Learning phase - freezing - overwhelmed (?)

The Lounge General Discussion
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Where to start.

Finally bought a Digitakt as a first piece of hardware, previously I’ve been trying to create only in Ableton and using a MIDI keyboard.

Couldn’t get anythingd one besides loops,and it’s been that for a few years before i tbh abandoned it, and sitting at the computer just became a chore due to my job. Even though it is using an instrument I certainly didn’t have that feeling.
Time went on, and creating was just… not going anywhere nad I comepletly stopped trying. Focused on my radio show and always was in the loop and the itch was still there.
After too much deliberation, it came down to the Digitakt, I read about perills of having an all in one as an idea, but it’s the only thing and I can afford for the time being. Seemed ideal as an instrument for all the styles I was going for, glitchy electro stuff, ambient… Drums, melodies, pads…
Note that I was also aware of the advice: instrument won’t suddenly make you finish tracks.

And after now almost 6 months of on and off learning and playing, time constraints, not beeing able to play it for two months due to health issues, I’m once again trying to catch it.

Finally commited an almost full afternoon after weeks of putting in an hour or two, but I’m constantly stuck at the same place. Getting a cool sample/sound maybe a loop, and that’s it.

Now I’m trying do decypher what is happening and I’ve almost quit, but I can’t let that happen.
I’ve been playing with it, exploring and it’s been fun and it is fun, I’ve tried watching some tutorials but I almost always give up on them too due to lack of concetration/focus ( which has always been a problem even with Ableton).
I get how basic stuff works and I’ve been sampling some stuff from videos from my laptop and playing with it but that’s it. More in depth with trigs, parameter locks, multiple tracks… I would say I’ve barely strached the surface with that.

I think I lack a systemic approach to learning, while fiddling has been fun, I need more.

Do I think Digitakt is for me? Not sure, I know I definitely want a sampler, but couldn’t think of diving into something more complex like Octatrack.
I though about maybe switching DT for AF mk I ( II is too expensive), but I’m scared I will miss the sampling.
While on the other hand I can’t shake the feel that even the DT is just too overwhelming with features and that that makes me freeze as I am consntantly trying new things, every other day ad just hoarding projects.

So I guess this whole litany can be summed iwth the word: overwhelmed.

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Take it one step at a time. Familiarize yourself with the manual. It’s not a gripping read by any means, but it contains a lot of very valuable information. If you don’t understand something, check it out on the machine. Set yourself goals you want to achieve step by step, e.g. use sound locks on one track only to create a little beat. Maybe start with the stock samples. Check out what the individual parameters do, especially at extreme settings. Try to make something that sounds absolutely shit. Try to recreate something you like, by breaking it down into its individual parts. Don’t get attached to anything you do. If you’re hoarding projects that aren’t going anywhere, make it a rule to wipe the machine after every session.
Once you’ve got a solid grip of the basics, make a pattern until you like it. Copy it to another slot and build a variation of it. Rinse repeat until you have a couple. Now is a good time to take a look at song mode. How do mutes work in song mode? How can you string together your patterns in a meaningful way? Record a little song with Overbridge or via your audio interface. Listen to it. Wipe it. Create something better the next day.

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Try and relax about it all. Youre just making sounds, not performing open heart surgery. Nobody is going to get hurt. Youre just making sounds.

Yeah, dont do that. Get used to the Digitakt. Its good for entry into the Elektron sequencer and their whole way of doing things.
Whats the rush, anyway? Youve purchased a musical instrument. These things take time to learn how to play.

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I’m guilty of the same thing at times. It’s not always a bad thing!
(EDIT: I have just reread your post and I think you mean hoarding projects on the DT :upside_down_face: although I read it a different way the first time, what I said still applies)
My advice is not to pressure yourself too much. These are hobbies, you don’t have a record deal waiting on you, and the Digitakt isn’t going to expire next week :blush: if you’re putting a lot of expectations on that free time, it’s going to lead to overwhelmed feelings. At least for me, I’m most productive at music stuff when I sit down without expectations and explore.

In terms of learning the Digitakt it sounds like you’re already doing well with teaching yourself. As @ViolentMeals said, these things take time to learn. If you haven’t already looked, I think YouTube is a fantastic resource for Elektron devices, you can learn a great deal from some videos there.

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i totally was in the same spot years ago. for me, watching true cuckoo on youtube and having my digitakt next to me while i watched it definitely helped me learnt the device. then once i learned it, i added my own samples and ideas and it went much better from there!

the other thing, is just being willing to be consistent. i admit i still struggle with this daily. but i have learned that just showing up, even if it is a 10 min twiddle of knobs… i feel much more at ease. continue to push yourself and a lot of times you will surprise yourself! most of my happy accidents happend when i 1. don’t have any intention 2. don’t really want to. it always happens, trust yourself and trust the process. keep showin up!

