Digitakt + Keith McMillen 12-Step

Elektron Gear
1

Greetings all: Thanks for reading this. I am posting this having done some forum searching and googling, but hoping someone has specific experiences with this combo and can give me some practical and straightfoward answers here.

I am hoping to control my Digitakt with a Keith McMillen 12-step. I like the 12-step because the keyboard layout makes sense in my brain and I might have occasion to use it to just play a synth chromatically. But the main reason for getting one is as follows:

I am a percussionist and play various little monosynths via keyboards, and most of the time I do not have a free hand to change patterns or mute things on the Digitakt. I used to use a BSP, but moved to the Digitakt because of its sampling role, 8 midi sequencers, and being frustrated that the BSP couldn’t receive mutes or even basic transport stuff from external controllers.

Now I’m looking to get the 12-step, and am kind of surprised that no one has made a video or tutorial about how to control the digitakt with an external device like this… a couple where it’s slaved to another sequencer or ableton, but nothing where you can just mute stuff and press stop and play and change patterns with your foot like some kind of counting horse at a carnival.

Wondering if anyone’s done this, and what their experience has been. I’d love to have this ability, but frankly, I don’t have the time or the interest in blazing an entirely new trail here if there’s lots of deep MIDI programming involved. What I’m wondering is:

Can I set up a KM 12-step (which I believe can send CC messages no problem) to remotely press play, stop, and mute/unmute 5 tracks and change 5 different patterns with my foot? Are there CC messges that will allow me to do pattern changing and muting without sending a ‘change mode’ command to the digitakt? Like, instead of pressing ‘pattern’ and then pressing 2, is there a command I could program into the digitakt that just sends the command ‘change to pattern 2.’? (I understand the pattern changes are not necessarily instantaneous, that could be fine.)

Thanks for your insights/

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Hey, I have no experience with the 12-step, but those action are definitely doable with an external controller. The Digitakt can switch to any of the 128 pattern by sending one Program Change message. You can also mute/unmute each track with CC messages.

From the quick look I just took at the 12-step manual, that would probably be hard to achieve though. It looks like you can’t set it to send Program Change just by pressing a button, these are only sent on preset changes if I’m not mistaken. Also you can only work with 2 MIDI channel at a time, and if you want to control 5 tracks independently, you’ll have to use 5 different MIDI channel.

Again I don’t have any experience with the 12-step and maybe it’s more flexible than what I understand. :slight_smile:

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Thanks. Seems like Softstep is way more the vibe for what i’m trying to do.

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Yep, I think the SoftStep was designed more for control and the 12 Step more for playing notes/chords. Be aware that you’ll also need the KMI MIDI Extender to hook the foot controller to the DT, since all of KMI’s controllers skimp on MIDI connectors in favor of space savings (which is annoying nowadays with the 3.5mm MIDI connectors that more and more manufacturers are using, but whatever).

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I don’t have a digitakt, but I use a softstep with an OT and it works fine.

You’ll need the expander, or any other USB midi-> midi interface (I use iconnectivity).

Softstep has a good programming software so it’s quite easy to program.

I don’t remember in details how many, but it can send several messages simultaneously and it works as expected.

In the end, programming complex sequences was a bit too demanding for my brain and I never pushed it as far as planned, but I’m quite sure it will do all what you need. I used it to switch several external fx presets + OT pattern and I always found my way to make it work.