A total newbie needs your professional guidance, thank you in advance!

Elektron Gear Digitone/Digitone Keys
#1

Greetings, all the musicians and Digitone users here!

First of all, I want to thank you all for providing so many great conversations on the forum, all those rich, useful information and good atmosphere in the past, gave me the confidence to buy a Digitone and started my journey into the synth world, and of course, became a member of this nice family.

A little bit background:

Now it’s been six months since I scratched out my first listenable tune with my DT only, I’m looking forward to expanding the learning journey a little bit further, so, it leads me to buy a Keystep as an external MIDI controller, I’m using it and it works fine.

Wishes:

Recently, as the research goes relatively deeper, I find that I become obsessed with modular synthesizers, but please don’t get me wrong because I want to build my setup around my Digitone. My wishes are: To find a modular synthesizer with a rich/Bladerunner kind of sound, then, to sequence the sounds with Digitone.

My questions

So here come my newbie questions, I hope you don’t mind those!

  1. Recently I’m focusing on two modular candidates: Mother-32 and Neutron, since I’m on a budget, think I would go with Neutron as my final decision in the near future.

What I want to consult is: From your experiences, do you think one of these two candidates could go along with Digitone well? Or is there a better modular choice?

  1. Cables and connections between devices are always such a headache for a newbie like me…Sorry that I have to come up with a such basic issue, in my wishful but doubtful thinking: The modular is like a “The 1st section”, a “sound pool”, providing its traits, so it might be staying in the 1st position. Then the “2nd section”, Digitone, could sequence the melody like we usually do, finally, keystep as the “3rd section”, to add some extra playing during the jams.

Here’s my second consulting request: Is this setup idea a possible one? Or is there a wayyy much better one, please give your advice to me!

  1. MIDI Interfaces. This is the area that I know so little from every aspect of my music knowledge storage… After a lot of reading and video watching, I’m still not quite sure about where to put a MIDI interface between all the devices(in the future setup), meanwhile, it is no surprise that I have no idea of what kind of interface to buy.

So here comes my last consulting request: Is it necessary to have a MIDI or any other kind of interfaces?

If so, then (Without using a computer) with a MIDI interface, in what kind of order should I rearrange a modular, a Digitone, a keystep?

As a total newbie of music production, this is my first post in the Elektronauts forum, it’s a long post and I hope this won’t bother you all!

English is not my first language, I tried my best to make myself clear but if there are any glitches in my post, please tolerate my words!

Looking forward to your precious and kind advice, it will be so helpful and such a great guidance for me to make decisions!

Have a nice day and take care.

1 Like
#2

controlling any midi synth via a KeyStep inputting notes to the DN and also on to the synth should be fine

KS midi out > midi in DN midi out > midi in SYN (assuming syn has a MIDI DIN port)

In order to live program the sun via a MIDI track on the DN you’d normally use the KS set to transmit on the Auto Channel of the DN and then the track selected in the DN gets focus - I haven’t sequenced often from the DN but there should be no issue to have the KS address both the internal DN engine when needed and the Synth

you won’t need any midi interfaces

whether the Neutron plays well with the DN is really your call - at least at heart these are quite different beasts although the DN can give subtractive flavours as it has a filter (supposedly modelled on a ladder filter like the M32 would have and in turn the Crave which is a M32 clone with a different but comparable oscillator section) whereas the Neutron has its own filter which doesn’t pinch bottom end when resonant, so it has its advantages - any can be input into the DN to add a splash of reverb/delay etc

I have all three devices, KS/DN/Neu and I don’t see why they couldn’t make a happy family but it really depends on the kind of sounds you like and how you like to combine things

the only thing you’ll need a confirmation on is whether the DN plays nice when the external keyboard is passing MIDI on from the current MIDI track whilst feeding it in, it should be fine, but a glitch doing just this with the Elektron Analogs presently means I’m only 99% sure it’ll be fine (i.e. no need to merge the sequenced OUT via DN with the MIDI Thru from DN)

The only two synths you might hesitate to combine would be ones which are ostensibly the same and limited, unless that was your aesthetic, so closing on features and sound character should be your driving factor - the DN can do so much so it’s an even harder question to be specific about what pairs well as it depends on what you want to do with it - but a flexible digital poly with sequencing, inputs and effects and a flexible analog mono (albeit with only notes to meaningfully program via midi) and a DIN equipped Keystep with its own sequencing and CV if needed should all make for a useful setup with some different strengths and lots of depth and lots of hands on and massive sound design potential … the crave/M32 voices are much simpler but have some interesting sequence tricks to expand their potential - there’s enough youtube fodder to check which does what you like

and welcome to Elektronauts :thup:

5 Likes
#3

I’d recommend investigating the Dreadbox Nyx as a possible semi-modular contender. It has lovely sounding oscillators, filters and reverb. It’s more than capable of Bladerunner sounds. For a cheaper alternative, check out their new Typhon synth. It doesn’t have the semi-modular patch points of the Nyx but has plenty of modulation options, a sequencer plus effects and it sounds amazing!

3 Likes
#4

Oh my, thank you so much for this detailed reply!! This is absolutely what I need and I’m grateful that you have spent time on this, it’s a great guidebook to me!

After reading it, it’s definitely canceling my hesitations, think I’ll go with the Neutron in the coming months, with an extra purchase of a few more cables and wires at the most, by following this guidance, I think the ideal sound would come out!

Also thank you for your tips, it’s amazing and thoughtful, thank you again for your kind and detailed reply, it’s my pleasure to join Elektronauts!

1 Like
#5

Hey James! Thank you so much for the new options, I’ve checked out the Dreadbox Nyx on Youtube, it does sound amazing! It has such a thick tone and you’re so right, it’s more than just Bladerunner sounds!

Both of them sound great and attractive, unfortunately, there is no dealers or localized online stores of these two products…which is such a pity, but still, thank you for the information, maybe in the future I could find a way to have one of those!

1 Like