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Check out @DaveMech and maybe you want to pay for a few lessons. Might help to have someone guide you through the tough part if your interest is there but attention span drifts when self-educating. Dave has a bunch of great free content, but since he will work with people on an individual basis maybe what you need is a sounding board as much as the access to a skill set.

I can feel the desire to conquer your limitations coming through strongly from your post. I know that there is a difficulty for you in consistently focusing your attention, but I don’t think that you’ll get any more benefit out of any other singular instrument (Analog Four or otherwise) unless you’re willing to learn it more deeply or have a highly focused end goal already in mind, because that’s another way to get results however you usually only end up with the skills to cut your way through that path.

I think you need to have a well-rounded education, or you’ll complete one project and lose interest in the machine, meanwhile the machine itself is very capable, and you might get enough out of something like single cycle waveforms as a type of synthesis to get you somewhere more interesting than where you’re stuck now.

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There are two factors at play here. One is that practice is required before one attains some proficiency. That is true of many things but I feel that Digitakt is more of an instrument and you have to play it a lot and get past the initial “this doesn’t sound anything like my heroes” feeling that you also feel with conventional instruments. Take that loop you manage to get and see how you can tweak it while it’s playing, by moving among the pages and seeing what knobs can do. Repeat the more successful attempts in order to build muscle memory. If something happens and you don’t understand it, do some research, in the manual or here or via YT videos.

The other factor is that you can’t grasp all of it at once. You have to do it in stages, and while I’m sure many people have written down suggestions or made videos as to how to proceed, there isn’t an authoritative “textbook”. I will second the suggestion above of Dave Mech’s courses (and one-on-one tutoring if you feel you need that). I bought his DT1 course (all parts) pretty much for the reasons you describe: I wasn’t getting past boom-chik-boom-chik, it all felt rather simple and repetitive. The course helped me to understand more of the depths and nuances. He has one out for DT2 now as well.

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A few thoughts:

What is it you want to accomplish? Do you want to record and release things (bandcamp, soundcloud etc)? Or is it just for you, like a journal or sketchbook?

Do you have a particular vision of what you want to make? Certain genre or combination of styles?

I’d recommend having to-do lists. Things you want to learn to do on the digitakt, things you want to experiment with. Give yourself time to learn these things with no pressure of making a whole track. Also, spend time gathering samples, sound designing etc.

Do things like make 16 patterns quickly without overthinking it. Then take the best 2 and go from there. Or make patterns with only 4 sounds allowed. This will help you break out of established mental patterns.

Study the music that inspires you. It sounds like you want more dynamics and flow in your tracks, so figure out how the artists you like do it.

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Thank you for you insight, I might as well try with wiping stuff and do away with it, because it seems like looking at those project just add to anxiety and tweaking them over and over brings nothing.

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I tried cuckoo and some of them, and they are all great to me, but trying to find focus is unfortunately just unbearable for that long of a time.

I do manage to twiddle knobs though, not daily though but when I find time, I try to play around

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checked out Dave Mech, and idea of paying for his videos seems really enticing and I think I might try it.

I think idea of Digitakt might not be for me because I am again getting the notion of having too much in a box? I’m into ambient, glitch, hard bassy stuff, and it feels like I am getting lost at what I am trying to do and everytime izt’s something different.

Even though I am now really trying to commit to some generative soundscapes and ambient.

You are right though. I really am mising a well rounded education.

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Yeah I am really leaning towards Dave Mech sessions, thank you for all the advice.

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I’m trying to for now still learns a lot, my goal is not neccesserally to publish, but now I’m focusing on finishing a track and not just a lop, no matter how shit it is. I understand that it can’t be some majestical creation and I am completely fine with that, I just struggle to make more than loops no matter number of bars.

I listen a lot, and have been for a while. I might try “studying” it more and commiting to that too, but that also feels overwhelming.

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Thanks everybody for the replies, life has been kicking me this week so I haven’t managed to reply sooner.

Hopefully this can be helpful for other people too.

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I second the Dave Mech Digitakt course. The price is nothing for how much more enjoyment and understanding you will get from the machine that will last a lifetime.

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One thing I have experienced with elektron gear, is that it’s quite easy to get stuck in a loop you 've made and to listen to it in repeat (and destroying the loop because of additional modifications) My advice would be to record /multitrack that loop in ableton, then try to compose something from it.
Something simple like making each track coming one by one. Then you 'll see what you need to add next.

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It sounds like you need a clear workflow so that you don’t get distracted by everything the box can do. I think that more familiarity will help but also, just having a more formulaic approach might get you farther than free reign creativity will. Part of it is definitely going to be familiarity with the menus so that you know where all the things that you want to do are at inside the UI or how to do stuff with button combos so that you don’t get discouraged just by trying to find them when you need them.

