FL Studio + Digitakt workflow tutorial (and demo)

In this tutorial I explain how to use FL Studio together with the Digitakt with midi. I love the immediacy of the Digitakt, and the really fast piano roll in FL Studio.

Q: Help, my Digitakt crashed!
A: It’s probably because of midi loopback. Make sure the output port is different from the input port! Also be sure to lock the instruments so they only receive notes from specific channels. Restart it and reselect it as the audio interface in FL, and disable then enable it in the midi settings.

Hope it was helpful. Thanks for watching!

bandcamp: https://ivartryti.bandcamp.com
spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4ds912FxVqFT78HZulqErS

Digitakt drum loops tutorial: https://youtu.be/YSCrbF-u7gE
Part 2 of said drum tutorial: https://youtu.be/JXU8uujQr_0

Digitone bass tutorial: https://youtu.be/gfFCnILXr20
Setting up the Digitakt and Digitone: https://youtu.be/gq6oUVZ-1wQ
#Digitakt #FLStudio

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Great video!

It was long, but also had a ton of nice techniques and on-the-fly situations that we’re fun to see.
I especially liked re-recording the bass line, using FLS to shorten all notes, and then the DT to add swing.

One thing you convinced me of is that I need to go back to a mouse in my setup. I sold myself on the idea that a trackpad was good enough for editing, and more portable, but watching you work in the piano roll made me realize how wrong that decision was! :slight_smile:

Also my setup with FLS + DT is different, and I’ve gotten multiple PMs up here to share how I’ve configured it. My hold up is that making YT videos was more work than I anticipated (esp aligning the audio). I saw you’re using OBS, so I’m going to give that a shot.

My favorite part of your videos is that they are “emergent” as you have a high degree of control and experience to draw from. You get into situations just like we all do, and its cool to see you calmly deduce what’s happening and what you are going to do.

Best regards,

Gino

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Fantastic video. I don’t use FL Studio, but I do record the Digitakt into Beatmaker 3. I’m inspired to try recording in the other direction.

Thanks!

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Fantastic! I was just about to bug you for something like this on YouTube! Can’t wait to watch it.

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Thank you very much, @Gino, @Mistercharlie and @erictronic! I’m glad to hear you like the whole live aspect where I can run into problems to solve on the fly :smiley:!

I absolutely recommend a mouse when working in the piano roll. It is incredibly fast if you get used to a few hotkeys and have the accuracy of a mouse. The shortcuts I use the most is right-shift-click to slice, left click to delete, ctrl+B to duplicate, double-left-click on a grey note to switch to that instrument in the piano roll, holding alt to temporarily disable grid snap, and a few more I can’t remember. I’ve switched my shift-keys so that right-shift is left-shift and vice versa to make the slicing more convenient.

I understand completely how much time making videos can take. When I upload only digitakt or digitone videos, it’s fairly simple because I just take the video from my phone into movie maker and add the audio recording from the DT or DN, and the video is done. But when recording the screen, and also recording the audio in FL Studio while playing and stopping constantly in FL, and recording the Digitakt and my voice with my phone… there’s a lot to keep track of. I did a 20 minute take and another 30 minute take before finally getting everything right on the 3rd take. On each take I made a new track, hehe. OBS works great! It took a bit of work to set up, and it doesn’t support ASIO, so I only used it to record the screen and not audio.

Hehe, I do a lot of preparation beforehand! I run through the tutorial at least once to take notes, then I pick out bits of these notes and write them down with a fancy brush pen, then go through parts of the tutorial again with these new notes. Then I start recording. This lets me do everything in one take and not spend too much time editing the video, and since I know roughly how the tutorial is gonna pan out, I don’t get completely thrown off guard when wierd stuff happens.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, man :smiley:!

3 Likes

This is a great video but I can’t seem to get FL studio to trigger my digitakt through the piano roll, plus every midi track I have triggers the midi out plugin. I’m not sure what I did wrong but I’m pretty sure I’ve messed with every setting in the DT to find out if the issue was the digitakt

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Much thanks for all the work you put into preparing and performing your tutorial.

Been avoiding FL for the DT and recording mono to a tape deck. But really nice to see there’s a good tutorial if I ever decide to use overbridge.

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thank you for the video!

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Thank you @Analogue5 and @areasecure! I don’t often use FL and DT together this way because it’s a lot to set up, but when I want to use VSTs and still use the DT as a performance box, this is the way to go for me.

Thanks, @potesanders :slight_smile: Check the following:

  1. The midi out uses the same port as the DT input. You can set the port in midi config in FL. I think the DT triggers the midi outs because the port is set to the same port as the DT’s output.
  1. On the DT, go to Settings -> mid config -> channels, and make sure that tracks A-H are set to channel 1-8, and that tracks 1-8 are turned off.

  2. Check that the midi out has the same channel as the DT midi track you want it to trigger (the one you set in settings -> midi config -> channels)

Sometimes if FL’s midi is acting weird, I’ve had it fixed by just restarting FL, too. Hope this helps!

Followed the tutorial but my Digitakt isn’t lighting up like yours @ 4.44 seconds.
Any idea what I have been doing wrong? I already tried different midi ports and restarting both the Digitakt and FL Studio.

Is there a template available for this?

I watched last night, and today I’m planning to watch it, again and step through it at my desk.

Are you still using FL studio?
I haven’t invested heavily in any DAW yet.
Im wondering how you chose FL, and if you prefer it to Live, Reaper, Bitwig, etc for a particular reason…

FWIW, I didn’t think the demo track was so cheesy…

I could have sworn I’ve answered the comments here =S. @fatpudding I haven’t made a template for this yet. After they implemented the trig+yes preview thing, I haven’t felt the need to use fl studio to sequence things any more.

@shankiphonic I’m still using fl studio. It is what I first started using back in the day because it was the cheapest option, so it’s the one I’m used to. I don’t think you can go wrong with any DAW, but I will say that I really, really like FL Studio’s piano roll. It’s fast and fluid, the controls are simple enough you won’t accidentally do anything other than exactly what you intended, yet offers a lot of options without slowing you down.

I have tried Live Lite, and I like how it looks and how neatly it separates everything. FL Studio in comparison is really messy with floating windows everywhere =P. I never managed to really get into Live though, partially because I didn’t like its piano roll, but mostly because I didn’t spend enough time with it. I’m happy with FL Studio and recommend it, but really any DAW should be good.