Can Digitakt sequence Fills?

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

If I’m building a pattern chain, and I want a fill on the 8th bar (of a 4 bar pattern), can I do that somehow? Or do I need to duplicate it and run pattern A01-A16-A2-A2 like that?

I’m playing cello and DT at the same time… Is there at least a way to trigger FILL with a footswitch or something?

#2

I don’t think you can sequence fills (?) but if you know for sure you want the fill to be on the 8th bar, which would be the second repeat of a 4-bar pattern, then you can use conditional triggers set to 2:2.

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#3

Doh!

I don’t know how I overlooked that! I guess I already created something on a fill layer and thought “Oh shoot, I can’t do this hands-free!”

What does sometimes irk me, though, is there is no condition for “every bar EXCEPT 8:8” which is part of this fill. The kick drops out (which you can do as NOT_FILL but you can’t do NOT_2:2 (or however you’d write that fill with the line over it?)

#4

you actually can do the “every bar EXCEPT X” using trigless trigs (where you hold function when putting in the note, it puts in a yellow trig instead of red)

find your kick or whatever sound you DON’T want to play on that last bar or whatever
put a trigless trig right before it
make that trigless trig 8:8 or whatever you are using. (remember if you are using a 4-bar pattern you would use 2:2, not 8:8)
then make the kick “NOT PRE” (the PRE with the line over it)

then whenever that soundless trig gets, uhh, triggered :slight_smile: the following kick WON’T play

ALSO you can have this apply to a whole set of notes using one trigless trig, like for example if you want to take out ALL kicks on the last bar, since PRE and NOT PRE do not evaluate each other, they “see through” any other PRE/NOT PRE conditions. so for example you could have:

step 1: trigless lock on 2:2
step 3: kick NOT PRE
step 5: kick NOT PRE
step 8: kick NOT PRE

you do have to be careful that you don’t put any other conditional trigs in between them, though

AND … if your kick is on the very first beat, you could either put the trigless lock on the last beat of the preceding bar, or put the trigless lock on the first beat, but microtimed “back” (to the left), then put the kick on the second trig, also microtimed all the way back so it’s essentially on the first beat

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#5

Couldn’t you just program the stuff you want as fill and not fill appropriately. Then holding down the fill button would make your fill play and the not fill steps drop out.

Cool thing about programming it with fill conditions is that the fill button needs to be pressed for fill stuff to play so it can be pressed intermittently for effect as needed.

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#6

he mentioned he’s playing cello at the same time, looks like he wants it to be as hands-free as possible

i guess he could use his toes :wink:

but yeah that fill condition is awesome for intermittent variation, not just traditional “fills”

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#7

Oh I totally missed the cello part. But, the fill button wouldn’t be to hard to press with a toe :wink:

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#8

This is brilliant!

Not only do I not have to use my toes, but I think you stumbled upon something that’s possibly more interesting… You can put a trigless cue marker before sections of trigs, use the PRE or NOTPRE (either one) and set the trigless cue to be % instead of 2:2 or whatever! You can have fills programmed and randomly played…

Wait… is this the same as setting the first hit of the fill to random% and then each subsequent hit set to PRE or NEI? I feel like there must be some other clever use for this…

#9

You’re right in that using a trigless “cue” marker with a random chance, and then all other hits as “pre/not pre”, is pretty much the same as just putting the random chance on the first actual note hit and linking stuff to that, but there might be subtly different nuances depending on how you want the first note to work and how you need to lay out the trigs in your track, given limitations of space for example or whatever way helps you keep track of stuff easier.

Say for example:
You have a kick on trig 5, as part of your regular pattern.
You have a tom on trig 6, intended to be the beginning of your fill.
you want a 33% chance of fill happening so you have two options:

  1. You can make the kick have a 66% chance of firing and put the following FILL notes as “NOT PRE”, so it’s like a reverse approach. The kick has a 66% chance of firing, which means it has a 33% chance of NOT firing, and then when that happens, the fill notes will activate.
  2. The other way would be to put a trigless marker BEFORE the kick, with 33% chance of triggering. Then make kick NOT PRE, and the fill notes as PRE - this obviously is more straightforward, but the first option might be better if you don’t have an option trig before the kick or something.
  3. EDIT: Another super obvious option would be to have the tom have 33% chance and other stuff following do PRE and NOT PRE as appropriate. The difference here would be that it doesn’t involve the kick in any way, so it really depends on what notes you want to include in your “fill / not fill” logic and what kind of trig space you have available.

Also, keep in mind you would lose the FILL control and leave it up to random chance, but yes, once the random chance does trigger, all the following “PRE/NOT PRE” conditions would function as expected as one cluster.