Digitakt tips and tricks

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Hey !
I just found something tonight that I really love in DT…
Say I have a long sample playing on Track 8 of Pattern A01.
I switch to pattern A02, whose Track 8 is mute…
Well the long sample keeps running.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is the way to the Transition trick !!!
Just need your long sample to be the resampling of Patern A01, and here it is !!!

Other one : say your long sample is a pad and you have an infinite release on amp envelope.
You can just hit stop, let it evolve while switching to pattern A02 (track 8 muted) and hit play : the new beat can have a different BPM, pas de problème !!

Too late for recording a track tonight, can’t wait for tomorrow :smile:

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MIDI Seq. Hold note, or infinity note without retrig
Digitakt OS 1.50
Changing my Octatrack for Digitakt
#2

Not sure where else to put this. But besides the quick mutes [Fn] + [Track trig] I found that you can suppress the sound source with simply keeping the trig of the track you want to mute pressed in.

This mutes the track until you release the trig again.

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#3

I don’t have a DT, but if it’s like the other devices, you’re not muting, you’re just superseding the sequencer track by overlaying/replacing it with a new source … so if the sound was a sustaining one, you’d likely be hearing it (i.e. it’s not a mute) … you’re just forcing the sound engine to wait on your note off, whether it sounds will depend on the nature of the sound source & envelope

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#4

So, if Pattern A01 is 4 bars in length and is resampled, then length of pattern is set to 1 bar, and the change is made to Pattern A02 with Track 8 muted, would that give 3 more bars of playback to achieve the transition technique?

#5

Makes sense! thanks for clearing that up:)

Either way, I just realized this, very handy for short sounds like kicks.

1 Like
#6

Just realized this today, set lfo to square and have it change playback mode between forward loop and reverse loop, gives a nice pendulum style looping to get smoother sustain sounds from some sample material. Set the lfo to trigger mode to make sure it always starts forwards (or backwards if that’s what you want)

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#8

I just toyed around with some interesting Digitakt techniques and I discovered away to get that sort of jazzy feel to the snare drum.

-Put the start icon in the middle of the sample(most likely empty space)

-On the LFO random wave, speed about 48 is working for me with 8 multiplier , max depth- put the destination on sample start and throw in a bunch of trigs and have the snare sequencer run at a 17 length(presuming you’re running a standard 4/4 rhythm)(of not I doubt it matters)

-I can’t really notice the sound ever, but I also have a 25% trig with delay on it. I can’t discern it out, so I assume it’s having an effect

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#9

I’m gonna try this with some piano sample

1 Like
#10

Ooooh! Me too!

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#11

Is the LFO set to trig? I’m going to try that myself with some samples today.

#12

I believe it runs free.

Another cool thing in regards to this trick to point out- you can determine the lightness/sparseness by sliding start towards the end and heavier/more frenquent by sliding start towards the beginning

1 Like
#13

Does anyone know any use for the NEI trig condition?

I always believed it was triggered when there’s a trig on the neighbor track but it’s only when the neighbor has also a trig condition evaluated as true

#14
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#15

The video Sebas just posted might explain it but I don’t have time to watch the whole thing right now, but for the NEI thing, I believe it’s like this:

NEI trig evaluates true if the “most recent” trig expression on the neighboring track was true. The neighboring track is actually the previous track sequentially, so if you’re on track 4, the NEI track is track 3.

I don’t believe the neighboring track’s trigger has to be on the most recent step… it could be from 5 steps ago or whatever, as long as whatever the most recent expression was, evaluated to true.

As far as uses… I think you just have to get creative with it :slight_smile:
I assume it’s more for experimental kind of stuff, I don’t know if there’s an obvious use for it in more traditional songwriting approaches.

One way I can think of, is let’s say you have an extra snare hit on a 33% trig. But when that snare triggers, some other sound on another track (well, it would have to be the very next track, or you would have to rearrange your tracks to do this) that normally happens right after it or something, sounds too cluttered. So you could use the !NEI (the reverse NEI), so that when that snare does trigger, this other sound WON’T trigger, to keep things clean. Following that setup, you could even add another trig with that same sound, but more delayed, and set that to NEI. So you still get the same sound but at a different time, when that 33% snare triggers.

I’m no expert and there are probably some really creative ways to use it, but that’s what I have thought about in my short few weeks with the Digitakt so far.

I’m not sure if there is much use combining it with a neighbor trig that is on a set repeat amount like 1:2, 2:4, etc. Because you could just set your trig to that same repeat amount and it would come out the same. Unless you want to set off a chain of stuff that is going to share the same repeat value, but want to be able to control it with only one trig maybe? But in general I suspect the NEI is better used in conjunction with random chance trigs… so that when the random stuff does happen, you still have some control over what “other stuff” happens at that same time

7 Likes
#16

NEI trig evaluates true if the “most recent” trig expression on the neighboring track was true

Thanks for elaborating, man! I didn’t get the most recent thing. You know, I use trig conditions a lot but can’t see any use for this condition. Pretty sure Elektron has something in mind tho. So I’m looking for examples…

I was thinking like, if NEI were true with a trig on neighbor track you could use it for layer drums on DT

#17

I haven’t played with it too much but I THINK it also includes the current step? Would need to verify that in the manual to be sure. So I guess you could, but in that case you might as well just use a normal trig.

The best I can figure, is that the NEI thing is kind of best used against random chance trigs… so you can make sure other things happen at the same time as the random trig… or DON’T happen… Everything else is predictable and you might as well just use the actual trig conditions that match up. Unless you weren’t totally set on what kind of trig condition you wanted, but want some tracks to be linked together, then I could see linking them with NEI and only changing the trig condition on one track

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#18

Not sure if anyone has said but when on the microtiming page any of the knobs can be used to make quick adjustments instead of the arrows

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#19

Had an epiphany last night and realized anything can be an oscillator :slight_smile:
The way I’m approaching the Digitakt right now is to sequentially go through each builtin drum kit (Abrasive, Adlib, Digit, etc.) and experiment/tweak the hell out of them to see what kind of cool stuff I can get out of just stock kits. Some of these kits already have “useable” chromatically playable sounds (some toms, snares, percussion etc.), and a couple even have some minimal synth sounds… and yes I know there are tons of synth sounds in the machine, but just sticking to the drum kits as an intentional limitation, I realized I can basically turn any of these sounds into useable synth sounds.

Set sample on forward loop, make length real short to your liking, mess with sample start to scan through the audio until you get an oscillator you like. Can put an LFO on sample start for a wavetable scanning effect. I guess this is also kind of like granular synthesis? I have never really messed with that.

Will probably have to adjust the base tuning of the sample so it’s in tune with anything else in the pattern (I believe the length, and thus rate of oscillation, will affect the perceived pitch)

Toms make good basses :smiley:

There’s like an endless world to explore just from basic kits.

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#20

Yeah- I was going into the NEI conditions hoping it would act as something like a choke condition when things get crazy with poly rhythms. I guess not.

Feature request! The ability to choke tracks-ideally routed freely, but even a neighbor track situation would work on account that it’s not promised and I want this feature.

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#21

Maybe they could implement this as a condition called “CHK”, where any trigs across all tracks that have the “CHK” condition will choke each other.

Of course you’d be using up your trig conditions just for this, but hey, it’s something.

If you want to go super advanced, could maybe even have a “CHA” and “CHB” (choke groups A and B)

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