Fading in/out a track on the DT

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Hi everyone,

On the DT I’m curious how others achieve fading in/out a track?

I ended up using an LFO from a midi track to do the job, but it made me wonder if there’s a better way.

To be specific, just for a learning exercise on the DT I was recreating the intro for On The Run by Pink Floyd.

In the YT video you can hear that the 8 note sequence at 0:10s fades in, and that is what I was trying to achieve.

Approaches I know about:

  1. Re-sample the track as a long sample, and use the LFO to fade it in
  2. Use lock trigs to increment the vol of the track (works, but is not a smooth fade)
  3. Turn the knob for each performance (the “you are the LFO” approach :slight_smile: )
  4. Use a midi controller or midi track to automate the track volume (the approach I took).

Best regards,

Gino

#2

Cool idea for a thread as I’d also like to learn other techniques.
In regard to your first approach, you don’t need to sacrifice the lfo to do the fade in. When you have a long sample or resampled sequence you can just put a trig with a 1st condition on step 2 and microshift it all the way to the left. Then p-lock the attack to be really long. On step 1 you put a regular trig, but with a not-1st condition, so the sample only plays at full volume after the pattern repeats.

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#3

Yeah but the max Attack Time on the DT is pretty short, it’s a few second at best. :confused: I often use the LFO on Amp Volume to override the Attack setting and get a reeeeally long fade.

Looks like you already got a few cool ideas @Gino! The LFO is the easiest for me as it’s reliable and you don’t need any external stuff but yeah sometimes you want to keep your LFO for something special<3 That’s why I use the MIDI loopback so often

#4

Have you considered an external midi controller for this?

Novation Launch Control XL comes to mind.
You can control the knobs as you like (which cc on which channel,…), and with an usbmidi to usbdin converter (kenton par example) it’s dawless too, not only ableton.
It’s cheap too.

#5

Thanks, some really good points here.

@Python - That makes perfect sense, and for shorter fades it’s ideal Thanks for sharing that!

@AldoVino - Exactly, and that is what I discovered while trying to do this. I needed one more LFO, and it was MIDI loopback to the rescue. As it’s been mentioned up here before, I would love to see an OS switch to enable MIDI loopback without needing a cable, or the OB/DAW route.

@gerkinear - Thanks, that would be another way as the LC-XL has sliders/faders. It would be manual, but definitely work well for the performance side of things.

Another one I thought was using the LP filter on it’s lowest freq, but have not tried it yet.
The first note trig would have filter trigger on, and the other notes would have it off.
The attack of the filter envelope would be a gradual fade as long as possible similar to what Python suggested with the attack envelope.

The tricky thing about the “On The Run” sequence is that it’s 8 notes repeating (16ths), so it’s hard to find room for lock trigs. and you can’t effectively “patch” it with a re-trig because each note is a different pitch. I just realized that you can use per track scaling at 2x to use 8ths, and that would make room for lock trigs.

Of course you could use a DAW to send CC to fade the track volume, and in my case I have OB running.
I know that’s getting into “song mode” territory, so I’ll quietly walk away from it :slight_smile:

Best regards,

Gino

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