Digitakt tips and tricks

[eangman]

Just noticed here that you can actually choose patterns from any bank when you make a chain in Digitakt (and Digitone). Maybe you already caught up on this, but it was news to me Will update the manual.

Sneak peak:

1. Press [BANK] + [TRIG 9–16] key to select bank.
2. Press and hold [PTN] and then press a [TRIG 1–16] key to select the first pattern in the chain.
3. Release the [PTN] key and then press [TRIG 1–16] keys in the same order as you want the chained patterns to play. Keep a previous [TRIG] key pressed while you press the next one, the one after that and so on. You can press the same [TRIG] key again if you wish to add the pattern multiple times in a row. If you want to add a pattern from another bank, press [BANK] + [TRIG 9–16] to select bank and then press [TRIG 1–16] to select pattern.
4. Press [PLAY] to start the sequencer and play the chain. The chain will be looped once the final pattern of the chain has played.

[Jack_69]

Coming closer to „song mode“

[paulkwitek]

You can do that in Trig Conditions simply hold down the pad you want to assign a specific sound to go to SRC and choose the sample you want it to play… so you can have 16 sound per each track on all 8 tracks

[kizunaut]

If you have an one-shot sample with a bit of silence at the end, you switch on Forward Loop for a trig as a kind of an alternative way to make a retrigger. The chances of you hitting an exact beat with it are close to nill, but it makes for an interesting effect. And unlike retrig the volume envelope has an effect on it, so you can have all kinds of rattles, klinks and klonks fading in and out.

[thelightshineth]

Just learned something tonight. Sorry if it’s already been posted but hey anything like this is worth bringing attention to in my opinion!

I’m starting to use my DT as more of a hybrid audio track sequencer. Meaning, some tracks I’m keeping as micro-programmed drum sounds, but others I’m recording full phrases of synths or other stuff and just keeping that track as a full-length audio file with a single trigger.

On the song I’m currently working on I’m just barely running out of tracks for what I want to do, which led me to try this out, and thankfully it works:

THE TRICK: Once a long sample is triggered, you can change sample select to a different sample and it will not change the one currently playing, until it triggers again. This means you can queue up changes in advance, re-using the same track. Of course when you change the sample on that track it’s going to retain whatever effects settings you have etc. SO, my plan is to use one track as a “general flex” slot to bring in extra elements to a song.

Still going to use dedicated tracks for the core parts where I can do more specific balancing/effects/filtering etc. but I really like this idea of a “flex slot” for misc stuff.

I think this allows for a lot of mixing in different stuff throughout a song within one pattern, instead of just being limited to eight “static” sounds, or having to create new patterns. And with sample backup capability now I am not worried about filling up my DT with long audio clips

Also, similar to above, when you mute or unmute a long sample that’s already been triggered, it will keep playing to the end (or not playing if it was previously muted). The mute doesn’t actually mute/unmute the sound, just the event triggers. That has an obvious drawback in not being able to “instantly” mute the sound, BUT also has a cool benefit in that you can queue up mute states both on and off, in advance of the actual trigger (which presumably, if using standard-length phrases, would just be a one-trigger event at the beginning of the first bar).

EDIT: Also just noticed this is very similar to @LyingDalai 's very first post of this thread! but a slightly different side effect/application of the same underlying functionality.

[krunchr]

How to make slow chord progressions (e. g. four chords, each four bars long) with only 64 steps:

• Assign four MIDI tracks to the same MIDI channel.
• Set the desired chord on the first step (and don’t forget to set LEN = 64, when each chord should sound four bars).
• Set the trig conditions for the respective chord steps to 1:4, 2:4, 3:4 and 4:4.

Of course, this method costs four MIDI tracks. But it opens up way more musical possibilities.

[Vonstirlitz]

Hello all. Just made an account after reading this thread, if anything to say thanks all for the tips and tricks. Inspirational and practical. Cheers.

[krunchr]

@yucatec Are you happy with your Sound Lab Micro Mixer? How noisy is it? Cool knobs, btw

[Jenda201]

Could you please tell me how to setup the track for these long samples…I have a bunch of long sampled speeches which I want to trigger every now and then during my liveset, and I would like to use that one dedicated audio track as u mentioned above…so how am I supposed to set the src and amp pages up? thanks

[thelightshineth]

You’ll probably have to play around with it to find exact settings that work for your situation, but, the most important settings are:
TRG page: LEN parameter
SRC page: START, LEN, Loop, play mode — obviously these will affect it but for your purposes should probably be left at default (starting position 0, full length, straight forward play mode, no loop)
AMP page: ATK and DECAY - these will affect the volume of the sample as it starts and ends.

For your purposes you could probably narrow it down even more to just LEN on the TRG page, and DECAY on the AMP page. Both of those directly affect how long the sample plays after triggering it.

