Octatrack: MIDI Arpeggiator w/ Mutable Instruments Ambika

Рет қаралды 38,265

5 жыл бұрын

This tutorial examines the features of the Octatrack MIDI arpeggiator, a very modular sequencer-within-a-sequencer. The generative possibilities for melody, harmony, and rhythm using the Octatrack MIDI sequencer/arpeggiator are extremely vast, but due to the blasé appearance and non-obvious feature set the power and flexibility is easily overlooked. Somewhat obtuse and seemingly non-musical design decisions also make the arpeggiator rather unintuitive but I feel that overall these choices were made in order to offer significant power and variety to the end-user.
0:51 - basic MIDI setup
1:38 - MIDI arpeggiator
10:01 - LFOs for modulating MIDI sequencer and arpeggiator
13:44 - Ambika to polyphonic
16:57 - FX application
17:48 - re-sampling arpeggiator-generated audio
23:38 - sans narration arpeggiator demonstration
26:30 - Ambika to polyphonic
the MIDI synthesizer I'm using is a Mutable Instruments Ambika with six SVF voicecards, which I built some years ago from the original run of Mutable Instruments PCBs
the background intro music was created using one thru track to process the Ambika mix output, one generative MIDI track to sequence the Ambika, and two real-time re-sampling channels
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Пікірлер: 97

@MrKost-dn6tq Жыл бұрын

I miss you Max. I cannot tell you how important your videos were to my development. Thank you.

@brainspoke Жыл бұрын

i 100% agree with this statement... i would have sold my Octa a year ago were it not for this channel alone.... :) ... and I also send thanks to you Max...

@user-xv8yg1li2t 3 жыл бұрын

It's so damn good. I've sleep for a while, then rewind and listen again. Music full of happiness. Thank you!

@m00ftak Жыл бұрын

Thank you very much for all of your illuminating tutorials. I admire how much you push these machines and find hidden beauty

@aiekmeeisnhdye 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you Max. I really admire your way of understanding and explaining all the features of this extraordinary machine. From the clarity that your careful choice of words brings to the learning process, to the wonderful and passionate details of your creativity, watching your tutorials has not only helped me understand the secrets of the Octatrack's marvelous structure, but also rejoice myself with the structure of a beautiful mind devoted to unlock those secrets and share them with the world.

@domeniquexander_ Жыл бұрын

Wow man. This is the best video about the arp on the Octatrack. So much stuff to try. Thank you 🙏🏼

@tedpedersen123 3 жыл бұрын

Yo max, I have gotten so much out of your OT videos. Thanks so much man! It seems like as soon as I discovered your channel you vanished… Hope wherever you are you are well brother! ✌️🎹🎶🎶🎶

@louiswarynski9039 3 жыл бұрын

It’s lovely. Thanks for this video and all the others. It’s not just about the OT, it’s about music. Deep respect.

@nooooddy 5 жыл бұрын

Hugely helpful and inspiring. You've demystified elements of my OT and unlocked new ideas and sonic options, thank you.

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

my pleasure, thanks a lot! challenging machine to truly grok, but it's worth it!

@robertsyrett1992 4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the breakdown! As others have said you have helped demystify my OT just a little bit more.

@synlfo7828 3 ай бұрын

Best arp video on the tube. Thank you

@earlsfield 2 жыл бұрын

The best video on OT arp. Well done.

@joshatlas 3 жыл бұрын

must have watched this 10 times. Thank you man!

@porl3004 3 жыл бұрын

Ha me too. Where’s max gone!?

@tedpedersen123 3 жыл бұрын

I know right?! It’s seems like I found his channel and then he vanished… ✌️🎹🎶🎶

@Oceanwireaudio 5 жыл бұрын

Fantastic, I have both the Octa and Ambika and had no idea about this depth of arp modulation

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

and then once you dig into it you get greedy for more modulation destinations and sources :D

@johanboberg 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for this, the octatrack is so deep

@am5790 5 жыл бұрын

This was a helpful and explained tutorial. Thank you.

@geecen 5 жыл бұрын

Great tutorial - having 8 of these arps is really quite powerful!

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

thank you! among about a few dozen other things I didn't even mention the fact you can layer the MIDI tracks and have multiple MIDI tracks sending messages to the same MIDI channel... !! I will need to circle back around more than once to this stuff to give it a fair shake and flesh out more of the potential :) :) :)

@am5790 5 жыл бұрын

@@maxmarco that will be a golden tutorial. I await with anticipation.

@queencitycutty9082 4 жыл бұрын

@@maxmarco please do.. circle back around and go through the functions

@lusz-music 5 жыл бұрын

Just perfect tutorial.

@falk3nn 5 жыл бұрын

that's mint. that end bit, jaeziz. 31.40 is evocative af :) 🙌

@BigPlasticPlant 3 жыл бұрын

Excellent excellent video, very clear and precise.

@lesstalkmoredisco9445 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the effort, helping me a lot at the moment!

