Melodic vs rhythmic styles

The Lounge General Discussion
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Question: Who uses Elektron gear to make music which is primarily melodic/harmonic in nature?

I see a lot of music posted which is primarily built around rhythms and textures, drones and jams and beats, and some which has tonal elements in a loop, but not a lot which puts melodies and chord progressions front and center.

I’ve been wondering because I like to do mostly melodic stuff, and I’d like to find others with similar interests. Like, the last song I finished starts out with 3-part harmony and builds up to 5 as the song progresses, without repeating much along the way. I think it used 22 patterns on my Digitakt, most of which only played once. The bassline is ten 64-step patterns long. Drums are there and are definitely an important part of the song, but the real meat is the melodies.

Is anyone around here into that kind of thing?

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I am, but I find that I don’t use my Elektron gear to make that kind of music. For me my Elektrons are mostly for making ever-shifting tracks based on one or two loops, slowly manipulating things and then later editing down for clarity.

I’ve made a lot of prog using trackers, but I just can’t find a reason to use Elektron gear to do the same thing, as the “composition” nature of it gives software trackers an advantage over hardware. Not sure if that makes sense? I’ve never felt comfortable composing using hardware sequencers; I’m much faster with a mouse and keyboard.

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Yah, I prefer the melodic thing - otherwise it sounds like I’m just stringing a bunch of loops together.

Using Elektron gear in this context (previously AR & OT, now digitakt) I found it quicker & easier to use the DAW as the master brain/sequencer/audio recorder/etc rather than trying to sequence an entire song on an XoX sequencer.

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Okay, it sounds like everyone has their own unique approach. :slight_smile:

I used software trackers for years, but it was always an awkward fit for me. I loved how much detailed control it provided, but I found it very slow and rigid and I had a lot of difficulty making songs move forward instead of just looping a pattern. So I got out of music entirely for a while.

Eventually I tried some hardware devices and found they were so enjoyable to play that I wanted to compose again. And I’ve kind of built up from there. But as my songs got more sophisticated over time, I kept running into walls. I tried using a DAW for a while, since all the features I wanted are there, but trying to do things via mouse and keyboard again, and dealing with all the complications involved in a computer-based solution, made the process no longer enjoyable.

So I got myself a Digitakt, and things have been going better. It’s basically a tracker, but in hardware with a more realtime-oriented UI.

I like it, but I don’t think I’ve yet run into anyone using it the same way I do.

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Could you post some examples or explain your workflow?
It’s always nice to hear how people are utilizing the device.

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I believe your post may be based on the abundance of percussion-based examples available. You see/hear that in Eurorack also.

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Sure. I didn’t want to spam links, but I suppose I could post my most recent track… (apologies for the re-post; I haven’t had my Digitakt for long so I don’t have a lot of DT-based songs to choose from)

As for work flow, I generally mess around with synths until I get an idea I like. In this case, I was messing with a Microbrute and Keystep, and made a bassline. I recorded the bassline (10 patterns) and then experimented with leads for a bit to get a feel for the key and scale. Then I hit record and improvised a 2-loop-long (~20 pattern) lead. Then I did that again, basically doing a second take to see what ideas came out. They sounded good together so I kept both. Drums came last, basically just improvising on the fly. I ended up with something really sloppy, but I felt it was at least an idea worth pursuing.

That was draft 1, mostly sketched out using an OP-1 in tape mode.

Then I went back to clean up the melody tracks, redo the drums, etc. I added an arp near the end, added a whistle in the second half (again basically improvised then cleaned up), and then just went around the track fixing up little things here and there.

The sound isn’t exactly how I want it, but it’s as close as I could get with the gear I have. I could really use an A4 or a Peak for a nicer set of synth voices.

At that point I called it done and recorded the audio. Then because I wanted to put it on youtube, I recorded a lame video too. The entire first minute can be skipped; it’s just boring setup info I probably shouldn’t have included. And after that it’s mostly just hit play and watch blinkenlights while the song plays.

Here’s the video: (sorry, youtube picked an odd frame to use as the thumbnail)

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Yeah, I’ve found this as well… but I still think Elektron sequencers have a while to go before they become as deep as trackers. One reason why I find it hard to sit down and write a full song on their sequencers is because I rely so much on being able to break patterns up into their tracks in Renoise (and previously, Buzz) and easily duplicate say, just one track to a different pattern, or have one track mirrored elsewhere so any changes are reflected in all patterns, etc.

I think also part of the reason I’m writing different music on Elektron gear is because I’ve been generally moving away from 100% predetermined music; moving towards a more generative/repetitive style makes it harder to incorporate longer progressions without them starting to get annoying. For some reason, I’m less annoyed by a piece having no chord progressions and consisting of short repeating lines, than a piece which has one long, complete chord progression that really goes nowhere.

