Digitakt on the way, and the wait is killing me!

My advice is to make use of the quick save/load and control-all functions constantly. Go nuts on the trig conditions (dont neglect the fill condition!!!), you can quickly make 16 step patterns that move and evolve for a long time. The 64 step pattern length is more than enough when paired with clever trig condition and fill programming.

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More YouTube videos! And the manual. You’re already doing the best you can do, so keep it up and enjoy the wait :smiley: you’re gonna love the DT.

You could prepare some samples if you want. That kept me busy when I was waiting for my OT to arrive. Also, I had my OT manual professionally printed and bound; my partner is an excellent artist and created a unique cover art for it. You could consider it!

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Go through the manual page by page with the Digitakt powered on. Do everything as it reads.

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If only I had a Digitakt to power on! Are you teasing me?

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My personal advice: collect all your favorite samples into well organized folders, and drop them into the DT. This is absolutely stupendous for going from 0 to 100% with a beat in minutes.

I’ve got my favorite Maschine Expansion samples loaded at all times so I can get the sound I want and get grooving.

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Yeah!

Thanks everyone, appreciate the advice!

I didn’t think about organizing my samples, and that’s a great idea as it’s really your own palette of colors to work with.

I’m hoping I can work independently on the Digitakt to refine grooves, and bring it back into my DAW. It looks like the public beta of overbridge is far enough along to enable that.

3 - 3 1/2 days left!

Does anyone have any stories of the gear they wanted most, and having to wait for it?

Best regards,

Gino

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Replying to myself here, but this video was great for seeing the capabilities in action.

I really liked the honest answers from Cenk, and the discussion.
Some really cool and crazy music too :slight_smile:

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Only a few days to go!

  • Organize samples you plan to import (done)
  • Install overbridge beta (done)
  • Download latest firmware, 1.11 beta (done)
  • Download transfer, and C6 (done)
  • Read manual (done)
  • Plan where the unit will sit, and where to plug it in (done)
  • Watch tons of youtube videos (done, and ongoing)
  • Tell jealous friends you’re getting a Digitakt (done)
  • Don’t tell wife you spent $800 on a “box of wires” (ongoing)
  • Practice the dual hand 4 finger double stab to hit all 16 triggers with style (ongoing)

Hang in there bud! I will echo the samples thing. I’d also point out that you might want to limit yourself to less than 125TB of sample packs lolol. I find it kills me trying to find something that works and I still have to tweak it. A few gigs of Good sounding solid samples.

Also if you are planning on using using Overbridge I think it turns off the ability to do sample transfer from PC to DT (someone correct me if I’m wrong have not tried it yet) I heard using the Crunch DT file transfer app (web based) that one of the Elektronauts here wrote will work though (again someone please chime in if I’m wrong!)

And finally… play play play play. Want to make it into an 8 oscillator monster synth? Do it! Want it to be a drafty 8 track tape type drone thingie? Do it! It’s all there in the little knobby black box. You can make anything from 4x4 techno to ambient to hip hop. Whatever floats your boat :smile: enjoy! Looking forward to hearing your experiences when you get a few days into it. OscillatorSink and Cukoo have the best tutorial vids on YouTutube.

Oh edited to add we have a pretty decent FLStudio 20 thread going with some tips and such if you’re interested. Just search FL Studio 20 and Overbridge. One click map all 8 tracks to 8’channels. Boom :boom: done! I have a sorry tiny pc and had to tweak a bit to get the glitches gone enough for it to be workable. Not OB fault or FL fault, just my sh1tty pc :tired_face:

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But surely you’ll let your wife play it too, no? :wink:

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LOL - I was only kidding, she’s fully on-board with it.

It finally arrived, and I love it! :star_struck: :heart_eyes: :star_struck:

Having a lot of fun learning, and got Overbridge working great with FL Studio.

I used patcher (a tool in FL Studio) to make a DT pattern changer.
This allowed me to make pattern changes as notes where I want them, and tweak the patterns live on the DT. When I’m done previewing, I can record directly as audio tracks.

A lot to explore, but so far, so great!

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Awesome, thanks for sharing your input in the FL Studio topic too. Yeah man just have fun learning this little beast. Its got its limitations sure but I for one dont want something that tries to be everything for everyone and looks like this

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Exactly!

