I’m loving the Digitakt so far and having a lot of fun. How is it best to handle loops? Say I have some percussion or simple pad loops that I’d like to incorporate - how do I incorporate these without timestretch? I’m not from the old school where I produced in a world without timestretch…
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Just find the bpm of the loops you want to work with and change the pattern bpm to match.
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Or just time stretch your loop ITB to match the tempo of your song/patern
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currently don’t have the DT in my possession but assuming it works like any other sampler:
use a metronome or add a 4/4 kick to keep track of time
then start playing around with the pitch of the sample
if loop ends early, lower the pitch
if ends ends later, increase pitch
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One thing I’ve done recently as a workaround on an old Yamaha sampler is to use the DjayPro app on my iPhone, which was a relatively cheap purchase. The time stretch algorithm on that sounds pretty good and you can use it to check the BPM of tracks, and quickly grab multibar phrases. The nice thing is that it works with Spotify as well as your iTunes library.
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Add a trig to each step of the pattern, and at each step, increase the sample start time proportionally until you’ve got a clean loop.
Or, use a ramp LFO on sample start time and use retrig (DT has that, right?) on the first trig… lovely tracker style timestretch 
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I’m interested to try this! My Digitakt shipped today, so should be here tomorrow or the next day.
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fwiw 
will have some crossover
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Was planning to save the bpm of the patterns to the loops. Would be nice to have some basslines in there and other mono stuff.
p-locking the start of the sample might be a good way to come up with some crazy jungle loop variation.
Not sure how practical that is but looking forward to receiving my unit and testing this out.
Luckily I have my loops already prepared at the right BPM so lack of time-stretching is no show-stopper.
I would prepare bpm and pitch in software and then sample it to the Digitakt. Yes I’m lazy.
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I recorded a few loops straight in with good results but something strange happened when I tried to sequence them. I put the first loop on the one and that is fine. But, I put the second and third loop on the 17 and 33 (or the one on page 2 and 3). However, those wouldn’t play. Other pre loaded samples would and track 1 (first loop) would but no matter where I put track 2 and 3 (loop 2 and 3), they wouldn’t sound.
Now they would sound when I simply pressed the track button though.
Any ideas?
can you elaborate on this lfo and retrig technique… im struggling with this.
Have you checked if tracks 2 and 3 are muted. This caught me out last night.
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With microtiming and conditional trigs you can have 1-3 samples on the “same” trig. One of the demo patterns uses this to play 2 chords on the “same” trig.
You can place two trigs left/right to the first one and move the microtime all the way left/right. Set the conditions so they never fire at the same time. This might also be useful with loops.
Taking apart the demo patterns revealed some neat tricks like this one.
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By default the sustain is quite short when opening a new project. This caught me off guard when I first started using the machine. May not be your problem, but worth noting.
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I’m new to elektron devices and could use some assistance. I’m trying to get the lfo to adjust the start of my sample. I have a 2 bar loop. I’m putting a trig on step 1 plocked to have lfo on that step. Lfo shape is ramp and destination set to start, mode is hold. I fill in the other steps with trigs. No matter the settings I use for time and depth the sample will play the first “chop” repeatedly before playing through different portions. It’s like it ignores the lfo for several beats. I have tried different lfo shapes and modes with similar results. What am I doing wrong? What would cause the lfo to be ignored for so many beats?
Edit: setting the mode to trg sorted it out