Saving on the Octatrack: 3 Tips and Tricks to avoid losing your work

[@RickyTinez]

haha! Having a good time.. settings some slices.. and bam. That should be the Octatrack tag line. Thanks for making this video and sharing all these tips Justin! Taught me a ton

[@_justin_joe]

Haha! Yeah! And Wow, that’s quite amazing coming from you. I have learned so much from your channel as well. Loving the thought of all the exchanging of ideas going on.

[@sashajedinac9391]

i learn something new every time i use the octatrack

[@_justin_joe]

Ain't that the truth! It is a bottomless well of discovery. Always new treasures to be found and lessons to be learned.

[@HelicopterRidesForCommunists]

Nice. Ty. I was wondering how to do this on the OT. Its not as immediately obvious as it is on DT/ST.

[@_justin_joe]

Glad it was helpful. Took me a while to wrap my brain around it and come up with a workflow

[@AltusNoumena]

This video is a God send

[@_justin_joe]

I’m so glad to hear that!

[@lwpweb]

this video shows very good how excellent the file management design elektron made. very clever, for everyone. More such videos.

[@_justin_joe]

Thanks for the comment and encouragement for more vids. I have been in a slump of life but want to get back to dropping some more OT vids. Hopefully a new one this week or next at the latest

[@hauntedexcursions]

Man thanks for the info. Was having trouble with some settings not saving right. Saving parts helped… Just when you think you know the octatrack you don’t lol.

[@_justin_joe]

It’s always a learning process with this thing! There’s even more to saving samples and chops etc that I didn’t know when I made this video. I highly recommend the Synthdawg manual

[@acidjack]

Hello from Germany, that video helped me a lot. Thanks

[@_justin_joe]

So glad to hear that I appreciate comments like this so much

[@njdpdv]

Handy tips!

[@videosarchive8058]

Just what I needed, thank you!

[@_justin_joe]

You are so welcome!

[@OFFMike]

Thanks I save some gems with that technique before I saw your video but I didn’t know really what i was doing and how know it’s clear🙏🏾

[@_justin_joe]

Thanks for that comment!

[@digitalspleen]

Thanks man, that is so useful !

[@OlivierSarfati]

I am pretty picky about having an organised library. Your tutorial just sorted me out as I am expecting my OT Mk2 :) Thank you ever so much.

[@_justin_joe]

So glad to hear that. I am the same way too. Thanks so much for the feedback!

[@bonnieabdulu1668]

Thanks !

[@_justin_joe]

You bet!

[@johnsweeney3634]

Thanks man! Really appreciate this - especially the bit at the end where you've cleared up how the newly saved and assigned sample is assigned to a SAMPLE SLOT but NOT YET assigned to the machine.

[@_justin_joe]

You bet. Took me a while to wrap my head around it and create a workflow where I was not losing stuff all the time. So glad that it helped!

[@lwpweb]

assigning and loading samples are different things. assigning is to see this in the slot lib, loading is something you can do with items which are assigned and visible int the slot lib.

[@aleksandrlukin565]

Rather useful! great vid!

[@SclimBeats]

Thank you

[@_justin_joe]

You're welcome

[@masterdimmer9326]

Yeah this is great…proper useful octatrack knowledge, not just the normal content….any thoughts on gain/volume levels clipping, internal recording attenuation? I hope you feel like looking into that as you have a good clear headed style :)

[@_justin_joe]

Thanks for that feedback, I greatly appreciate it. Yes, I will indeed add that to my list of upcoming videos. I think I have a pretty good workflow for gain staging, recording and whatnot but would need some time to flush out the ideas for a vid!

[@SONWU]

We’ll done!

[@_justin_joe]

Thanks so much!

[@_justin_joe]

Just checked out your channel and subscribed as well. Dope content!

[@robertsyrett1992]

Nice cube!

[@_justin_joe]

Thanks! Got that at the Moog factory in Asheville NC when I took a tour a few years back. 😎

[@robertsyrett1992]

@@_justin_joe That is such a magical place! It's kind of a miracle how they keep the spirit of Bob Moog while continuing to create new designs for the modern musician. (I'm a happy Sub 37 owner)

[@_justin_joe]

So very true! I love my MiniTaur and have had the pleasure of using many of their wonderful products. Top notch stuff, always.

[@domeniquexander_]

Hey 👋🏼 wow man this helps. Have mine since 3 days now and yesterday i start to sample in flex mode, turn the maschine off and all lost. Now i know why and how to fix this. Do you have an extra video about this template or templates? Best, d

[@_justin_joe]

Thanks! Which parts of the template are you most interested in? Would be glad to a video on it

[@maikrobin]

Thanks for showing this man..! This really can´t be more confusing! When reading "save and assign sample" and after that even "assign to flex 3 " I´m sure that everyone would expect the sample to be assigned to flex 3. But instead - it´s not 🤦🏻‍♂ In fact, it is literally NOT assigning the sample to the machine. It only saves the sample, but you need to assign it yourself.

