An idea for kits on the DT

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#12

Again, it should be an OPTIONAL feature that can be turned on or off, which I said in the original post - “You save your track as a SOUND. Then, in the DT settings somewhere, you could set it so that if that specific sound is on the same track as previous patterns,”

Here’s how I envision it working (in my perfect implementation):

  1. You create a kick for your song and put it on track 1. You save it as a SOUND titled T1Kick.
  2. In the DT settings somewhere, you can have a few options:
  • All T1Kick instances on any track in any pattern/bank will always be effected by changes in any other pattern/bank.
  • Only T1Kick instances on T1 will be effected by changes in any pattern/bank.
  • Same as the first 2, but per bank (for people that do 1 song per bank).
  • Original mode - changes are only per pattern.

This would give insane amounts of flexibility for multiple different work flows.

It’s not a nightmare on the OT or A4 once you get used to it, so why would it be a nightmare here? Not everyone uses their devices the same way. Some of us, as has been discussed in the feature request thread, would find something of this nature to be insanely useful for the way in which they work. Some, such as yourself, would not. My idea allows for individual tracks to be linked throughout patterns or not, user’s choice.

Also, I have the OT, DN, and Rytm, and I’ve had the A4, Machinedrum, and Monomachine. None of my remaining Elektron boxes fit the particular role that the DT does in my setup. If they did, this wouldn’t have even been an issue for me.

Why is the idea of giving people more flexibility so opposed here?

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#13

Why is the idea of using a device as it is, rather than always requesting new features/changes so opposed here? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Edit: I have totally been guilty of this in the past FYI

#14

Are you telling me that you haven’t updated your DT since you got it to use the new features that have been implemented that were not on the device “as-is” when it was first released?

2 Likes
#15

Edited my post above and created a new topic so I don’t sidetrack this one: Do we all complain too much?

Totally not having a go or directing it all at you fyi, as I’ve requested plenty of new features/changes in the past.

#16

It’s all good! You know, as well as I do, that the kits in any way will almost never come to pass, but we can all hope!

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#17

I consider the sounds on the banks of Drive+ as a kind of cross project usable micro ‘kits’.
I’m wondering why almost no youtuber talks about sounds concept on DT. Maybe only few people understand it’s benefits (which could be due to a non ideal manual) or - in comparison to AR user - they actually don’t need it in their workflow.

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#18

Indeed, I think the sounds system on the drive+ are as close as you need to get for kits. If you have a sound that you like and want to reuse all the time, you can load it up with little to no hassle.

Also agree that there has yet to be an focused video on the topic.

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#19

Right, but that still, to my knowledge, doesn’t apply to the track levels, so mixing is still hard. It also means that doing live tweaking from pattern to pattern doesn’t follow.

#20

The DT and DN were designed because everybody using the OT, A4, AR with “Kits” (yeah, OT is kind of kit-style only I know) are the first year confused why their sounds change when they edit pattern A16 and a week later they try to continue with A1 and wonder WHY THE HELL it suddenly sounds like sh*t :sweat_smile: (true story, it happened like 100 times to me). Soooo… I can understand why you want it but I can understand why it’ll never be implemented… it was a day-0 decision due to the fatal userexperience beginner people had with their Kit-devices.

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#21

Since 1.30 you can set the mixing levels of all tracks globally which solved a lot of “kit issues” for me:

Added a GLOBAL FX/MIX menu item in the SETTINGS menu. In the GLOBAL FX/MIX menu, you have the option to set the parameters on the DELAY, REVERB, COMPRESSOR, INTERNAL MIXER, and EXTERNAL MIXER parameter pages to be global (making any change to these parameters affect all patterns in the project and not only the active pattern).

An older trick makes you copy / paste “kits” to another pattern: Digitakt Unofficial Guide - #122 by obk

And you can export / import sounds to the sound pool and reimport those in patterns where you need them.

With a bit of planning and some structured working, all of this is more than enough “kit funtionality” for me.

