The Octatrack is amazing

With deluge you have a moderate learning curve for all the wholesome of features, but it was fast for me to get it running.

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^^
Your profile pic next to the thread title “The Octatrack is amazing!” is…amazing! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Loving the Octatrack/Digitone together but I surround them with at least one mini synth and a turntable/tape machine into kaoss pad mini2.
I like to sample any vibes off a synth I’m using so it’s there without having to remember settings next time. I usually sample 128 or 256 step jam.

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Yeah just finally acquiring the Mkii to go with my DT has been so rewarding.

I got a deal for one witn a high speed CF card with 64Gb of storage. I had wanted it when I decided to upgrade from the Volca sample but couldn’t afford it and went with the Digitakt to learn the Elektron workflow and loved it.

So just kept finding myself chomping at the bit with the crossfader and massive sample and full track mangling abilities and etc over the DT.

It’s the final piece of the puzzle with it’s little brother and some analog mono synth’s.

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YES!! :rofl:

Wanted to find a nice octatrack thread for my latest jam with Octatrack and JX-03

I’m using a breakbeat for drums but other then that I’m just using thru tracks (t1-t6 jx-03, t7 breakbeat sample, t8 master) and effects to mangle the fudge out of jx-03. Also a lot of compression in this jam, I love how you almost here the filters fizzle from the strain of the compressor.

Octatrack is amazing in so many ways!

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Slide trigs are blowing my mind right now. You can create so much movement without even using an LFO or touching the crossfader.

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IDK, been thinking about all the OT can do, well, more like thinking of the things I know about that it can do. To think I started with an analog monophonic synthesizer, and one day hoped I would acquire what would be my ultimate synth. When I got back into using a sampler the sound design prospect of the OT became clear when I started hearing about it and then watching videos on youtube.

It’s surprising to revel in a “thing”. But when it comes to expression and how I’ve begun with using the OT as my ultimate synth, I really feel like sound design it self was my favorite thing to do when I’d come home from work and just noodle on my synth and play a melody or something tweaking away at it and such. And the OT is just such an endless ocean in a box that it is my ultimate musical instrument.
It’s like my musical soulmate. :heart: :elot:

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This really resonates with me. I’m happy to hear this tool has been so good for you.

I’ve had dual Octatracks for 3 weeks now and literally doubling down on it has definitely pushed other gear away. I focus on the end product now, finished music, more than I had been lately with hardware.
The FX and sequencing capabilities, combined with the wealth of content I have access to in the static list has put me in a great creative headspace for productivity.

My mindset is all about composition and manipulation when using the OTs, and not feeling limited by 8 tracks was just what I needed to break free and really commit to it.

Now, when I take breaks in order to use my Pro 2 or Typhon, I use those instruments with the OT’s manipulation capabilities in mind, I make loops with their onboard sequencers, and I take a little time to wash them in the kind of dense reverbs that OT lacks. I don’t mind working around that shortcoming on the OT, because the destination is totally worth it.

I can’t think of another instrument that rewards so well, and fulfills so much, all the while you’re only scratching the surface of its vast capabilities.

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well said.
my brain kinda collapses like a black hole at the idea of having two,
but i feel what youre saying.
what an incredible instrument!

I certainly don’t use the 2nd to do the various things I don’t do on the 1st. That would do my head in. But rather, I use it to make more space on the 1st to do more of what I was already doing there. :slight_smile: so that I can offload looping, mixing, and longer stem playback to the 2nd unit.

But yea, it also certainly maximizes the possibilities. I spent a solid week with a notebook just mapping out how I would work with the pair, what my goals were, and how I plan to grow into the 2nd box in the future.
That informed how I have set up Parts, flex lists, static lists, etc.
Once I got going I even took the time to reslice old sample chains with Octachainer to get them more concise for the flex list, because I had put so much curated and usable content (loop chains, stem chains, etc) in the static list.