[@_justin_joe]

Absolutely, it can be super confusing indeed and the source of much frustration until you can wrap your head around what it is doing. Glad it helped!

[@marshalldestro]

yeah i realized what it means to say is "Assign to free Flex sample slot" and then "Assigned to Flex sample slot 3". And then its still up to us to go point the machine at that newly filled slot - i can imagine use cases where you wouldnt want to change it right away and instead put that new sample on another "part", so i guess it makes sense :(. It took me FAR too long to figure out that there is one Flex sample list that is shared by all the Flex machines because everytime i saw the message "assigned to Flex 4" i wrongly assumed it was putting it on the 4th flex machine of the project.

[@maikrobin]

@@marshalldestro Thanks man! I didn´t use my octatrack now for a while and only reading this gives me a headache already. So - better never stop using your octatrack haha ;)

[@jolieuke]

Collect samples ... thanks for that !

[@_justin_joe]

You bet. It’s a life saver!

[@wreignone]

This was extremely useful. I recently had an issue with power outage and thought I lost my save state. This is actually useful. im taking mental notes but i bet it still happens one time or another. So I have a question. Have you noticed sound quality issues with OT? I heard from a few users that they have not only had issues with audio degredation, not just with sampling. But also instruments, is it noticably bad??? I have tried turning off all effects, and still noticed a small degredation. I might sum it.

[@_justin_joe]

No issues here in regards to sound quality. It is actually quite excellent in my opinion to say the least. If you are having issues while sampling I would venture to bet it has more to due with gain staging, by that is just my 2 cents. It sounds awesome in my opinion and when sampling my hardware synths, if my levels are set right, I cannot even tell the difference between the sample and the original. I have returned other samplers like the Deluge due to sound quality issues so I have certainly given this a lot of my attention in my set up.

[@wreignone]

@@_justin_joe hey man following up after running my own experiments. Yeah your right dude. I noriced when you gain stage correctly, it makes a huge difference. I recently followed a tutorial and the guy had the gain at 127 on nearly everyrhing. But, I started mixing and sampling between ot and digitakt. And i was getting some noise when going from ot to digitakt. Like this sample sounded fine on ot, very clean, and when sampling to digitakt it had a hint of noise. I tried different cables and everything . Turns out cos i was sampling from ot headphone jack, the headphones volume from ot was clipping ae ir was nearly all the way up. So I backed it down while sampling etc and yeah, everything was staged correctly and I had no issues at all. Made me think wow, maybe some people have just used it wrong in some instances. Its definitely got a bit of a bad rap. But its all good. Thanks for the informative video i found it very useful 👍🏻

[@_justin_joe]

@@wreignone Thanks for that follow up and your feedback on your tests. Gain staging is SO important on everything and it a bit tricky on the OT since there are so many places to adjust the volume. Like you said, having your levels at 127 is the best place to start. EZBOT video he is always hammering home to have everything at 127, which is no attenuation. Then you can set your level from there in the amp section which also sets you up for your LFOs to work better when controlling the amp level and whatnot.

[@jaypugsley8025]

Great video!! It was such a relief at the end when you explained why the error file appeared at the end (due to there no being any sample recorded). I just got myself an used OT mk1 and this happened the first time i saved and assigned a recording (following cuckoo's tuto). I got really freaked out thinking that there was a bigger issue (and that whole flex machine was corrupt). I am now quite convinced that this was my own user error, however, are there any other instances that you have seen this same error come up?

[@_justin_joe]

Glad it helped! I can think of another circumstance but of course with OT there are always surprises.

[@dkamhaji]

Can you create a sound on the Octa and mess with the AED and then the track parameters such as ENV and FX etc.. and save that as a sound to pull up on another bank or project? even savable to the computer as a back up?

[@_justin_joe]

Yes but in order to do that you need to resample that track and save the new sample

[@IDONTPLAYENT]

Should you clear the recording buffer after you save the recording?

[@_justin_joe]

No need to clear. Next time you arm or record it just records over the previous

[@LoveMeBack]

Where can I get that Cube?

[@_justin_joe]

Got it from the Moog factory in Asheville NC when I went on a tour of the plant there. It was such a fun experience and place. Not sure if they are still doing that since they got bought by InMusic and fired a bunch of peeps 😢

[@neb2612]

So does this mean I have to click collect samples every time I save a project?

[@_justin_joe]

At least the 1st time and do it again when you add any more samples

[@neb2612]

@@_justin_joe Ok, thanks for the reply :)

[@doomageddonjnr7561]

Wow! I have finally been able to save my work haha Couldn’t Elektron have made some of these things default? I know, they have made it with an open architecture, but even so haha Anyway, many thanks

[@_justin_joe]

Glad it helped. I have had a lot of heartache along the way but now it’s like 2nd nature and with templates it gets even easier.