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#22

Right, but that’s assuming you’re using the same sounds for every track in all 128 patterns. The copy/paste kits thing is good if you’re using the exact same kit in every pattern, too. Otherwise, you still have to do things individually. Also, IIRC, when you copy/paste/load sounds, the mixer volumes and trig page settings don’t always copy over correctly, which can cause other issues. None of those ideas/solutions allow for tweaking live across chained patterns, though, which is a big part of this.

My whole point is that this feature would allow you to lock/sync individual tracks across multiple patterns, either per bank or per project, to speed up workflow and allow for chained patterns that are being tweaked live to carry over to the next pattern.

Trust me when I say that I have spent the last 1.5 years working on streamlining and organizing this live set, and I’ve explored a multitude of ways to address this. That’s how the idea I proposed in the original post came to light. I realize not everyone wants full on kits, and I’m sure there are many people who are not interested, but we’ve also seen interest in the feature request thread, and I think my idea would satisfy both types of users.

@PekeDorty I definitely had that user experience when I started, then I learned my gear and realized how invaluable it is to have linked patterns/tracks. TBH, I wish all the Elektron machines would implement it in the way I suggest. That would allow every machine to be even more flexible for full song composition and arrangement.

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#23

I totally get it… and I would envy that feature (for all units - like A4, AR!!)! Elektron sadly diversifies their gear still with features to let you buy all of them. That mindset needs to change first which I don’t think will happen over night (if ever…) … because it works so well (I own all of their latest gear after the mk1/MnM/MD besides the AH)

#24

Oooph. Don’t get me started on that whole diversified gear thing…

I’d accept the lack of overlapping features if the boxes synced up properly (pattern change issues, anyone?!?), and had more similar interfaces/UIs - why do the Rytm, DT, and OT, which can all do sampling, have such drastically different sample management and interactive user pages, for example. The DT SRC page is, overall, the best out of all 3, IMO.

With those 2 oddities, it makes it so that even if you have multiple boxes, they don’t all actually work the same in some of the basic functions, nor can they reliable communicate with each other when you’re mixing pattern lengths and time divisions.

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#25

My big suggestion for Elektron is: Please ONE base OS with same UI/UX across all devices. Easier to maintain, add features for the whole range all at once at the same time.

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#26

See, here I am just asking for a slightly better track link/management feature, and you have to go and ask them for some crazy hairbrained idea like similar UI experiences. INSANE!!! :slight_smile:

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#27

Kits would make the Digitakt even better for me. Why do spme people have a problem if some of us would like to have the option? I don’t get it.

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#28

it’s called trauma! I have to take lithium twice a day because of kits!

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#30

opt-in is a good idea (similar to how different length tracks is an opt-in “advanced feature”)

I think the one thing I’d tweak on your proposal is to have a kit mapped to the bank+track rather than to a sound. So for Bank A, Pattern 2, Track 1 you could toggle between the non-kit sound (default) and kit sound (same for all patterns in Bank A).

That way you don’t really need to touch the Project layer at all or risk projects affecting each other by changing sounds.

#31

I would love to have some type of kit functionality as well. And it’d be great to be able to set each track to have base parameter values assigned at either a Project, Bank, or Pattern level. That way, for example, I could have my kick on track 1 persist throughout a whole bank, but have other tracks dedicated to shifting with each pattern.

For me it’s slightly less important for drums, but for synth sounds it’s really useful to have continuity (for me at least) in most instances when moving from pattern to pattern. That’s the main reason I sequence my Digitone with my Digitakt: so that when I tweak parameters leading up to a change, the sound doesn’t snap to something else after the change occurs.

@slicetwo As workaround, since you’re also using an OT, you might consider using its MIDI tracks to sequence your DT and DN.

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#32

I tried using the OT to sequence the other gear, but I use a lot of plocks and s sound locks, which are a pain to transfer over. Sometimes, I use the OT LFOs for the DT/DN, though.