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Right!
Having an organized mind ( i do not) or a clear set of goals is really clutch with it, i agree…
its crazy to even just “see” the scope of what it can do.
my Holy Shit moments have been pretty frequent with it since i got it back in late june, and any time i really dig in and force myself to try something new, to use it in a different way if only to better understand some part of wqhat it can do, it is so, so rewarding.

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My latest !!! moment was from working with a chain of chorused synth stabs I made. Using the comb filter with the tune parameter under LFO control, I also used retrig to get a Karplus Strong kind of attack pluck from the start, but the rate parameter was set to negative and slow.
This rate, combined with just the right “length” amount made it play back a different stab in the chain, in slow reverse, after that initial plucky attack.
Which, thanks to the original stab being stereo chorused, made the stab play back with a very wide left to right pan. The LFO’d comb filter just sold the slowed down chorusing even more.
Imagine my joy when I found I could get this distinct yet alien sound out of just about any chain of chorused samples I applied these parameters to.
And I still had 2 LFOs unused!

The Octatrack is amazing. Indeed.

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Kaboom :bomb:

Thats some heavy shit.
One real good one i had not too long ago, which is just about structure, was this:
I was a couple of good bong rips into horsing around and getting something really engaging going on, some cross fader action, ya know, the good stuff.
Then i did something where i cleared a sample from a slot and replaced it with a different one and…
it had all the same slices in place.
and, i kid you not, i had VISION of the slot lists as a spinal cord, a long one, mind you, that ran through the Octatrack, and on either side, at the space between the vertebrae, was a line coming out and that was the slot, Static on one side, Flex on the other…
I could cut and slice and do whatever to that space, that vertebrae and it would hold that data, the sample was just the thing on the line extending out.
whereas, i had thought i was slicing into the file itself.
“Woah!.. WOAH!!” and i smacked my hand to my forehead in a moment of understanding.
my engagement ring is Tungsten steel with a rose gold jacket. its kinda heavy.
that moment left a bruise on my forehead that i could feel when i wrinkled my brow in concentration for over a week.
it was a great reminder.
I know all that business is in the manual. i had read it several times over before i REALLY understood it though.
even simple stuff like that…
amazing! so well thought out!

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My own !?! moment lately was dealing with the master track heavily, with trigs and plocks everywhere on filter and envelopes to get a distinct groove whatever is coming in.
Use the crossfader on the env amount to get the groove more or less distinct, don’t plock every decay so that for certain trigs you can get make the beat go from lazy to sharp.

This master track can receive trigs, let’s feed it :slight_smile:

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Au contraire, not at all; Excel can be a whole world of sonic fun and adventure; says the man who once developed a music sequencer in Excel :expressionless:

One of the best pieces of software ever written.

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I’ve just realized that for me the Octatrack is not a sample playback machine. I have to use it in a more creative way and as an instrument. I’ve loaded some raw data files into the sample slots and processed them with the comb filter. That results in percussive metallic synth tones. I’m not into modular because I don’t understand and like patching. But I guess the Octatrack gives me kind of the same experience. I love how many happy accidents you can get out of it.

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I have to say that one of the major reasons for my OT to be underutilised is my lack of imagination… Every single time I let my mind loose and just noodling about I ended up with something cool on it, sometimes I had no idea how I got there but it made sounds I never expected before.

It’s also hard for me sometimes to load it up with unusual samples, I know I can mangle them to hell and back so any source should be fine but I end up in an “analysis paralysis” of what kind of sound source I want to feed into it.

Most of the time it’s used as a performance mixer, I feel so bad about it, haha.

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Talking about comb filters?
Without samples (sampling inputs with nothing plugged), no filters (only comb filters and compressor). Who said OT can’t do synthesis? :content:


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I think Elektron machines have a strong personality and it is very difficult for me to program something I have in mind. Often it feels like they are controlling me than the other way round. But when I go with the flow a lot of great things are happening.

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