings?
(Oops, we should probably go to a compressor thread for this 
)
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i found that although it is way cool using Track 8 as Master channel with the associated possibilities of applying effects to the entire mix, somehow it was getting in the way of truly understanding the quality of the OT’s effects on individual tracks.
So, whilst in song production, that option is not being utilised. But then, when hopefully doing a live set in the not-too distant future, or capturing a promo mix recording, that is when i would use Track 8 as Master channel/effects.
on the parameters page of Filter there is a “dist” option which is sometimes useful when double-tracking a synth or bassline. If the synth or bassline is coming from Zebra via Ableton, i will then also sometimes apply a realtime effect of a gently notched low pass Autofilter, the “Generic Compressor” preset, and the “Warm Tube” preset in Ableton, whilst realtime capturing that and the already captured audio file playing … using the Recorder options of input CD and T6 for example, recording both signals to a new track. This sometimes helps avoid overly-obvious phasing issues when double and triple tracking.
Comb Filter is a fascinating effect, gotta explore more of this.
Spatializer is the one effect i am not exploring atm as i work completely in monaural. This is for two reasons: i dropped one of the Genelecs and it stopped working as a protest against unfair treatment - thus, the home studio is now a one-speaker scenario.
Also, my personal opinion of playing through big separated sound systems is that it is going to sound most predictable in mono mix.
From what little i know of Spatializer effect types, they are only going to be perceptible through a stereo mix via two speakers.
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This thread is amazing! I just got my new Octatrack and loving these tips.
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This ones good too: 
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maybe a dumb first post, but i havn‘t seen this yet:
if you‘re in the flex or static slot list, you can select the next sample in the folder by pressing function + right to switch a sample very fast (or function + left to select the previous one). never seen this and is very practical if you sorted your samples by category.
dont kill me! 
cheers!
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I wonder what’s the benefit of this? Is there a difference to press arrow up / down + yes instead of press func + arrow up / down?
on slot 1 you load a kick (kick1.wav) by selecting the slot, press yes (or right cursor), then the disk
menu pops up and you select your sample by pressing yes again.
if you highlight slot1 with your kick now and press function + right, it changes the sample to kick2.wav without further menu popping up or yes pressing.
hope that makes it clearer (or maybe i did miss something on my third manual run :))
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Clancy’s “separate patterns per track” workaround which is far less limiting now that we have trig conditions to make 16-step patterns evolve more <3<3<3 : Separate track patterns. Is it possible?
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Didn’t know this! Great to know
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Also been playing with paste and paste again (=undo paste) at any time during the bar for fills etc.
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Cool feature I didn’t know :
When Arp is activated, if note LENgth = 0, it plays a chord. 
Exemple here, just 1 bar midi track with arp, TRC, random lfos on LEN and arp NLEN, VEL
Playing Micromonsta (monotimbral 8 voices synth), just tweaking its filter.
The idea is to play bass, chords, lead on 1 midi track.
Didn’t see it the manual. Is it well known ?
LEN sets the duration of the notes. When a note has finished playing a NOTE OFF command will be sent. A max setting equals infinite note length. This setting also controls the length of an arpeggio. When the set time has elapsed the arpeggio will be cut off.
After reflexion, from above it is logical if it’s deactivated with LEN with 0 value, as the set time is already elapsed. 
I was using Arp mode plock / lfo before, this LEN behavior is interesting too.
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super simple tip:
to save a loop recording during a performance (to then revisit during the set or listen back to in grand solitude of the studio another day) - without interrupting the playback - use the menu option to “save a copy”.
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