Tons of teachers and pros recommend the “make your own version” of an artist’s song. It won’t end up sounding anything like it. Just recently I saw an interview with James Taylor saying he did something similar when first starting out. Also a famous author just said in an interview on NPR that he basically transcribed other author’s works for a few years to get a granular view of story structure and plot. It’s just an exercise that can make you appreciate the craft and learn some tricks. In the end you will still sound like you and AFX will still sound like AFX.
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well, don’t cover things, just try and copy the patterns but with your own sounds.
You aways mess it up and make something new anyway, but the process of listening to something closely enough to copy it is the fastest way to pick up what’s going on.
IDM not withstanding there’s only so many patterns that sound great tbh, after that it’s sound choice, swing and mixing…
Also, it’s quite good to have something like this:
and just build beats based on random selections from it. Your sound, their patterns. After you’ve done a bunch of that you might be stocked up with a lot of new rhythmic ideas.
I find Attack Magazine’s “Beat Dissected” columns are another good resource.
After that use D16 Decimort to get some grit in threre and use some field recordings.
(that last bit might be personal taste)
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Oh, that’s exactly what the last two people said in loads less words.
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By the end of the video I don’t think I would say it sounds exactly like Aphex, but it does sound pretty cool.
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Absolutely Attack Magazine’s Beats Dissected is a good resource. Also, for the basics, I have a little book “Pocket Operations”, which is a collection of drum machine patterns that was made by someone on muffwiggler iirc. It’s pretty useful for getting a starting point, has a ton of different patterns for different genres (a lot of funk and soul, so I guess that is where the authors’ heart lies). I have the printed version, but you can grab the PDF for free from the site.
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I remember some:
You can do a lot of this stuff with the OT.
A recent one, that’s quite nice 
And of course everything by @nedrush for crazy break stuff
(see @Bwax post above)
This thread might be interesting to you as well:
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This might seem really simple but I’d start by making beats with just 4 or 5 sounds max. It’s really easy to create kits with loads of interesting stuff but you may find yourself adding sounds just to compensate for a lack of a decent structure.
But then on the flip side maybe chuck a load of sounds together, go wild and pick out the interesting bits & dissect them.
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Another great piece of advice! Sprinkling a ”busy” rimshot pattern on top of a very uninteresting beat, then add yet another glitchy sounding pattern on top, yep definitely done that. And I have a tendency for maximalism but I’m working on it! 
Thanks so much everybody so far and keep them suggestions coming! Will take a good look at the links in the coming days but start with the practising TONIGHT.
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I’d like to echo people’s recommendations for dissecting other’s work. When first trying to wrap my head around making good drum patterns something i did a lot of was finding songs that had melodies that felt in line with what i lean towards in my own writing and doing note for note recreations of the drums to get a detailed view of how they were made. I wouldn’t recommend using these recreations in your own songs but approaching it as an exercise like transcribing someone else’s work on guitar.
That being said nothing beats just making as much music as possible and experimenting as much as possible.
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I’m struggling with the same problems as the OP. Lots of good links here. Beats Dissected looks very promising. Thanks for the tipps
@korpinen I took the liberty to merge your thread with a related discussion.
Don’t hesitate to check what has been said above, and the following ones as well:
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Listen to Jaki Liebezeit.
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i THIS this.
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Cheers! (As long as it’s ok we also talk about tips that are not specific to Digitakt.)
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Damn good point. Fixed.
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Increasing the sequencer resolution by changing the track scale is great for creating more complex rhythms or just getting more intricate timings.
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Electro, hip hop. Listen to that and twist it up.
Crazify it.
Training assignment: recreate beats from Syro at 16rpm then increase speed x2
Then come back and tell us what you’ve learned.
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With your Elektrons at your disposal, definitely take advantage of probabilities. For example, just set up a basic groove with kick, snare and hats then set the kicks and hats to 90%. You’ll get lots of happy accidents that way. You can then record them and pick out the best bits. Or else get your beat going and resample it as a whole as if you were using a breakbeat (OT is perfect for this) then play it back using some random trigs across 16 steps, go into each trig and p-lock the start points randomly. You don’t need to be in total control of everything is my point. Experiment!
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I would not be too dismissive of “genres” when it comes to grooves. Much of traditional music (e.g , Indian, Persian, Afro-cuban, but also European) builds on codified/categorized rhythmic patterns, often related to ritual and/or collective dance, which require coordination, and also to some extent build ups, drops, etc. Artistry can also be to vary within an established pattern.
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