One thing I’d like to use the OT for is as a super long delay, i.e., max-ing out the available RAM to record what I’m playing live (either an external audio signal input or internally from the OT), have it decay in volume after a couple of cycles, but keep recording as I’m playing. Like a delay peday, basically, but with a much longer repeat (and of course with the ability to send the modulate and effect the signal for maximum sound-fuckery). So not just as a looper – a decay in volume of the repetitions is important, as is the continual layering of new sounds (which would also decay).
Can I use the pickup machine like this? Or the thru machine? Is it possible at all? If it is possible, would someone help explain how I would set it up?
Maybe this is obvious to some of you, but I’ve had my OT for several months now, and have not been able to devote as much time to it as I like. Between work and house renovations, I’m also recording and mixing my band’s album (on which I play modular synth exclusively). I have RTFM’d backwards and forwards, watched the tutorials, read Merlin’s guide et al. But having never used any other Elektron boxes (or other samplers, or Ableton-style DAWs), my progress learning the OT is slow and I often get bogged down for hours trying to figure out how to do stuff (though I still love the OT dearly), and it often helps to have a fellow user explain from personal experience.
OK, spit-balling here. What if track one recorded the input then track two recorded track one, etc? You set the track as the source in the record settings for the track under SRC3. T1=Track1, etc. You can have the track play its own record buffer. You might even be able to get track one to record whatever’s coming out of track 8 in addition to what’s on the input. I would have to imagine it would be mostly noise at that point but maybe that’s what you want.
I’m having trouble figuring out how to get the phrase longer than 64 beats but I’ve never used a combination of recorders and whatever they call it when you string multiple patterns together. I’m wondering if you can get away with slowing your tempo down to the point where you don’t mind the 64 beat thing. Also don’t know what role the buffer size limitation will play. Also no experience with pickup machines other than they have an overdub mode.
^yeah resampling tracks seems like a good way to do it.
how about 2 1 shot/plays free tracks each with half the ram available set up to resample the main out and bounce between those? assign another 2 tracks or more the same buffers for playback with effects. that might work to go beyond the max track length.
i’m not sure if you can use arrange mode to activate plays free tracks, i should try…
A thru machine is exactly what it sounds like…you are sending audio through your OT. You can apply effects to a thru machine track so it may work for what you need.
For example, say you just wanted some delay to the audio coming in. You could add that effect to the track and then jack the feedback up so it has a really long decay. In the delay settings you can even adjust it so that you are only hearing the delay audio (not the source sound). With lock on you can have an infinite repeat of certain lengths. I use that a lot in combination with a scene and the fader.
Use a neighbor track with some heavy reverb and that may be what you are after?
It seems the most straightforward way to do this is to just use a pickup machine and play with the gain parameter. I’ve done pretty much what you are talking about running my acoustic strings into the OT, looping them with a slight reduction of the gain, so that the pickup acts as a really slow delay, great overdubs but the oldest layers fading out gradually.
Edit: I should add that the “delay time” of your pickup machine loop is however long you decide based on when you start playback of the loop. Just make sure you have RLEN set to Max (unless you want to use a set step length) and use Dynamic Recorders.
Hey these are all great suggestions! Lazos your plan sounds like the simplest place to start – I will give that a try first. Subq I’m hoping to repeat long phrases (like a minute or more even, repeating 1 or 2 times, decaying in volume with each repeat) rather than have a great number of repeats of short phrases (say 200 ms repeating 40 times) – though I definitely want to put the OT’s standard delay and reverb (and more and more effects!) on top of these long, repeating phrases.
I used to have the Boss DD-20 23-second delay, and 23 seconds was never quite long enough (there was a hack to get it to do 46 seconds, but it was not quite right if I remember correctly). The only thing longer has been looper pedals, but they don’t decay with repeats. If one of these methods posted here so far works, the OT has 85.5 MB RAM to play around with!
Thanks so much Lazos – I’ve now tried it and that is exactly what I wanted! The GAIN setting I just thought of as setting the gain on the input being recorded, but it’s the gain of the loop, which when set below zero causes the volume of the loop to be decreased with each repetition of that loop.
I’ve just set it up so that I’ve got a six-minute delay! Probably more than I really need, but wanted to see what the max was.
It’s not quite 6 minutes – the track recorder becomes full at 6 minutes, so just under.
You need to set DYNAMIC RECORDERS to YES and RESERVE RECORDINGS to NONE in the MEMORY sub-menu of the CONTROL menu. This will free up all the RAM for use in the track recorder. You can’t have other long samples loaded to that project though, or they will use up the RAM.
You also need to set the RLEN to MAX in the RECORDING SETUP menu.
Unless you have a drone or indeed a whole backing track saved to the Compact Flash card and play it using a Static machine, right? Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Hi Demi Jon, are you using an external clock synced to the octatrack?
Im having the A4 as a master clock/transport and OT as slave.
My BPM is set to 66 and when i start the A4 both sequencers play in sync, but when i use the pickup machine and sample a loop (from my sub phatty)over 16 steps, the playback of the loop is not correct in relation to the song from the A4.
the A4 will ‘iron out’ the slight tempo variation issues way better than the OT will, especially regarding pickup machines, so if it works for you, it might be best to try making the OT the master - that, of course, may have unacceptable complications, but it’s worth noting - the audio side is ‘elastic’ but the recording side isn’t, so it’s simpler for me to drive the A4 from the OT -that probably doesn’t help with your issue, but you seem to be in the minority using the A4 as master fwiw - that’d probably have been my pref too
Ive tried it with the OT as master. The result is that the BPM changes after a loop is recorded on the pickup machine. And who would want a loop/phrase to dictate the BPM tempo of the song? The tempo is set and i dont want that to change. Experimentation is fun, but sudden changes og global Bpm is not so fun
Glad that there was a workable solution for you.