Elektron-Users

What are your favorite features of the OT?

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I like the most - by far - those trigless trigs in combination with envelope parameter settings!! Similar to the MnM, but more easy to use and flexible.

Imagine a drum loop. Set the first trig like usual to trig the sample and trigless trigs on every 4th. Then set the amp envelope parameter to "R+T" so that also trigless trigs control the amp envelope. Afterwards you can divide the loop's contents easily into BD and offbeat stuff via attack/hold/release. Add some delay and you can fill up the rest of the loop, e.g. if you wanna have hihats on every 8th instead of just offbeat 4th's.

Imagine a synth loop. Set the first trig as above and the trigless trigs in an offbeat rhythm. Then adjust the FX1 envelope parameter to "R+T" and FX1 to filter. Via filter depth you can now control a nice pumping cutoff automation, far more flexible than with a LFO.

Now, imagine 3 drum loops + 3 synth loops stacked and controlled like this. Very powerful, complex and forward-pushing sound.

P.S. In the beginning, I'd been extracting elements from drum loops via that DJ Kill EQ. Though it's a nice feature, all "extractions" sound very similar and, for instance, BD's lack punch when filtering out the mids. So I went away from doing so and used the OT MD-style instead, with BD on track 1, SD on track 2 etc. That's nice, but nothing compared to the sonic power you can achieve with complete loops on the tracks, controlled as described above + maybe some slicing and scenes!!

Nice tips! Thanx!

MK7 wrote:
Then set the amp envelope parameter to "R+T" so that also trigless trigs control the amp envelope!
I was not aware of this Parameter.
thanks

i enjoy the most the trigless trigs in general.

Thanks for sharing all of this MK7.

One remark regarding the "punchy sound" I stated as a result of the above-mentioned workflow: Not using the DJ kill EQ frees up the FX1 slots --> space for (even) more compressor assignments.

What features do you like the most?

Nice tip man, just got my OT this week and i'm blown away with all the unbelievable things one can do

5id wrote:
Nice tip man, just got my OT this week and i'm blown away with all the unbelievable things one can do

Congrats! Have fun with that sick machine!

Yesterday, I found a feature that's even greater than the above-mentioned one: time scale set to '64, 1/4' in combination with micro timing!! (and I'm not that poly-rhythm kind of musician..)

Before elektron, I preferred to use 16 bar loops. In my opinion, 16 bars are the perfect unit to structure electronic music, e.g., 1x (or 2x, but that doesn't make much difference here) 16 bars intro, 1x 16 bars theme1, 1x 16 bars some more action, 1x 16 bars theme2 etc. with some cymbal hit in the beginning of every 16 bars and some BD/SD variation in the end. With the elektrons, I switched down to their 4 bars. This seemed quite restrictive to me. Sometimes I tried to go back to 16 bars via pattern chaining, but that's not the same (for instance, because you can't easily copy&paste between different patterns during playback and need a large amount of patterns).

Now with that '64, 1/4' time scale, patterns can have a length of 16 bars WITHOUT losing any rhythmic details thanks to micro timing and maybe some retrig p-locks! Imagine a chain of 4 patterns that have a length of 16 bars each and a bank with 4 of those chains. That's really a lot of space for variations! (easily enough for a complete track, where you can even record all automations) And if you need one track with some very crazy weird rhythm, e.g., percussions or a melody, you can set this one track to the usual speed of a '1/1' time scale thanks to individual time scales.

NICE

This feature might be interesting for anybody trying to build full tracks on the OT.

Yeah been using this 1/4x speed for some time now. Very useful.
The only thing that sucks is that OT doesnt guess automatically master length and you have to specify it yourself every time you extend a track from 4 to 8 or 16 bars.
Same happens you if you have your pattern scale mode in normal and when you switch to per track no matter how many bars you have activated in normal you always get a reset of master length to 1 bar. Really clumsy!
Another thing thats missing although stated to be working in the manual, is the autocopy of pattern pages when you extend a pattern.
They really have to work hard in this sector of pattern length management.
In my opinion along with the No of master steps, an option should be present to express the master length in terms of bars and the number of steps to get automatically readjusted. I hate to turn the knob to get to 512 steps even when pressed down for speed purposes. It feels again very clumsy.99% of people use integer master bar lengths and you only need sometimes to get to an odd number of steps.
And lastly is the problem of looping infinately tracks that have independent loops lengths without getting into excel to find the master step length or sometimes run out of master steps before all tracks loop correctly.
Dont get me wrong I simply love my OT but I definately need these issues fixed. I got expectations from this machine as all of you have I think.

I won't be getting my OT until the new year but i'm terrified & excited at the same time. So many interesting things it can do but a big learning curve from everything i'm used to. Still, until my circumstances change the OT will be my only piece of kit & i intend to fully explore its capabilities.