Does "Retrig" restart LFO?

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Hey all, I’m a new Digitakt owner and very happy with it. Having a lot of fun and have spent some good deep sessions with it.

This is probably an obvious “yes”, but since I’m at work procrastinating and browsing Digitakt/Synth-related pages I can’t test it myself with a very slow “retrig” setting that would make it easier to hear if the LFO is restarting.

But that’s my question. If the LFO is set to TRG, does the LFO restart on every retrig?
For instance, if I have a “step” configured with a 1/16 retrig value and a length of 1/4, does that mean the LFO will restart 4 times?

Thanks all and happy mangling!

#2

Yep. Can be turned off in the trig page too if you don’t want it to reset.

#3

Thanks and that’s what I figured.

Can be turned off in the trig page too

So I know that flipping the LFO T on the trig page will disable the LFO from being triggered on that particular…trigger…
My followup is, on the “step” that I use retrig on, by turning off the LFO T switch, the LFO won’t be ‘restarted’ on the INITIAL trig of that step…
So, is there no way to allow the LFO to be triggered on the first trig of the step itself but NOT on each “retrig” of that step?

#4

sorry i misread your orig post. not sure if retrigs will retrig the lfo too, but if that’s the case, you could put a trigless (yellow) trig on the step before the retrig step and nudge it over so it only fires once.

#5

Yeah, that seems to be the go-to workaround for the monophonic “limitations” of the Digitakt, a late nudged trigless trig. Definitely an option.

Thanks again for your replies.

#6

Mode HLD doesn’t restart the LFO.
Mode TRG restarts the LFO when a note is triggered.

#7

Ah ok my mistake, then I’m only referring to the scenario with LFO set as TRG.

#8

I’ve been playing a lot with this recently, but I guess there is no way to have predictable results in your retriggered notes unless you dial in your LFO frequency perfectly. For example, I’m trying to have a trig retrigger 3 times within the span of one 16th note (retrig settings are len 1/16 and rate 1/40). I set the LFO to modulate the tune, with the intent of having those 3 retrigs sound the pitches “E, D, C” every time the pattern plays. If I use the “HLD” LFO mode, the pitch of the retriggered notes do indeed change, but every time the pattern repeats the pitches are different. . If I use the LFO in “TRG” mode, the retrigger pitches are the same each loop, but they don’t actually change in pitch, just have a kind of gliding effect on each note.

The closest I’ve gotten is using the HLD mode, and setting the speed of the LFO to a multiple of 4, so that it is exactly the size of one bar/loop. This allows the pitch of the retriggers to change, and also be consistent, but it is difficult to dial in. Changes to the start phase do not have any effect while the loop is playing, so you have to stop and start your loop again to hear the change. The best way to then dial it in is to change the depth, either positive or negative, and keep listening. Pretty difficult to get exactly “E, D, C”, but close enough considering it’s meant to be more of percussive part than a melodic or harmonic one. It is very important to lock the LFO.T parameter to “on” on whatever trig you want this effect on, otherwise the changes on that trig’s retriggers are not consistent every time.

Hopefully this was useful to someone, or maybe just confusing. If people have other workarounds please share. I’d like to try the nudged trigless lock after the retriggered trig, but it also sounds difficult to dial in predictably.

#9

How are you dialing in the correct tune amount? The LFO depth never quite seems to make sense to me, is the whole range somehow stretched onto the mapped parameter, I never quite got behind that.
Having the mode on HLD seems to make most sense, what speed have you got it on? Having it in some powers-of-two range should make it repeat predictably in a “conservative” pattern length. Alternatively you can have a trigless trig some step before your funny retriggering, and have the LFO reset with a TRIG mode.
Also I guess having the LFO shape on SAW could give you a bit more predictability over hitting all three notes well.

Alternatively, have you tried with motion sequencing some three microtimed steps?

1 Like
#10

I confirmed the technique and want to simplify this for anyone else reading. Lock speed to 8 or 16 and lock mult to bpm16. Lock the LFO mode to HLD. Lock DEST to tune or whatever else you want. Lock whatever retrigger settings you want. Lock the LFO.T to “on” in the Trig menu. Then listen and adjust the LFO depth to whatever value gives you the desired sound, and lock it there. This will give you the desired change in the LFO-modulated paramater over the retriggered sounds, and it will be consistent every time your pattern loops.

For the depth amount, I’ve just been looping that track and changing little by little going by ear. So if the pitches of the retrigs are going up and I want them to go down, rather than messing with the lfo shape/speed/starting point I just turn the depth to negative. I suppose the whole range of the chosen parameter is probably mapped to the depth values, yeah, but haven’t tested that either.

I’m trying to cheat the digitakt here by using the LFO+retrigger to increase step resolution. I have notes before and after this little sextuplet thing, and I ran out of resolution to microtime the steps and make sextuplets. Usually I think you’re right, that’d be the way to go.