In fact, I feel like the intentional design decisions is what I’m paying a premium for.
For example, I think the “limit” of using mono samples with stereo send FXs is smart.
It doubles the storage, and increases responsiveness (loading, saving, etc) for many operations.

Nothings perfect, but I genuinely feel that the Digitakt will be highly collectible in the future.

Best regards,

Gino

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I just had a fkn 100% wonderful time playing my digitakt and my a4 for friends, drinking nice red, morphing from siq beatz to weird radio samples I recorded idk when and back, and I’ve fallen back in love with my DT.

(ctrl-all and fn-yes/fn-no are so much fun!)

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Awesome!

Right now, I’m finishing off loading my sample library. I’m at 53% full… you can put a TON of samples on the +drive. Need to practice doing live sessions more, and doing that with friends (and alcohol :cocktail:) is a great idea :smile:

The thing I’m exploring now is re-sampling to really mangle stuff.

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Ok - Getting back to this, as i’ve used my Digitakt for 2 weeks.

My review so far is 9 of 10.

It’s an amazing digital instrument, and I’m creating new things I never thought I would get into.
I made an ambient track for example, and had a blast making it. While the track is nothing special, it showed me a new level of “quiet” sound design. I don’t know what it is about the Digitakt, but I can hear all these little things in the signal (in a good way), and it’s cool to work at that level of detail.

Regarding Overbridge, I’ve had a good experience with it. It was actually great for a while, but I’ve had several disconnects while working. I wish I could narrow it down to make a bug report, but it seems to only happen when I’m working for a while (40min+). For example, last night I was dragging and dropping sounds to a pad, and did that about 20 times, and it crashed.
When the reliability is higher, Overbridge will be very high value for me, and I’m really happy it exists.

Now, the device itself is an infatuation. I friggin’ love making beats on this thing, and exploring sound design! I woke up early this morning just to play with sequencing the pitch of a LFO, added lock trigs to mess with parameters, re-sampled, and assigned multiple trigs to pick different start points of the sample. And of course you can keep going, and that’s the best part about the flexibility, you can can keep going. I wasn’t into samplers before, but this has opened my eyes to sampling as legitimate sound design.
Did you catch that I woke up early before going to work? Yeah, it’s that special to me.

Why only a 9 out of 10?

Is it because it’s mono?
Nope, I find that for percussion that’s great, and you can use 2 channels (or 8 if you want to be ridiculous) to model sounds. Yes - re-sampling takes it back to mono, but for me it just really has not been an issue.

Is it lack of effects?
No, while I would like to have more, I can shape sounds really effectively (well bandpass and notch filter, yes please!)

Is it because it doesn’t have a battery?

Nope, I’m perfectly fine moving from place to place with a power supply, and it’s very portable IMO.

Is it because it doesn’t have song mode?

Not directly, but that’s closer.

Is it because it doesn’t feel finished?

Yes.

As much as I love this thing, it just feels like it was on a story arc to be a historical product, and cut ever so slightly short. The team that worked on this should be damn proud. It’s such a unique, and cool device. For those smitten with it, you know how attached you can get with it.

My hope (ok - plea!) is that Elektron come back to the Digitakt and give it some attention, as it’s so close to being the best thing I’ve ever purchased. I’m one of those people who would never spend this much on a drum machine, and it’s utility has really impressed me and won me over.

9 of 10 for now.

10 of 10 if we can get a few more updates.

Best regards,

Gino

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I’m with you on the love. I get so much out of the DT, and it is absolutely “enough”. I can play an hour-long set on it, within one project, no problem. It gets better the more you use it. It’s outrageously good.

But I know there’s still a little more juice to be wrung from this juicy lil fruit. Individual track tempo multipliers. MIDI pitch & mod receive. Bandpass filters. And one or two things from Elektron that I haven’t even thought of yet.
And then, my friends, it will truly be the greatest. It will be at that ‘legendary’ status achieved by very few electronic instruments, and people will still be carting their precious, battered Digitakts around the world for decades to come.

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I’m updating this to a 10 now with update 1.30 :slight_smile:

Nothing is perfect, but the value you get with the DT is fantastic IMO.

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