I’m obsessed with the idea of creating a song with the Octatrack where I’ve pre-programmed every damn thing that’s going on in there, in advance. Scene transitions, pattern switches, delay repeats, you name it. Like Korg’s motion sequence thing, where on some of their instruments, you can record EVERYTHING.
Goddamit.
So anyway, within the Octatrack, this is not possible, I know.
But what if I want to create a perfectly crafted track for recording purposes (not for live, this doesn’t apply, I enjoy fucking things up live and trying to find my way back), one where I have control over all parameters for the purpose of creating an album version of a track?
How do I go about doing that? There’s a lot of stuff in the Octatrack you can’t automate, and it would be nice to be able to program a slice of perfection for your track, and spend hours just tweaking details instead of relying on your exact timing every single time you record a new version of the track.
Has anyone of you done something like this and what tools did you use?
More often than not, this is what I do. I make some patterns, then structure them into a rough track in the arranger. Then create more variations of the patterns, various fills etc and insert those where I want them in the sequence. In the end I have lots of patterns, many of which are small variations of each other.
I do things this way simply because this is how I used to do it in Protracker back in the days. Since the arranger is quite powerful and allow you jump around between patterns without playing it to the end, start a pattern at various offsets, etc. I feel I have detailed control and lots of interesting options.
As an example, I made this a couple of days ago. Nothing done “live”, just pressed play and recorded it. It is not a great example as it is a silly track without much fancy use of effects etc., but still, I can’t think of much I wouldn’t be able to do by setting the parameter locks I want instead of wiggling knobs live.
Thanks. Awesome track! Listening to it now, funky and sweet.
I’ve actually never tried the Arranger mode, always underestimating it to be just a way to string patterns together and nothing more. Maybe I should look closer at this feature. If it can resolve a few of my issues, then perhaps that’s enough.