OT as a supplement to the Machinedrum

i think the OT is a great supplement to the Machinedrum.

that is to say … for the first year of owning an Octatrack (and what a year it’s been), i have at last come to realise that the Machinedrum must be king of the beats, and the OT just do stuff like synth loops or one shots.

anyway that is my own approach, slowly moving towards live performance thing … by limiting the OT to some nice sounds, and keeping away from triggering full drum loops, i think the OT will be the perfect audio spectrum companion for the MD

yep, i agree
I got the md mkII (no uW) a year ago, and its been great
Firstly to have 16 tracks for the drums,
then to beable to really shape the drums to fit what i have in mind
Also it frees up loads of space in the OT
Previously i was using the OT for all the drums,

However with the advent of the AR, and eternal new machine lust kicking in,im not sure the MD’s gonna last in my studio ( though if money was no issue, id def keep it forever)

Agree that percussion sounds are so important in modern music. Samples can feel lifeless, loops, more so. When you get used to the sound of a drum track then try to record it and play it back, it can feel like the air got let out of it. I think the OT pairs nicely with a drum box and a bass synth through the inputs and effects and mostly use the static slots for pads and the flex slots for stabs and ornamentation.
I sold my MD to get the OT and still can’t tell if I miss it or not. With all of the drum synths coming out this year, we live in a truly golden age.

OT midi tracks can give you microtiming on the MD. Also, CC plocks on the OT gives you plocks over parameters of the MD. Here’s a jpeg with tables showing MD parameters pages (synthesis, effects, routing) correspondings CCs for being set on the OT.

Let’s say you want to plock the high left corner parameter of the synth page of track 2 (SN) on the MD. You’ll have to send CC 40 over chan 1. For MD track 14 (M2) You’ll have to use it would be CC 40 but over chan 4.

Hope my english wasn’t too bad.

Would like to know how to attach some pdf.


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Yea the microtiming from the OT is pretty usefull
Also with midi CC learning, there’d ne no need to use a chart,
The OT would just “listen” the the incoming midi messages,

Pretty handy, but not as hands on as just using the MD
especially concerning programming beats on the OT’s midi chanel, its a bit of a pain…
But thats also cos ive got my machines in a chain, so the MD’s midi isnt going into the OT

@Rael

Are you telling me that if I connect MD midi out to OT midi in, I can have the OT midi learn from the MD…

All this time wasted…

yes thats right. the OT midi section allows you to set a cc to listen mode by FUNC + CLICK KNOB of the CC you wish to program. then simply change the MD param you want and voila!

@ Gouxte - 2bit already confirmed, but yes,
allthough ive never actually tried it with the MD, i used it on other gear and it worked a treat
listens to what CC message it is, and then youve got it saved,
so you could have 6 (or 12, i cant remember) parameters

I think ill give this a go this weekend, ctrl all machines should be fun

Still a shame you cant PLock the midi parameters to scenes though
That would be awesome

midi learn for the win!

i try to pretend the new Rytm machine isn’t available for another couple of years.

totally rocking out with the MD today in the studio, playing through one channel of the OT…
playing basslines on a purple ESP five string bass through the other input on the OT.
keeping things to a mono signal path, so as to make it possible to easily play through a nice guitar amp.

using a fender Rumble 150 amp, for a single mono (left) output from the OT. entire mix sounds amazing through this amp, especially with a dash of tube-modelled-distortion in the preamp stage of the Rumble.