I wanted to explore the limits of the Digitakt II as a sample mangler. In this track, I created a simple four-chord piano loop and manipulated the samples extensively. The Digitakt II offers three LFOs per track, but I needed more. To achieve this, I employed the ‘midi loopback’ technique by connecting the MIDI out to the MIDI in and sending CC data from MIDI tracks to Audio tracks. With two LFOs per MIDI track on the Digitakt II, I was able to utilize up to five LFOs per Audio track. (But it’s perfectly possible to route multiple MIDI tracks’ CC data to a single Audio track as well)
The track begins with the original piano loop and some added texture. Gradually, I introduce ‘mangled’ versions of that same piano loop, eventually phasing out the original loop to highlight the altered samples. Seven audio tracks were used, six of which had the exact same piano loop assigned. The last audio track featured additional texture and tape noise, which I also heavily modulated and distorted.
Audio recorded directly from USB. No post-processing.
it’s a cheap, random (but accurate) spectrum analyzer i found on amazon years ago. you can find plenty (and for a lot cheaper) on aliexpress etc.
just don’t pay any money to the etsy guys who literally buy dozens of the shittiest, cheapest, inaccurate analyzers, spray some airbrush on it and sell it with 1500% profit margin.
This sounds beautiful. So you need all 6 tracks playing at once to achieve this sonic awesomeness? Or are they not all playing at once at any one time?
Thinking of buying a digitakt to complement my Syntact and you’ve just convinced me.
Also wondering if syntakt can do similar mangling with loopback.
Very cool. How do you get that warbly pad-like sound that exists throughout a lot of it but comes in strongly at about 1:37? Is it just time stretching + pitch LFO?
