I tried fingerdrumming on a beatstep connected to a Digitone with velocity sensitive drum sounds

Elektron Gear Digitone/Digitone Keys
#1

I have an Arturia Beatstep that I NEVER use. Its encoders are unreliable and the pads jitter, sometimes playing twice when I hit it once. I saw some fingerdrumming videos last night and was inspired to check out a few tutorials. I also wanted to check out the Digitone’s new multimap feature, which lets you assign a range of keys play a range of sounds from the sound pool.

I have two ranges on the beatstep: C5, C#5 and D5 are the kick, snare and hat playing on track 4. From D#5 to D#6 it plays my “Ambient V” patch (V for velocity-sensitive) on track 2. The basic chords are sequenced on track 1, and the bass is sequened on track 3.

I can see myself spending time fingerdrumming. It’s very satisfying, even if I struggle to keep time and play more than just simple beats :smiley:

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DN and Percussion
#2

nice tune

1 Like
#3

Thank you, @safetyofobjects!

#4

Madskillz man!!! Wow. Love the melody you „drum“ in there during live playing. Really cool!

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#5

I didn’t know that my Digitone was capable of producing that nice of a full jam. Your YouTube channel is amazing. Where has this guy been hiding on YouTube? You’re good.

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#6

Awesome. I like the enjoyable simplicity of this setup, the groove sounds really nice.

Fingerdrumming is very rewarding.

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#7

Thank you very much @digi_dave, @ANON20yhouse530 and @mk7! I’ve been making music as a hobby for a long time, but only got my Digitakt (and later Digitone) half a year ago and started uploading videos then =)

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#8

I saw your youtube video and trying hard to configure the multimap on my external keyb without success, anyone?

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#9

@undiagnosed I don’t have the DN in front of me so I’m only going from memory atm… The multimap feature is near the bottom of the settings page. In there you can make multiple ranges (though for drums 1 is enough).

I set the range to C3 to D#3 so I have enough slots for a kick, snare, closed hat and open hat. These sounds have to be loaded into the sound pool in the order you want them to line up on the keyboard. Then set the pitch to increase by 1 for each key. This way the multimapped drums will play different notes, and won’t steal each other’s voices. Then set the multimap to move up 1 sound slot for each key, so that C3 will play the first sound (kick), C#3 will play the next sound (snare), etc.

Once you have it all set up, you have to go into midi settings -> channels, and find the multimap channel. Set this one to the same channel as your keyboard. This might be channel 1 by default, so you might have set the synth track #1’s midi track to off.

Hope that helps! Lemme know how it goes :smiley:

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#10

Hi Eaves, thanks for the reply, I did manage ith success although the multimap mode need to stay open in order to play with it…a bit weird programming IMHO from Elektron and I read there is no way to plock them so no changes allowed, still…better drum pogramming it this way, if only triplets were part of the sequencer it would be near perfection, I guess a pice of software were to actually allocate soundpool samples ( visually I mean ) would be ace

#11

My pleasure, man :slight_smile:. It should be possible to use multimap without keeping it open. Did you check settings -> midi config -> channels and set the multimap channel to one of the synth tracks? Or if you have a midi keyboard, did you try setting the multimap channel to the same channel as the keyboard?

#12

Yes I did set multimap ch on say ch 4 ( track 4 ) but no happiness

#13

Ahh… I thought that would make synth track 4 play the multimap, assuming synth track 4 is set to midi channel 4. I’ll check out how my project was set up when I have time!

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#14

So I tried setting up multimap for synth track 4 yesterday, and I’m stumped. Ran into the same problem you did! I could have sworn I managed to use multimap internally, but I can’t figure out how I did it. I’ll give it a try with a midi keyboard later and see if that works.

#15

Nice, let me know

#16

I went back to read this part as I understand the multimap mode gets the sounds from the first sample onward from the sooundpool as we do not have the chance to assign a specific sound to a specific key ( wishful ) and yes… once all is set up in order to Finger Triggeing Live I have to leave the multimap mode menu open or it goes back top play a track sound instead… wish for triplets…