Good Timing! (for me at least!)
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
So I was just about to drop a load of cash on a Machinedrum a couple of weeks back. However I decided to hold off because I got wind of the mystery Octatrack that was floating about on the internets and figured lets see what this is. Oh, additionally I forgot to mention that I have been aching to DUMP Cubase 5 for months, eying Ableton as the potential ship to jump to. Ok, back to my train of jumpy thought, the Octatrack and Elektron! Ok, first up the MD is dropping in price, and it is going to be upgraded in a huge way. The new upgrade shipped with all MD's forward is called +Drive, and will offer 128X the current memory capacity. So if you want a MD now, wait. The deal gets better, at least for me that is. The Octatrack is looking to be Ableton in a sexy Swedish box.
From Gear4Music:
"Billed by Elektron as 'creative and timeless sampling' the Octatrack offers an incredibly innovative take on sampling, allowing straightforward recording of samples on the fly so you can get down to business immediately.
Loops are treated with complete elasticity remaining in sync whether they are pitch shifted or the tempo of the device is changed.
Single sounds can be moulded into virtually any shape, with Elektron claiming that static samples are now a thing of the past.
On board you have a compact flash card for massive library storage, alongside a USB port for rapid file transfer.
With the addition of an optical cross fader, Elektron have succeeded in adding further parameter control to an already incredibly detailed machine."
http://www.gear4music.com/news/article/Musikmesse-2010-Elektron-debut-long-awaited-Octatrack/1D4/2010-03-24
So, this could not have come at a better time for me. I just got addicted to doing everything without a computer, and jumping back to being tethered to software for sequencing I was hoping to avoid but this product has a lot of potential when paired with my other analog gear.
My goal would be to avoid Ableton (if possible), avoid the USB controller, avoid the laptop, and instead get the Octatrack (if in fact it can accomplish what I want) and a MD +drive.
So, things are looking up, I can't wait to hear more about these 2 and when they will be available!
