Over the last few weeks, I have been focusing on learning the Octatrack and building a comfortable workflow with it. This week I decided to try and writing something more serious with it.

To help me learn, I used Octatrack to create the sound/music for a logo bumper that you might see at the beginning of a movie on VHS in the 80s-90s. It helped me to master the sampling system and the basics of the machine's sound design. From there, I built a simple track to test my understanding of the sequencer settings, syncing external gear, and signal processing. This improvised track was the result of all this experimenting with patterns I had written and was recorded in one take directly from the Octatrack.

The next step will be to learn the song arranger to make recording and production easier

I am happy to say I am starting to understand the Octatrack (after 4 or 5 years of neglecting it due to the initial learning curve). The last 2 weeks of experimenting and learning really paid off. I can now finally say I have written something for the first time completely with the Octatrack and have a new skill from this year's time in quarantine

I had forgotten that weekly beats was happening in 2020 but I am glad I got to have put together some tracks at the end. On to 2021. See you in 2022?

Gear Used:
Elektron Octatrack (sequencing, Sampling, Processing, drum machine)
Roland Juno-6 (sampled chords)
Deffel Tracker (sequence sega Genesis)
Moog Mother-32 (Sampled squelchy synth)
Moog Realistic MG-1 (Sampled Bass)
Sega Genesis Model 2 VA3 (Playback and sampled)
Yamaha DX7 (Sampled Bell Stab)
Tascam DR-05 Recorder (used to record percussive objects)
Elektron Analog Rytm (All Electric and sampled drum sounds)
M8 (sampled lofi synth pattern)
Strymon Flint (reverb for Ambient pad chords of Juno-6 before sampling)

Tags: ambient, chiptune, glitch, idm, lofi, sega genesis, week 52 2020, View by:ENC_