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Yeah, I do see that a lot in Eurorack and other modular gear. Compared to Elektron gear, it’s even harder to sequence modular stuff… since so much of it is physical instead of virtual, and each CV control needs its own cable instead of muxing all the info over MIDI.

I miss Buzz. That was the first tracker I encountered with a 2-dimensional pattern sequencer, allowing the user to repeat individual tracks while altering others. It’s a really useful method.

So on the Digitakt I definitely end up doing a lot of copy/paste. It’s annoying. Even if I change the trigs, I still have to copy/paste the sounds and settings, because it treats each pattern almost as if it’s a completely different song. But it hasn’t been a huge hurdle for me, especially since most of my sounds are external.

Something similar can be done by using multiple sequencers though, like having a set of drum sequences on a Digitakt and a set of melody sequences on an A4, and playing them at the same time. Mix and match manually during playback to create a song. It’s less automated, but I kind of like it. It also is much better at facilitating live mixes, going with whatever feels right at the time. And I appreciate that, because so much of my musical approach is intuitive instead of analytical. I’m not a music theory geek.

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Speaking of hybrid approaches, with realtime improvisation using multiple sequencers on different gear for music which is primarily melodic/harmonic, I really enjoy the method Ehsan Gelsi uses. Here’s an example of how he does that:

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Yeah true. I haven’t even used my elektrons together yet! I should do that at some point, I think the DN+OT would go together nicely.

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I guess my style generaly speaking sits somewhere in the middle in this regard. I come from a musical background that is like 1/3 industrial, 1/3 synthpop and 1/3 VGM. I have a pretty percusivve, one could say techy or psy-trancey style where I build up interlocking melodies to be the high points of the tracks.

Out of Elektron gear I have a Digitakt, Digitone and Sidstation. Digitone is the most recent purchase and I’ve barely used it for anything yet. I also have a Roland D-05 and the keybed for it.

Anyway, my workflow has general been like this: I lay down some basic beat and bassline on the Digitakt. I jam on the D-05, trying to come up with embellishments/melodies/arps. I program the suitable ones back to Digitakt, usualy arps, drones or then some backing melodic stuff. I fiddle around with the sounds. Would a DT sample be good for this one? Or something from the D-05? Or maybe the Sidstation? Once I have a certain pool of snippets, phrases and ideas I start to work on the structure and variations for the track. In the end I put it all together in a DAW.

With the Digitone I’m probably gonna delegate the Digitakt to just beat duties. I’ve had the Tone for like 4 days and I’m already in love with it, it integrates so well with the Digitakt, the four synth engines is fantastic because I can do a lot of the parts of the song on a single box and it sounds so clean and easy to mix.

Anyway, the Elektron sequencers on these boxes aren’t necessarily the easiest ones to deal with when making melodies, and the lack of portamento/slide is bit of a bummer, especialy on the DT (though there is that LFO workaround to that). There are a few really big plus sides to these boxes when it comes composing.

First off, Elektron boxes have multiple tracks, so you can hear very immediatedly how several elements work together very easily. This combined with their really fluid workflow makes sketching up ideas really fast.

Secondly, conditional trigs are quite useful. It’s easy to make an 8 bar melody on a 4 bar sequence using some trigs, or you can liven up some arps and so on.

Thirdly, the p-locks are very good for varying the sounds, changing them alltogether, or working around some of the limitations of the sequencer (you can pull of slides and vibratos with them). I must confess that I have mostly used the p-locks on rhythmic stuff, but I plan to explore their potential on melodic sounds further now that I have the Digitone.

And last, the MIDI tracks make it easy to put these good features into gear that don’t have (Elektron) sequencers. I’m really impressed by how for example the Sidstation has integrated into my setup, as I’ve had pretty big MIDI issues as long as I have owned it. Not latency, no weird ass off-timing, nothing.

I would say that an offboard keyboard is pretty necessary though, because playing around with the pads is an excercise in futility and/or making tracks built around some variation of C scales over and over again (I did do a two song release with just the Digitakt and no other gear though).

So to sum it up, I would say that Elektron gear is suitable for more melodic styles too. Obviously some of the gear is better suited than others - Digitone is more fit for this than Digitakt, but the Takt is still suprisingly good. You might also really need to push the sequencers to get most of the gear melodicaly, but on the other hand you should try more jamming with a keyboard and figuring out the possibly building blocks. I have found that trying to compose just by hitting buttons and fidling with trig pitches just doesn’t cut it fro me. And hey, why worry about your sloppy playing when you have perfectly good quantizing mechanic on the boxes, and a good sequencer where you can further tweak your creations?

