I just got my Digitakt a couple of weeks ago. I love it even though I had to return it and am waiting on a replacement due to it not powering up a few times. Now I’ve read through this forum and it sounds like that is a common issue so maybe returning it wasn’t necessary but anyway…on to my questions that I can’t seem to answer in manuals:
is there a way to automate effects? Say I want to slowly open and close a filter on one track in my pattern for example?
is it possible to change samples on a per pattern basis. Say I want 4 different toms in one pattern to play a fill but in the other patterns I’d rather assign different sounds instead of the toms? I like to stay minimal but the 8 tracks seems limiting sometimes for things like that. I know I could resample a pattern to free up some slots but that’s not my ideal workflow.
Thanks and glad I found this forum. This is my first piece of Elektron gear and love it despite a few hiccups.
Awesome thanks. I figured there were ways I just didn’t know terminology. I haven’t gotten into locks yet. I was just getting into conditional trigs and retriggering before I shipped it back. Unfortunately it’s backordered so I’ll be waiting a few weeks to get my replacement but I figured I’ll use the time learning all these tricks
To elaborate on my short post.
For the first thing you can live record filter sweeps and other knob adjustments. The digitakt doesn’t slide though so things can sound a little stepp-y.
For the second question, there are a number of parameters that can be locked to specific values per step. Commonly referred to as plocks. One of these values is sample slot. So in theory you can lock however many different samples to a pattern as steps.
To answer your 2nd question, if I’m reading it correctly: The patterns sort of act like kits. So, you can have different samples in every pattern. The limit per project is 64mb or 127 slots, whichever comes first. P-locking is only needed if you want to change the sample on a per step basis within a pattern.
Cool. That is what I’m asking. I just want to have different kits in each pattern as needed. But I do need to dig into pattern locks because I know that’s a powerful feature
re: “wanting to have different kits in each pattern” … that’s actually kind of the only option, so you’re in luck
Just to further explain: You can’t really share a single kit across different patterns and have them linked together in any kind of meaningful way. Each pattern contains its own kit basically, irrelevant of other patterns and their kits. So the way you are wanting it, actually is the way it’s done already, so no problem there. The downside is it makes it a little trickier to keep the same sound across multiple patterns. Of course it can be done but it takes a little more planning and preparation. Just something to be aware of.
I see. So far in my learning projects I have been making one pattern and then copying and pasting to new ones and making variations. So doing that I’m copying the kits to each pattern and I didn’t try switching sources on tracks in variations because I thought It would effect the other patterns. But this makes sense that copies would not change the original
On that note, if you are using “sounds” and you edit/overwrite one it WILL change everywhere the sound is used. Good workaround for those who like the kit structure of the previous machines.
wait ,for real? that’s awesome. from what I saw in the manual it didn’t seem like it would work that way, like it says stuff about when you load a sound it makes its own copy in that pattern or whatever… maybe I didn’t get to more in-depth explanation deep in the manual tho or maybe it just doesn’t make that very clear?
Yes the actual sounds list. Sounds can be overwritten and used across patterns when changes if they are overwritten the changes will happen across patterns using the sound
So I guess if you make on-the-fly tweaks to a sound in one pattern you just need to remember to save it before queuing up the next pattern (if you want it to stay consistent across pattern changes and don’t mind overwriting the original sound you saved I guess)
I haven’t really ventured out of single-pattern jamming yet but this gives me a lot more incentive to do start expanding
You can’t do on the fly tweaks to sounds, because you have to go into the import/export sound menu and manually overwrite it in the same slot. Which is good! I had a Rytm and was constantly tweaking on the fly and messing up other patterns where the kit was used.
But I mean, you COULD go in and overwrite it before switching to the next pattern, as long as you had enough time to do it before the pattern change, right?
You bring up another good point though, if that sound is being used in other patterns not related to the current song, those are gonna get messed up… so maybe better just not to do it, unless you only use certain sounds for specific songs maybe?
This is my thought process in this:
Say you have patterns A and B, both sharing a sound, and that sound has a wide open filter setting by default. Let’s say this is a long ambient style thing, and you’re tweaking the sound on pattern A in realtime and you have the filter turned down real low. You want to switch to pattern B to change up the underlying sequence but want to keep the currently tweaked sound intact. From the way I understand it, if the saved Sound that both are using has the filter wide open, as soon as you switch to pattern B, there’s gonna be a significant change as the filter is gonna pop way open again.
So you would have to overwrite the sound before switching, right? So when it loads the new pattern it keeps exactly what you just tweaked.
Again, the downside being like you mentioned, you’d be overwriting a sound that might be in use by other songs, but I guess if you know what you’re doing this should work right?
