Hi all. Looking for a good workflow with my new OT2. I prefer this time round to be as dawless as possible. So im thinking of recording as much material first with the Tascam and then mess around for a week or so with Ableton live 10. Is this a good workflow or would it be better to mix as i go.? Do i need to use the Tascam. Ive not found much stuff on recording or exporting tracks? Can i save a track to the cf card? Im still in the early stages and want to keep it simple. Any advice much appreciated.
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https://www.elektronauts.com/search?q=export%20track%20%23elektron-gear%3Aoctatrack
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personally i go between two modes with the OT:
song part-making, and song-making.
song part-making involves recording relevant 4bar loops of different elements (analogue bass drum, analogue bass synth, Machinedrum, vocoder) … saving the song parts with a 3 letter song name and then a code letter to indicate if the part is drums, bass or synth etc.
also resample and resequence these elements, saving the resultant 4 bar loop along with the rest …
and then also sampling entire collections of say 5-7 tracks playing at the one time, and give this a code of E with a number, to indicate it is an Ensemble loop …
to then make a song, i import some relevant Ensemble loops to the tracks, then play it live and capture a realtime recording from the Master Stereo Output to Ableton. I don’t do anything with the recording in Ableton, but rather go to the Song folder, Samples folder, and grab the raw audio file from there and call it a “song” or “work in production”.
this is somewhat satisfactory, but in the future i plan to invest with a Roland MV8000, midi-syncable multitrack hd recorder …
then do similar things with the OT as regards doing a realtime song mix recording … but do a few of these, to different tracks of the MV8000 … with the idea being to then later do a realtime mix of these tempo-transport synced realtime mixes into a single song format.
then toast a fabulous song CD or something.
maybe apply some Mastering effect to the mixed song mix recording. Export and then toast the CD.
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I record my tracks in the OT. You can make premixes, and play again over them.
If you want to record more than 16s, you have to go in Memory Config and set Dynamic Recorders to YES.
Record with SRC3 = MAIN
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Thanks guys. How could i ever doubt you!
I can learn more from you than any manual.
So now ive got gear lust. That Roland MV8000 is the sort of thing i could see me using. Does it all without much need for a daw. Yes that could be an answer.
I will definately have tracks longer than 16 seconds. More like 6 minutes. So do i just do the settings you mention and export individually to the CF card.
Cheers
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You can’t export/write directly to the CF card - this is all covered in the linked threads !
16s does not relate to track length but a default buffer length in recording memory
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Oh i thought you could save tracks individually to the card. So i either have to use a field recorder or track recorder externally or direct into Ableton?
You can. Better quality than external recording, but more work.
Cheers Sezare. When you say better quality?
I came across this statement from above links
Anyway I found the best way is to record directly out of the Octa into Ableton but using the [CUE] output to select which track you want to record from, (and using obviously the [MAIN] output to listen to what your doing).
it only allows recording of one track at a time (not ideal eh) but for me this is the best workflow.
Is this the easiest workflow?
No DAAD conversion if you record in OT.
So, best quality inside.
The OT tracks create audio based on the trigs, but they are not inherently audio clips to save, they are sequences firing different audio as they go. To capture them they need to be recorded either externally or using a track recorder internally in the OT which will create one audio file which is really the outcome of the track sequence firing off smaller chunks of audio. I hope that makes sense. Once a track is captured as an audio file with a recorder it can be saved to the cf card…
I just want to let you know there’s tons of ways to use an OT, so follow people’s advice to get going but just know that as you learn the thing, there’s lots of other ways to do it so you don’t have to feel that whatever way you start with is the only way, and you don’t have to feel locked into it. A neat thing about the OT is that after awhile you can create your own custom flow that works well for you and is tailored to your specific needs. If I traded OT’s with someone else who also has a complex project, neither of us would know how to use it correctly, even if we understand the OT completely…
My OT is set up as a live jam performance machine that samples audio and plays it back in all manner of different ways. I don’t even use pre made samples really, just one or two occasionally and there like spoken word or little recordings I’ve made of my friends singing or playing instruments I don’t have. Only I know what my parts and scenes are set up for and it totally won’t make sense if someone else turned it on. My setup is not what you are going for so I won’t even begin to describe the details. I just want to let you know that as time goes on you can create your own custom use of the OT as things begin to click.
Definitely follow others advice that use the OT more in the way your going for, and I’m not saying this to complicate things or confuse, but just putting it out there so you don’t get locked into any one way…
Have fun, happy trails to you, until we naut again…
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Cheers Mike. That explains a lot. I was unsure about the Card save primarily and you ve helped assure me thanks. I can see that the set up will be different. So ideally i need to use an internal recorder and save to CF for lossless quality. That way i dont need to use Ableton for a few weeks and get a lot of music down which is what im after.
Many thanks bud!
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