How to Set Baseline When Scaling Tempos on OT (Using Loops of Different Lengths)

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi. I’m still in the first week of OT ownership. I’ve watched every Cuckoo video twice and lurked on this site in advance of making the purchase.

While the manual is great, it sometimes fails to explain why you have to do things a certain way (same with YouTube videos). I ran a search on this site and found this thread that is somewhat related, but I was hoping somebody can give me a why

THE ISSUE:
I use the OT to provide some backing tracks in a solo guitar setup. I made some loops from my own songs. They vary in length, the drums will be a bar, a bass line with be 4 bars, and another loop might be 8 bars.

I trigger all three samples on the first beat and everything runs for a bar and resets so I never hear the last of the longer loops. So I set those tracks to run at 1/8 and 1/4 and then everything works (as long as the shortest loop is set to loop automatically) and I’m a happy camper.

THE QUESTION:
But is this the right way to do it? Is there another way? I assume then you change the Master Tempo Resolution if you have a loop that is, for example, 24 bars playing with a loop that is one bar? How does OT figure out what length of a bar is? Can you tell the OT otherwise besides scaling the tempo to 1/8 or 1/4?

Thank you. Loving the OT. I’ve not felt this challenged by a piece of equipment since trying to get a Motu Midi Time Piece to work with OS8.6!

PNP

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#3

i believe that’s what i’m doing:

  1. select track
  2. hit record button
  3. select trigger button (in this case #1)
  4. repeat for other tracks

They all reset at the same time, even if the loops for tracks #2 #3 and #4 are not finished. So I went into tempo control for those three tracks (all 4 tracks are at 16/16) and set the last three to 1/4, 1/4, and 1/8 and they work.

but is that the way you’re supposed to do it? I couldn’t get an entire sample to play by changing the length to 64/64, only by scaling it.

#4

it all depends on how you are using it… the OT is a fuckin beast when it comes to options, it doesnt really matter that the CPU is so old when it does so many things in so many different ways so effectively

first thing to realize is that recorder trigs and playback trigs are not the same… recording and playback are different - you can have a one-shot recorder trig in the same spot as a normal playback trig and vice versa or otherwise, etc. … btw you need to understand how one-shot trigs work if you are using this as a sampler, they are so essential in that workflow… go ahead and RTFMRTFMRTFM as much as you need to

secondly, i think you are talking about setting a track to a division of the tempo, if you’ve got 120bpm at 16/16, then a 64 step (4 bar) track is 32 seconds long… each step is 2 beats, or .5 seconds (120bpm / 60sec = 2bps) and (2bps = 1 beat every 1/2 sec)… but if you have the track multiple set at 1/4, thats 30bpm (120bpm / 4 = 30bpm) and therefore each step is 2 seconds long, rather than .5 seconds, so a 64 step (4 bar) track set at 1/4 of 120bpm is actually 128 seconds long, about 2 minutes or so…

the previous answer of one-shot trigs is how i prefer to do it, and skip all the business with the tempo divisions and separate track lengths because it makes my brain hurt (see above) - but also i need to keep everything related to each other in terms of tempo since im using the machine more as a sequencer/groovebox/brain rather than a sample playback device… however this requires more prep work because you have to make a perfect loop beforehand (or within the audio editor) since the sample is looping on its own, when it gets to the end point of the sample, rather than according to the pattern steps

combining all this with the live sampling, resampling, one-shots, etc. etc. - dude its crazy, i havent even scratched the surface of all that but it really has a bottomless pit of potential if you put the brainpower into it…

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#5

This is actually so easy to do in the Octatrack. Press Function + Edit to get to the pattern settings page. Then select PER TRACK in the scale mode. Now you can set each track to an independent length as well as the time division.

There’s also other ways to do this, such as setting up the plays free and oneshot track option and syncing with the trig quantization parameter. Alternatively, you could accomplish the same this with Oneshot trigs. The Octatrack is all about flexibility. You just have to get comfortable with its capabilities and workflow.

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#6

like pmi said,
hit function/edit
set it to “per track” mode
now every track can have an individual length
but then hit function/page to set your track length, be sure to set the master as well, as everything will reset when the master length runs out.
I like to keep master on infinite so the poly rhythms can’t get cut off
but then you have to make your patterns change length is at 16 or whatever, or else your patterns will never change.
ect ect ect
either you love it or hate it
haha

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