Semi-generative music on the Digitakt

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Hello boys and girls, long time reader, first time poster here!

I recently got a Digitakt and wow, this is a wonderful piece of gear. It’s my first Elektron box and I find it to be soooo inspiring.

Even though it was not the reason why I bought it, I ended up exploring generative music for the first time with it. I got so many ideas to experiment with that I recently started a video series. Each one relies heavily on the MIDI loopback trick, there’s so many possibilities with this thing! Anyway, I’m really happy with the last one so I thought I might share it around here :

I hope self-promotion is okay<3, let me knows what you think!

30 Likes
#3

absolutely love this

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#4

Oops, sorry about that, I can’t delete this topic unfortunately but I will post my stuff there next time.

@swanage_fan Thank youu!

#5

This is good stuff.

doesn’t really have anything to do with that other topic beside the generative part. Hope you keep posting your work.

2 Likes
#6

Impressive! Gotta learn some tricks from you!

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#7

Thank you guys!

@jefones I tend to write detailed explanations in the video descriptions if you’re interested, but I would gladly talk about this for hours too!

#8

I found your videos fascinating! Any chance you could do a simple walkthrough of how to use the midi loop back exploit safely ? Or perhaps just a tutorial video? Keep up the awesome work my friend

#9

Thank you for the kind word! I actually plan on making a complete tutorial on how to set up the MIDI loopback and what you can do with it, but I feel like I’m still learning how it works so I will probably wait a few weeks more. They are also a few topics here with a lot of informations!

As you may know the main idea is to simply plug a regular MIDI cable into both input and output. That way, by sending data from your MIDI track, you can control a lot of parameters within the Digitakt with LFOs or P-locks. The default MIDI Config allows the trick to work but I believe it’s better to disable some features if you don’t use them (such as Clock Send/Receive, Note Receive).

The main issue is that it tends to crash, but in my experience (with OS 1.10) there are only 3 actions that causes crashes and freezes :

  • Double-tapping the Stop button
  • Loading a project
  • Saving a project you just created

When I want to do one of these I simply unplug the MIDI cable from the MIDI input. Otherwise it’s pretty stable, I only experience some minor bugs when I get all crazy with multiple LFOs and stuff, but nothing too annoying.

Even when it does crash, turning the unit Off and On again restore things to normal, and I’ve never heard of anyone doing permanent damages to his unit. :slight_smile:

This video shows how to set it up (but it was on OS 1.02 back then) :

5 Likes
#10

:+1:

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#11

Cheers Aldo, thanks for taking the time to link the video. I look forward to your future tutorial video and other great music videos of yours!

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#12

Hi guys, I’ve made 2 new generative track in very different genres!

Some wacky electro-house (not sure how to call this) :

And some dark-ambient-drone stuff :

Also I’m currently working on that MIDI loopback tutorial I was talking about last time, should be out in a week or two :grinning:

9 Likes
#13

Hey guyz, I just released the 20th video of my semi-generative series on the Digitakt so I thought I would bump this thread, here are the 3 last Digitakt-only pieces :

First one is a lush droney track, second one is more melodic and the last one is the newest, it features some abstract/granular guitar sampling, hope you’ll like it!<3

6 Likes
#14

love these, not just interesting from a technical standpoint but also gorgeous bits of music. always excited when I see a fresh one in my Youtube feed

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#15

Lovely stuff :slight_smile:

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#16

Thank you @drewinnit & @pidgeo, appreciate the kind words. :sparkling_heart:

#17

Stunning and technically impressive work all around. Looooove ‘Melanisme’!!! Gonna have to investigate some loop back!

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#18

I’ve really enjoyed these pieces. Do you still plan to release a tutorial?

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#19

He has, scroll further up. :slight_smile:

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#20

Gorgeous drone :+1:

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#21

That’s not his video though. When I try to duplicate what is in that video it crashes every time I hit stop. I want to see what he’s doing, and what works/doesn’t work.