@norwegiananalogue3465 Жыл бұрын

You sound like Noam Chomsky laying down some solid tips for the Octatrack 😎

@G.GordonMidi 5 ай бұрын

Oh man. Kinda does. Now I can’t unhear it haha

@ljs8888 4 жыл бұрын

Beautiful tutorial, thank you! :)

@frankie1833 5 жыл бұрын

shit, man. not only is this informative it's inspirational. thank you for all the work you do!

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

thanks a lot dude!! octatrack arp is a special kind of beast 👍

@kotn2 4 жыл бұрын

Very deep analysis

@Unifono2012 5 жыл бұрын

Very nice tutorial! Keep it up

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

thanks man, really appreciate it! :) :) :)

@wax83 5 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the effort you put into these videos quite inspiring stuff.. Now I need to dust of the old nord rack of mine!

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

thanks for watching! will breathe life into just about any synth, but ones with good multi-timbral implementations will really shine!

@gorillabraudcast474 4 жыл бұрын

Ah, very cool little groove

@BrunoWiebelt 5 жыл бұрын

so musical Thank you... good inspiration

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

thank you! the Octatrack arp is pretty absurd!

@holydiver4728 5 жыл бұрын

Great vid Thanks !

@jamessusbilla 2 жыл бұрын

amazing. thank *YOU*

@fleshback 3 жыл бұрын

Brilliant!

@luchofrancisco 5 жыл бұрын

Thanks, really helpfull!

@robvbeats 10 ай бұрын

amazing! thx~

@PaulHubiss 5 жыл бұрын

Hi Max, I also have Ambika, a few pieces of Ambika, and I'm thinking of buying Octatrack. I'm looking for a usable sequencer to control hardware synthesizers and Octatrack seems to be usable. Thanks a lot for this video ;)

@17thvillain9 5 жыл бұрын

Thanks for these videos! Some of the other tutorials out there are too scattered and unplanned

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

my pleasure! .... hehehe that's pretty much how I feel about my own octatrack videos as well... always feel I could do a lot better... not easy machine to demo!! xD

@LamontStigler Жыл бұрын

27:24 your videos are amazing, thank you.

@gavinpeters9531 4 жыл бұрын

Great video! Question - can I send the midi output of one arpeggiator to the input of another? (or muitiple others?)

@spybloodjr 5 жыл бұрын

love throwing an Octa midi arp on my JD-Xi drum channel for a quick fill or just to hear the madness after applying an LFO to TRAN.

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

yeah man!! MIDI arp on percussive sounds is a great tip! Love that stuff!! Controlling other gear like that is awesome, so many possibilities with Octatrack MIDI arp!! In general the OT is such an amazing MIDI sequencer that unfortunately tends to be overlooked and hugely misunderstood - eventually with some more videos hopefully I can help a bit with some of those erroneous impressions :) :) :)

@spybloodjr 5 жыл бұрын

I would happily watch any videos you put out on the octatrack. I totally agree about the underutilization of the octa's midi sequencing. It blows my mind that I can have that sucker hammering away on 8 other midi tracks at once. OH, also the CC learn function and you can record knob tweaks?!? As you know this isn't even the half of it. One of the limitations I've run into with the Octa's midi tracks is not being able to overdub live recorded midi notes. You get 4 notes per trig, but you can't layer notes up overtime. AFAIK You can only live record all four notes to each step simultaneously. Otherwise everytime you play a new note it will overwrite whatever was previously recorded. For example, let's say I have a 16 step sequence and live record four on the floor. If I try to add a clap to the kick on steps 5 and 13, the midi note for the clap overwrites the kick. However, if I intentionally play the kick and clap at the same time it'll record both! Ah! Everytime I watch a video of someone chewing through a problem on the octa I spiral into a fit of inspirational productivity. "Oh shit, that's right you CAN do that, now what if I do it like this??"

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

super great info, thank you!! That's an aspect of Octa MIDI I haven't quite explored yet, although I have some ideas I'd like to eventually try out so that's amazingly helpful to know! hugely deep device, so many aspects to it that I think it can only be 'mastered' in the context of particular ways of working - there are dozens of features I have barely even used even though I know they represent a vast amount of untouched possibilities

@mike_qbik 3 жыл бұрын

Where have you been?

@FairuzOsman 3 жыл бұрын

Miss him so much lol

@mathieul695 3 жыл бұрын

Nice videos , Quick question: Can you play on different midi channel at the same time ? If yes , how ? Thank you

@lwpweb 8 ай бұрын

by the way the speed parameter decides the lenght of the arp midi setup note lane. With 6 it playing the full range, with set to 12 its only playing the first 8 steps.

@edjwise 3 жыл бұрын

That fully featured arp is what is missing from the Analog4. there are no plocks for the arp on the a4.

@MoltenSon 4 ай бұрын

Thanks for this tutorial. One thing I can’t get is the relationship between the 4 notes on the main page and the sequence in the note offset setup page. What exactly is going on between the two?

