How do you organize your songs/projects?

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

I’ve been thinking about this for a minute, and would appreciate feedback on how people go about managing their music on the Digitakt.

Up until now I’ve taken a bit of a “kit” based approach, wherein each project is a batch of samples from a specific drum machine. So I have an “808” project, a Machinedrum project and so on. Once loaded I use the patterns as housing for song ideas, pulling in random melodic samples and sound FX from the drive as I see fit.

This works pretty well, since the project (drum kit) I choose serves as a bed rock/jumping off point, with whatever other sounds I load being the wild card element. However it can be a little bewildering, since I oftentimes feel lost in a sea of options, with thousands of samples to choose from. Sometimes I miss the deliberate simplicity of a “real” drum machine where you sculpt your own sounds from the ground up, though I suppose that’s an entirely different topic.

Do you have a way of working that you find especially efficient or inspiring?

#2

Hi!
I’m fairly new here.
Before getting the DT,I kinda had set my mindset based on what I saw on videos from Jeremy(Red means Recording).
What I figured from his live vid performances is that he was using a bank to make a song.So my thought was that a “project” could be a live set of about an hour,consisting 8 songs(each bank is a song).

For the type of music I make(Deep house/Deep Techno) it seemed a reasonable thing to do.

Getting the Digitakt and started working with it,like from Bank 1,Pattern1,I realised that “finishing”the basic structure of my first song took 6 patterns of the total 16 of the bank and performing them live(jamming),gives me a track of about 6 mins.Ofc I have a lot to do to perfect it as much as I can but almost all the sounds I want are in there.

Now as I said I’m new and know nothing yet.But I try to make the best use I can from Mutes,p.locks,conditional trigs,fills and CTRL all.I only learned about scale per track today,which is huge for me :joy:

My hands still haven’t got into it much but I’m hoping a day comes that everything will be muscle memory.I mostly want to perform the things I write so pattern reload is an amazing feature in case i want to mess with filters,envelopes and stuff while a pattern is playing,even without CTRL all.

As with samples I feed it with various sources but I have very little stuff into it yet.I find it’s library great,especially the single osc waves.And I also pair my old Roland JP8080 for pads,leads and stuff that adds the hard part on the mix.Or at least the ones I find harder to do on the DT yet.

Sorry for the long reply :slightly_smiling_face:

#3

I use a lot crunch/elk-herd to organize my things when it comes to live thing.

for daywork, I use one bank for one song. I try to focus on 4 or 5 patterns and play with them…

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#4

I haven’t used it yet, but it sounds awesome! Likely when I need to merge projects for my next live, I’ll be exploring it more.

Using it for music duties alongside the Rytm, I try to keep things as simple as possible in one pattern. For example, Trk1 is always bassline, and the track progresses left. Occassionally I’ll write a B version of the track on another pattern, but I try to keep things as simple as possible.

Sorry for the shameless plug, but here’s an example of a one pattern track.

I felt songs by Bank would be too limiting (only 8 tracks?). I often just leave a space between each song to help visually when doing a live set. Like Pattern 1-3 is song 1. Pattern 4 is empty, Pattern 5-7 is song 2, etc.

Good luck! :metal:t2:

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