You might ultimately be more comfortable with something like an MPC just because it’s more like working on a computer, has a touch screen and has built in synths and effects, but I don’t think you should give up on the DT just yet because an elektron sequencer just sort of starts to make ideas come together on it’s own.

Also, the way that elektron has a clear way to physically interact with each step in the sequence when locking trigs by pressing and holding down the trig keys, or just trying out different trig conditions, the small things like that are what seem to lead naturally to being creative.

I find the MPC convenient for how much it can do, but it doesn’t always make me feel creatively stimulated the way digitakt or digitone do.

If you have the patience to do it, I’d give digitakt another shot and if possible, just taking a couple sessions with someone who can help answer questions without breaking the flow of creativity and interrupting the learning could cause that information which you do learn, to stick with you a little better than reading and searching like you are now. Basically, so that when you try to remember how to do it, there is some clear memory other than a lot of reading and searching surrounding the information.

Anyways, good luck. I hope you find a way to break through the frustration and make some progress!

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Twiddle daily! if not daily, set an amount of times each week. 3/week, or less even! regardless of amount, pick what you think you can do and then do it! less is more it sounds like in your case. don’t overwhelm yourself. set a goal. achieve it. make another!

it sounds like you are having trouble also just because you aren’t seeing results.
remember it takes time like all things… you didn’t come into your career without a learning and understanding, elektron boxes (any instrument really) is the same way.

also not to bag on dave mech because i am sure his stuff is super great, but if 45 mins of a cuckoo video is too much i’m assuming 150+ min will also be the same.
unless, you do it in chunks! (15 mins of a video/day, etc.)
i think you should try setting some (very) achievable goals, and achieve them! baby steps my friend.
“this too, will pass!”

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This is good advice, record something.

I like to have my chosen recording device wired up and easy to turn on and press record straight away, without changing monitor levels or anything. Bang straight to stereo ,live jam.

So when messing with an instrument, if it sounds half good, jump up, switch on my recording machine (zoom, tascam, in my case a cd recorder), press record…

Then turn tracks on off, tweak filters, increase fx, all that stuff.
See if i can capture a vibe and some movement, hopefully a journey.
It can always be tweaked and trimmed later in software and at least the idea is getting recorded for later when you are chilling on a game or tidying up.

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I really like Elektronauts but probably don’t quite belong here because I’m not a dance music guy, so this might sound like some real grumpy old man stuff. But the thing that jumps out at me from your post and a lot of other similar posts is that you never really mention music. Before you focus on gear, technology, and tutorials, you should be thinking about melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Have you tried finding a simple, minimal track that you like and trying to do a cover of it? Every musician in history has started out by learning other people’s music first, but with electronic music it seems like a lot of people try to dive in by buying gear and watching YouTube tutorials without having any basic musical background first. The only reason I say that is that I’ve seen this personally over the years with friends who wanted to make music and fell down that trap without having any real foundation and end up selling gear and buying different gear and never making anything.

My advice would be to create a very simple kit of sounds that you use to write with and don’t deviate from it at all. They don’t have to be the most perfect amazing sounds. Give yourself a kick, a snare, closed hat, open hat, done. Even further I would say pick 808, 909, or 606 and that’s all you get. If you can’t make a good beat with those sounds, no amount of complex sound design is going to help you.

Pick one bass sound and keep it simple. An analog sawtooth sound, a square wave, an FM bass, whatever you prefer. Pick a couple of simple lead type sounds, maybe a hard attack short decay pianoish sound and a soft attack long sustain fluteish sound.

Pads are a little harder since you’re working with a monophonic sampler but you could just pick a good single note pad sample and put it on three or more adjacent tracks and sequence them separately. I wouldn’t sample a full chord unless you’re doing a house music chord-memory type of feel because you’ll just box yourself in unnecessarily.

With that kit of sounds, take a half hour a day and spend 10 minutes each writing 3 loops. It doesn’t matter if they’re awful. Most will be. Some days will feel pointless. But just keep doing it. Don’t worry about parameter locks and trig conditions and all of that garbage. Write some music.

Listen back and take notes of which ones suck and which might be promising. It might take a while. Might… it WILL take a long time. I would say do that for at least several months and see where you’re at.

If you’re lucky you might happen onto something that you can tell really has promise and then you can dig in and figure out the sound design and the structure and the mixing and everything and you’ll be way more motivated to do so because you’ll know you have a good foundation to build from.

You talk about getting stuck on loops, but lots of great music is built on pretty simple loops and when you write something good you’ll be able to listen to it again and again on loop and not get tired of it, even if the sound design and mix aren’t quite there and it’s just a rough idea. It’s the musical ideas that really count imo.

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