@MoltenSon 4 ай бұрын

Ok I have answered my own question… it offsets the note, which is what it says in the manual, but I couldn’t get it. So it first plays the 1-4 note arp as entered on the note page, then any settings made on the arp setup page will offset (or mute) the note in addition to the initial arp settings. Incredible!

@lwpweb 9 ай бұрын

what sense make it to call the range in cents 10 20 30 40???

@lwpweb 8 ай бұрын

where are the midi arp ssettings stored?

@shatteredsquare 4 жыл бұрын

Is this the same functionality as the arp in the monomachine?

@maxmarco 4 жыл бұрын

the MNM arp is more simple overall, although there's probably a lot more you can do with it than immediately meets the eye - I haven't yet dug into using MNM arp + MIDI loopback, so I'm not really sure what is and isn't possible

@The_Invisible_Man 4 жыл бұрын

hi there, can the ocatrack transpose track?

@maxmarco 4 жыл бұрын

there are two ways to transpose MIDI tracks - the MIDI track TRAN parameter, or by using arranger and its transpose function

@janniscarbotta3725 5 жыл бұрын

how do you apply the fx to the midi signal? 17:00

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

by putting FX on the thru machine that I set up in the beginning of the video to route the Ambika audio through the Octatrack

@janniscarbotta3725 5 жыл бұрын

@@maxmarco thanks!

@danieldemayo6209 4 жыл бұрын

I wish the a4/ak arp would let you p lock it’s settings :(

@maxmarco 4 жыл бұрын

I've never really used one but it is surprising to me that based on what people have said the A4 didn't get a very beefy arp - does it have any advantages over the OT arp?

@lwpweb 8 ай бұрын

yes instead of push encoder works better.

@shatteredsquare 4 жыл бұрын

The potential power this has for external gear control is obscene

@maxmarco 4 жыл бұрын

I originally got an Octatrack simply to control and sample my modular gear - after some years of using it though I find the real magic happens fastest and easiest when standalone

@DiSC0RDUK Жыл бұрын

Anyone else hear The Addams Family @9:50

@VinceWallace478 3 жыл бұрын

Can the digitakt do this ?

@chrisfroman8018 3 жыл бұрын

No the digitakt does not come with an arp.

@seanchud 5 жыл бұрын

Can't believe I've never noticed the distortion on the filter.

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

It's a real secret weapon! I'm sure they would have put it on the parameter pages if it would have fit as it is very unfortunate it can't be p-locked or assigned to scenes. I also tend to find it a bit more useful overall than the Lo-Fi effect distortion parameter, which is much more of a hard clip

@seanchud 5 жыл бұрын

max marco yeah it’s too bad about p locks, but I get it. At least I can work with it. I just find the lo fi a bit more harsh/digital? than I prefer.

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

definitely to me the distortion on the lo-fi effect is much more digital in sound as it is a hard clipping distortion reminding me a bit of solid state guitar distortion pedals, whereas the filter distortion is a bit warmer and less harsh as it seems to be more of a soft-clipping saturation effect, and is somewhat more similar to overdriving an analog mixer input

@danieldemayo6209 5 жыл бұрын

Hmm I’m thinking I’m gonna have to try this with the rytms dual vco machine....

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

how much octave range does that offer? it's fun to loop back the arp so you can use it on the OT audio tracks for example, but those only have 2 octaves of range which is a bit limiting. My eurorack sound sources usually have about 5 octaves and that's usually plenty but I most enjoy using the arp with something like the Ambika since it can respond well to the very wide MIDI note range that is easily produced using the Octatrack arpeggiator, especially under heavy modulation - setting up complex multi-timbral patches with varying note ranges and etc. to dynamically respond to the generated arp is also quite fun, definitely want to cover some more in-depth approaches to using the arpeggiator at some point in the future

@danieldemayo6209 5 жыл бұрын

max marco I just realized this lol I’m like wtf isn’t it working?! Had to go way low....

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

haha! yeah usually analog VCOs will only respond to a handful of octaves - still a lot of fun to be had sending the arp to them though!

@danieldemayo6209 5 жыл бұрын

max marco I could t read your whole reply earlier....I think it’s only 2 or 3 octaves....what might be cool is using an lfo or plocks to control the “detune” to add chords or other weirdness...maybe it’s a bit redundant but it’s kinda odd using the pads on the rytm too. I barely know what I’m doing so there’s that too lol

@maxmarco 5 жыл бұрын

hahahah! sounds like you have a pretty good grasp on things - I'm not sure how the Rytm interacts with incoming CCs combined with scene changes - could be quite some complexity there. MIDI CC sequencing/modulation combined with the OT arp definitely blows things wide open, and the OT is happy with using multiple MIDI tracks to send messages and overlap notes on the same MIDI channel, so you can have a ton of modulation and sequencing all going to the same device on the same MIDI channel - I think the only CC I modulated in this video was a bit of velocity, but the world is your oyster when you start digging into the CCs - although once you start getting really fancy you might start to run into the limitations of MIDI bandwidth! :D