Without the ability to arrange, if you create an awesome pattern on the Digitakt but want to incorporate into Ableton or another DAW, and don’t want to have to do your whole production on the Digitakt, what do you do?
I love P-locks, conditional trigs, but I hate having to perform the Digitakt from memory or from a written chart of patterns to construct a song in one take. It is a huge time suck. I work full time. I want to get songs created, not sit there memorizing arrangements. I can’t help but get the feeling I spent $700 on an idea scratchpad that is a massive pain in the ass to make songs with.
Record long takes into Logic/Ableton or whatever performing all sorts of twiddling.
Anything from 5 to 20 minute takes, with builds drops etc…
Do that a few times with different sections muted.
Chop up the stems and arrange, voilá
That‘s why my workflow changed to live recording my performances without post editing.
Surely depends on your style and genre, but for me this actually works well.
Forces to more recording takes, or to record when in good mental constitution.
I‘m producing toolbased minimal/house for vinyl only productions and i mostly don‘t like overarranged and unrealistic edited tracks/performances which can‘t be reconstructed live on stage.
If i think about having single tracks recorded into DAW the only way would be to programm as much variations/randomness & pattern chains as possible and having a shower or preparing lunch
repeating 7x for every single track
rearranging & post editing …
not really what gives me the feeling of being creative …
recording single tracks simultanously would be def. a huge benefit, my workflow wouldn‘t change, but i wouldn‘t be pissed of a too loud hihat or something like this after recording the take of my life
back in the days i just recorded single shots or 64 bar loops from my favorite machines, just to have the sound … what leads into working on DAW ()
I kept my oldschool feeling of using my DAW as multitrack recorder, but actually it‘s just a multi stereorecorder and plenty of performances and recordings don‘t have the perfect mix or sound i‘m looking for after all …
so i‘ve stopped that stereo recording stuff until i can spit out all of the patterns in single tracks.
I record each part out individually, doing live tweaks on filters, master pitch, verb, delay ect… Then get the bits I like in my DAW and sequence it out as normal.
Question for those who work like this. If you record a long performance and then go back and edit it into a tighter song in a DAW, how do you avoid abrupt ending of fx tails like reverb wash or delay echo, filter cutoff positions, etc.?
You have to consider your entire process, thats why I record long takes, so I have a wide selections of passes and change overs. Be judicious of what sections your’e using and where you are chopping. If you group things right and give yourself plenty of room for error you’ll be fine. I appreciate that if you are the kind that wants very fine control over every nuance of your arrangement this process will not be ideal, but after years of trying to make everything sound just right I find the ruff and ready approach to be far more productive and enjoyable for me and gets me much closer to the lofi underground vibe I’m going for anyway.
Wait for OB or sell it, really the only choice for those of us that take our time crafting tracks from composition, to arranging, to tracking, to overdubs, to mix etc.
That said
In live you can use dummy clips to trigger pattern changes though. Any MIDI sequencer you can do this really. So make your own song mode using a DAW and try that. doesn’t help the tracking/mix stage unless you are a masochist and enjoy the track by track process.
I make bank of patterns on Digitakt, Mpc and other gear at same bpm, connect all to audio interface on different channels, jam for 20min then edit it down to best bits. great fun
Remember that DT has a step sequencer. The concept of bars/measures doesn’t really apply universally. The fastest it can change patterns upon receiving a PC command is 2 steps. You can set this in the SCALE menu, switch to LENGTH PER PATTERN and set CH.LEN correctly. Page 33 of the manual, if you can figure it out. I still don’t have it totally figured out.
But let’s say I have a 16 step pattern…and my CH.LEN is also 16. Once the DT receives a PC, it will finish playing the 16 steps in that pattern and then switch. If you send it PC on step 1, it will play till step 16 then switch. So you have to send PC earlier than step 1. Even step 16 doesn’t seem to be enough time for the DT. So send your PC’s on step 15 or earlier. It’s easy to do in your DAW if it is a linear based one like PT, Logic, or DP (my MIDI sequencer of choice). In Live, at least in SESSION view, you make dummy clips with PC change, and then set a negative track delay. It KINDA works. I don’t know. I haven’t gotten my hands dirty with it yet aside from some simple tests. It certainly is not as elegant as controlling my MPCs (which have instant sequence change via PC) with live, “lost transients” be dammed.
It’s not perfect, and I would MUCH prefer instant pattern change, even if there were glitches and “lost transients” because, when cueing up sections of a track to work on them, I go to the measure/beat i want to work on and hit play, and now I’d have to have some pre-roll every time to make sure the DT gets its PC. When printing, I can just shift all PC messages over a couple of steps, switch back to non-instant pattern change and viola, no glitches. It’s a situation where Elektron is likely catering to a crowd that has less experience with MIDI, because if they were to offer this simple functionality, and there were to be pops and crackles or “lost transients” - a lot of folks would complain. I wouldn’t be one of them, surprisingly enough, I’d be ok with it.
I felt that way a week ago i was about to sell but mpc live kept acting weird so i started messing with the digitakt…a week later this machine is dope it reminds me of the sp1200 i had a few of those back in the day a small but way more powerful sp1200 of the future and set up for live performances which i like its easy to change directions on this machine like going from autechre to dilla in seconds !
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