Digitakt-enabled ambient

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Sorry this is a very vague post but ambient is a very wide open music style.

Digitakt seems like it is very deep box, but mercifully not as intimating as Octatrak.

I don’t have a specific thing in mind how I might use this box if I buy one but I would love to hear from anyone who uses it in creative ways to enable works of ambient.

What is it you do with the Digitakt exactly for ambient?

I love little rhythmic decorative flares of sound, sound effects etc. never done anything sample based stuff before but seems like it could be fun and helpful for ambient.

#2

since there are some limitations around how many samples and the amount of time the samples can be (127 samples in the ‘pool’ & 64MB of RAM, which is about 11 minutes of samples), finding ways to make ambient soundscapes requires a bit of creativity. You can loop samples, utilize amp envelopes, filter env, & an LFO to make small samples end up feeling like longer and evolving aspects of you pieces. it goes without saying a lot of it depends on what samples you bring into your DT and what you’re going for. So a lot of this also depends on what other equipment you have to create samples or what sound packs you have.
I will say the DT is very fun and immediate for experimenting with cutting up and processing samples, so i don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you do end up with one.
There are definitely some great resources on YouTube (loopop has a video about Brian Eno style ambient music for example) that might give you some more info. I hope this helps.

#3

Tons of reverb and decay.

Resample and resample again.

Lfo on pitch of slight percussive sounds then live record motion of attack. Gives it a live feeling.

Although I love the immediacy of the digitakt, it’s mono sound and 8 tracks only gets me so far with ambient before I hit that wall of boredom from the sound of the digitakt.

But pushing it to it’s limits with resampling, reversing samples, trigless trigs, motion recording, and playing with the decay and reverb got me further into my own sound than a lot of other gear and DAWs did.

I’ve used the Digitakt as a drum machine, sampler, arranger, performance tool, midi tool, sound sculpting tool, and more. It’s a great piece to have.

An ambient track of mine on Youtube

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#5

It can do granular in a pretty cool way! (Midi loopback helps here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGd15ktPVdo

Probability and trig locks (be it pitch, reverse, etc.) can go a long way. It helps that the DT with it’s mono punch, reverb/delay, and compressor sounds really good.

I got the DT about a year ago to make some ambient music ~ it was fun! It’s definitely a capable machine. Now I have a Deluge because I like long samples and sequences

Lots of good examples hiding here on the forum, of course: Search results for 'digitakt ambient' - Elektronauts

#6

You can set up each track like a series of tape loops and trigger manually, no sequencer. There’s a YT vid on it, but I forget who posted it.

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#7

Yes! I did this a lot with my DT. The mixer page comes in clutch with this method

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