Digitone Sequencing

I’m noticing that unlike the A4, when I press a note, and then press a step in the sequence, the step does not reflect the note pressed, it reflects whatever note is set in the trig section. Is this by design? I found that way of step sequencing on the A4 useful.

Nope, to enter in a note manually via the step sequencer, you need to either hold down the step and then either hit the up/down arrows (a little keyboard will show up on the top of the screen) or hold the step and adjust the note on the trig page.

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LAME. That needs to be fixed. So counter intuitive. And really why do it that way when you’ve been doing it the other way with your other devices for so long…

Cause that also means I can’t press a key on an external controller and have it be the note for a step. Really makes the sequencing more tedious.

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It really is. It’s a pain in the ass to enter chords into the sequencer - so much so that the only real way of doing it is by recording the chords live, I’ve found.

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I just learned in the feature request thread - hold a trig and press the arp/add note button, and a keyboard will appear for you to enter notes. Pretty nice!

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… dont know what device you guys have but I can input notes on my Digitone by holding the step and pressing a key on my midi controller, this works for chords too. Did I get a special Digitone or something?

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Nope, if you have a midi controller, it looks to be a lot easier! I just don’t have a controller yet :(. Keystep is on backorder. If it takes much longer I might just shell out for a nicer controller like the NI kontrol series.

but you can also do it on the Digitone by holding a step and pressing “add note”. This lets you input notes on a chromatic scale.

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Try it the other way around (ie. hold trig, then press note on your controller).

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This would work with the external midi controller, but not if you’re using the digitone standalone since you are either using the keys as a step sequencer or as a keyboard.

Edit: But knowing this I’ll likely just use my keyboard to sequence notes since it’s faster and easier than the alternative described in this thread.

Hate to break it to you but its not going to be possible with the layout of the hardware… Its possible on the A4 because you have the buttons corresponding to steps and to the chromatic notes but its physically impossible on the Digitone…

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interesting workflow change.

So, you press and hold your trig, press the add notes/arp, let go of the trig, unselect the note that has now been selected from holding down that key, press any of the notes you want present in the trig, chord or not, and then select yes and that trig will then have that information. Quite convoluted.

I mean, what you are asking is like asking why your car does not fly…

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Not true. I’m asking why I don’t press a note on the keyboard, that note be remembered for when I select a trig when I press the record button. As it is on other Elektron hardware. Another thing that happens on the A4 is after that first trig, every successive trig is that note until you tell it the next note. Useful for bassline programming. On the Digitone it always defaults to whatever root note is set on the trig page. Obviously it’s not a dealbreaker, I just don’t understand the change.

Edit: interesting sidebar. Using an external keyboard to enter the notes of a trig only works on the auto channel, not on the channels specific to the tracks.

hmmm tried that a few times, but did not work. Will try again! Tried it in Grid Record/Edit Mode…

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Can you please elaborate on how you pull this off?
I would be very thankful if you could enlighten me (and maybe others) on how to proceed or which buttons to press or which mode to enter…

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You need to plug your midi controller to the midi input of your digitone.

set them to the corresponding channels

Select the track you want to input midi notes in a step

press the “O” to activate grid recording mode

press and hold the step you would like your note to be inputed in

while pressing and holding that step press a note or chord on your midi keyboard.

If done correctly you should have a note or chord on that step when you press play.

Thanks.

Same here. Be a easy change to hav an option to "change note on trig page " when u press a note in keyboard mode. Just got a Digitone and was wondering why it wasn’t doing this as on A4… Bummer

I believe you have to use the omni channel! Than it should work with midi controllers to add chords per step by playing a chord while holding a step.