LEN on TRG page simulates actually holding the button down, like holding a note down on a keyboard, where the sample will keep playing as long as the note is held down.
The numbers of the LEN parameter correlate (as best I can tell) with exact steps in the sequencer. So a LEN of 1 = 1 sequencer step, so the true amount of time that amounts to will depend on your BPM.
LEN of 16 = one bar, 64 = 4 bars
Then there’s INFinite which will play the sample all the way to the end. But keep in mind the tracks on the DT are monophonic, so say for example you start speech sample 1, then while it’s playing you switch the sample slot to speech sample 2, speech 1 should still be playing, but if you trigger that track again, it will cut off speech 1 and start speech 2.

AMP DECAY - This determines how long the sample will take to “fade out” after the above LEN parameter ends. You can set decay to INFinite also, which as far as I’m aware will accomplish the same thing as above. I’m not really sure if there are small nuances or differences in how the two approaches might interact with other things such as muting/unmuting. The stuff I explained in the post above was using TRG LEN to hold out the samples, it might not work the same if relying on amp decay instead.

Anyway, sorry for rambling on longer than you probably wanted, hopefully that points you in the right direction Feel free to PM me if you need any more help with it

[Jenda201]

hey! thanks a lot dude! brilliantly explained!!

[thelightshineth]

NP and I just noticed I was saying amp decay, when I really meant amp RELEASE

[Normalogic]

Brilliant

[SB-SIX]

Ok some really obvious but maybe helpful tips:

• FN + no (reload pattern): Green mute mode muted tracks stay muted after pattern reload. Purple muted tracks are restored after reload. So you can have a pattern with all tracks unmuted in storage, mute some tracks and reload the pattern to unmute everything at once, but also the other way around: Store a pattern with only 1 track unmuted, then unmute some more tracks, do some ctrl-al if you like and fn+no to reload, Good for drops.

• LP filter to boost the high end. Ok this works on any synth but it’s particularly useful to add high-end to samples in the digitakt with the lack of an eq. Keep the LP filter (almost) completely open and increase the resonance. This is so obvious but alot of people only use LP filters to make sounds less bright, while it works also very well to add brightness.

[TrabanT]

I dont get it

[Tylox]

After a couple weeks with the digi-duo, I have a decent grasp of the basics, so am starting to work on song structure. I admittedly have loopitis, so this is a definite weakness with whatever device/instrument I use.

To combat this, I’m attempting to make a cover of a super simple song that has just few elements that are mostly filtered in and out for variation. I randomly picked “On Off” by Cirez D.

The intro is a kick, hat, and filtered synth. After awhile the synth opens up a bit, kick filters down, and another layer to the synth is added. A slow white noise riser comes in before everything is brought back into play. Simple stuff yeah? I could do all of this super easily in a daw with some automation tracks.

In comes the Digitakt. I’m thinking I could make a separate pattern that has the kick filtering automation, and then another with the kick filtered, but things start to get tricky with the synth and white noise. These automations might last 2-4 times as long as a 4 bar pattern. Do I need to sync up multiple separate patterns and make sure the filter points line up, or can I mark up a pattern chain and record the automation that way?

If I can record automations while in pattern chain mode, I see another potential hurdle. What if I need to change the chain, or …turn the machine off? I would lose everything.

For those that are beyond loopitis, how are you working around these issues? I’m assuming/hoping that overbridge will eventually solve these issues?

I could maybe use my DAW to control pattern changes and automation that way, but at that point, it might be more efficient to skip the Elektron and do everything ITB. The Elektron would then essentially be an expensive midi controller.

TLDR; I have loopitis, how do I best write a song with lots of automation with the Elektron sequencer system that may last longer than 64 steps.

[tnussb]

Recording an smooth automation (for example: a filter sweep) with the Elektron sequencer won’t work. It is a step sequencer and will record only 16 values per bar.

Since the Digitakt doesn’t support parameter slides itself, you need to utilize the LFO for such an automation.

But: can a parameter slide using the LFO work across multiple joined patterns? I’m not sure if the LFO can go slow enough for this and/or has enough fine control for speed and offset …

Update: Maybe you don’t need multiple patterns. A slow enough ramp-like LFO may be enough …

[raindro]

While this is true, I disagree that you can’t record a smooth filter sweep, I do it all the time.

[thelightshineth]

Are you talking about parameter-locking a filter sweep? If you “live record” a filter sweep into the sequencer, it should lock values per step and not have a smooth transition between each step, so it ends up sounding choppy/steppy. This is what @tnussb is referring to and hence the workaround of using an LFO which does stay smooth.

[bwo]

My current tip is if you’re thinking about getting a Bastl dude for a submixer going into you’re digitakt… do it. It’s nice and clean sounding and if you are looking to make the monitor volume more adjustable on the digitakt you get the +20db which is really handy and can saturate the sound. Great little mixer for speeding up your work flow with a digitakt and other gear. I’m tempted to get a second one.