I just wrapped a very short soundtrack with the DT2 (that I’ll post in a month or so) and while the process was smooth and super fun, I want to address some of the pain points I had in my workflow.
Just looking to shoot the shit on strategies and workflows specific to some of the new tools DT2 offers.
So I REALLY wish kits worked like they do on the Analog Boxes. One of biggest issues is that I’ll fine tune a mix as I go, and if I’ve expanded to multiple patterns, I’ve kind of shot myself in the foot having to go back and commit those changes by copy parameter pages.
My songs off the DT are actually relatively simple and I’m considering trying to limit myself to a single pattern and maybe make use of the page loop as a clip launcher of sorts.
I have chord sections that I often fit on a single page with 1/8 timing and conditional triggers to further add variety. I do the same thing with drums, often preferring a single page of 16 steps and lots of conditionals / live manipulation.
If I view pages as my song sections, I might be able to make page looping work as a stand in for “patterns” since I don’t actually want to change any of the sounds within. Anyone used page loops like this?
Pretty sure Page Loop is not going to work well as a clip launcher, because the looping applies to the whole pattern, not just the single track.
It sounds like the feature that does what you’re looking for is Perform Kit—turning on this mode will keep the kit constant across pattern changes. (It will also keep your adjustments, with func yes and func no states included, until you turn it off.)
One workaround I don’t see written about but I’ve thought about is resample some tracks down to one or two and use just one pattern, treating tracks like sections of the song.
If you don’t mind me asking, how do the DT2 kits differ from the ones on the A4? Kits are one of the few reasons I would consider upgrading to the DT2 from the 1, but if they don’t work similarly that makes it even less attractive for me.
They are different in that they are still stored in the pattern unlike the A4 which only references them. But now you can save/load them from +Drive and enter perform kit mode which locks the kit into a temporary one until you turn it off. It’s a backward-compatible solution that I haven’t used on the DT2 or DN2 yet. I think they need to add support for it to Song mode for it to be a true replacement.
Internal resampling is subject to normalization, same as line-in sampling. The only way to avoid this would be record your tracks into the DAW then bounce them to a stereo track and then move that stereo file back into the DT2 via transfer. You could also just record via USB straight to a stereo track in the DAW without using overbridge.
I wouldn’t internally resample anything where sonic consistency between patterns or a desire to maintain the track samples original character and dynamics are of any consequence.
In my opinion, the way kits function on the DT is more like a preset of sounds you can load.
Maybe you have an 808 kit ready to go and can load up. Like a template. Even if you load the same kit to each pattern… They are different kits.
You do have the “perform” kit which locks the current kit across patterns. I didn’t like this at launce and found it no substitute for the A4 / AR kits.
I admit I need to give it another shot. I have some questions like what happens if a pattern uses different instruments on a track but then I perform kit over them?
It’s just kind of a fuzzy territory for me. No matter how you slice it, I feel like you have to really be strict about setting up your patterns in such a way you don’t shoot yourself in the foot if you intend to “perform kit.”
Never could be faffed with “song” modes, I always just copied a pattern with the kit saved within it for variations and would make subtle changes to sounds and fx settings from there per pattern. On the DT2 you can save the kit of the original pattern and reload it into a variation pattern if it gets too off the rails… but there’s workarounds on the DT1 for that as well.
