Here’s my first take on the challenge! This is also the first time I actually try to produce a full song with an OT. I wrote the notes while I was working and decided to post them here without editing. I also felt like explaining how I ended up using the sample.
NOTES
Sample source: https://youtu.be/Fj1FWWO7qtw
When I was five or six I got my first electronic device: Zelda Game & Watch by Nintendo. I remember playing it for hours and hours on the backseat of our car. I remember playing it when I first met my new friends at the school yard, where we moved when I was seven.
Mastering the game was all about rhythm and sound. When you learned the rhythmic movement patterns of the skeletons, goblins, ghosts and the dragon, it was easy to press the buttons in the right order and beat the game. Level by level the tempo of the game got faster and the more opponents you had on screen, the more complex its polyrhythmic bleeps got.
I’m fairly new to Octatrack. So far I have only experimented with it for fun, but my aim is to bring it more to the studio and live performances and eventually replace my laptop on stage.
Restricting myself to the clean and minimalist beeps of this ancient electronic game device feels like a great challenge to learn more about Octatrack’s sound design possibilites.
SESSION 1
I sampled the game sounds from Youtube directly into Octatrack. First I created two pads. With the first flex machine I used Comb Filter and Dark Reverb and with the other one I experimented with the LFO, Filter, and again Comb Filter and Dark Reverb on Neighbor Machine. Comb Filter feels almost like a synth.
So far my Octatrack navigation is super slow and coming from Ableton I don’t feel yet totally comfortable with the step sequencer, but somehow I managed to create a hypnotic, slowly evolving, flute-like loop.
So far I have used three flex machines and three neighbour tracks. The third flex machine is a rhythm track I created from a looped short buzz, then pitched down and using the filter I created a pretty good dry bass drum. On the second FX slot I used Plate Reverb to add some space and drum resonance to the thump.
SESSION 2
I created an arpeggio with a Static Machine on track number 7. The sample is a short buzz with Filter, Delay in the FX slots.
At this point I got really bored with the track, so I decided to create a fade out scene and recorded it on my computer. After recording I realized I forgot to play the last pattern, but decided that this is a good beginning and next time I’ll do better!
SOME THOUGHTS
I learned a lot about the sound sculpting and Filter and Comb Filter in this experiment. I didn’t pay too much attention to the FX order and ran quickly into some problems. Mixing with Octatrack seems pretty difficult, unless you pay attention to it constantly. But at the same time I noticed I was listening to the sounds much more closely. During the second session my workflow was already getting faster, so I guess after a while the machine will feel fast and simple. In a way Octatrack reminds me of an old typewriter. Maybe it’s because of the satisfying click the buttons have. 
I might have another try on the same challenge later, either with Zelda or some other source material…
Working with OT is great mixing practice!
and i agree, i tend to mix more and more in my OT ( which i just got 4 months ago ). At first i was hesitant, but this last month i just went for it and i’m pretty surprised by the results. After all these years watching a SCREEN, it make sense coming back to my ears 