I’ll wrap this post up with a few examples of what I’ve done:

This is a kind of a techy synthwave track that I did with the Digitakt and D-05. I think it sort of well demonstrates my style which this kind of middle ground between the more techy style that Elektron boxes incentivize and a more melodic style.


This is an unreleased WIP made with Digitakt, D-05 and Sidstation that might get vocals on it someday, and I’ll probably migrate parts of the synth tracks to the Digitone. Anyway, it has a trap beat and then else in common with the genre. It’s a pretty good excercise in cooking a mix of scifi basses, glitchy noises, drilling hihats and interlocking melodies with the Elektron gear.


Here’s another unreleased WIP made with the same gear as the previous one, more in VGM/synthwave style. Not 100% happy with this one, but it’s another good demonstration of how you can cook a mix of techy noise and interlocking melodies and this gear with relative ease.

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Being a shitty keyboard player I’m generally much more into the melodic side of things but, oddly, with the OT I would say I’m in the middle or edging more towards the rhythmic side of things.

When I had a DT though I used that loads for melodies - really enjoyed how easy it was to take any sound and shape it into a bass/lead Working on my OT skills to bridge the gap on that device better - just find it a little tougher.

I do think that for me at least, Elektron devices are more suited to rhythmic approaches. Or, at least, structured approaches. It’s only natural with the sequencer at hand. When I’m working ITB I approach things very differently and will build a variety of melodic parts to layer and jam with.

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…since techno and hiphop came up way more than twenty years ago, it’s part of the common progress, that u don’t have to be musical trained in any way, while still making music somehow anyway…in punk days the revolution was…u need just two chords on a guitar to get it going…
so further down the simplicity rules way, producing somewhat edm these days became a serious hobby for many, many people…and not even half of them are into it for the music, but for the girls…that just taken as a synonym for the attention all in all…
while keep on forgetting, that u better have something to say for real, instead of just playing some look at me-hero games and pure only in pretending…poor me…wher’s the money…in here, somewhere…

but for at least somehow melodical harmony driven content u still need to be trained musically…
no matter what…
so here we go, minority report…

i, personally, dig stuff where simplicity AND real musical content comes together. as one thing, working together to comfort each other…
and hell yeah, i know i’m not alone with that, but more and more outdated anyways…
so, i hear u…

my son, 12 by now, really dislike vocals aslong there’s no obvious auto tune on it…!!!..that’s where it’s at…

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I like working with melodic and harmonic content and use my Digitakt in that way. I’ve got my Kawai MP11 with which I play chord progressions that I sample into the digitakt and maybe mangle the samples if the music requires it (boy I want an Octatrack for that :)). I also use the midi tracks to control a Nyx, Erebus, and MicroKorg and a few iPad apps if needed, providing melodic content (and sometimes also harmonic content). I also have an AKG D5 going through a Boss RE20 Space Echo directly into the Digitakt. That, I use for vocals as well as sampling melodic vocal content into a track.

Also, I tend to spread my parts/sections across banks, eg Bank 1 Patterns 1-5 will be the a-section (with variations but effectively still the same section) the b-section will be on Bank 2 Pattern 1-3, th Chorous on Bank 3 Pattern 1 -whatever, and the Bridge on Bank 4 Pattern x-y etc… so I can use pattern chaining to play those sections without losing orientation.

Of course all of that is muh easier achieved in eg Ableton Live, but I dig the hands on feel of the digitakt, and it invites me more to play and alter stuff.

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Some time has passed… I haven’t made as much music as I’d like, but I have at least learned a bit more about music in general and how I like to work.

The Digitakt is really nice for making patterns. I particularly like it for doing loop-based stuff which is only a pattern or two long and evolves by turning knobs or adding and removing tracks. It’s a bit awkward for longer songs though.

What I’ve found works best for me so far is:

  • Get an idea in the shower or something.
  • Hum / beatbox the idea into a voice recorder. I typically use an OP-1 for this, but a phone would probably be fine too.
  • Enter the melody into a sequencer. Ideally, this ends up being several minutes long.
  • Add some basic drums.
  • Add a bassline, second melody, or other harmonic parts.
  • Scroll through patches to find sounds which work well together. Adjust the drum samples too, to make a coherent kit.
  • Spice up the drum parts, to fill them out and make them respond more to what’s happening in the melodic parts.
  • Generally just go through adding layers and refining things until it’s done.

The core idea here is to work horizontally first, making sure it flows from beginning to end… and then pad things out vertically for a fuller sound. Fine-tine things along the way as necessary.

The Digitakt seems to strongly encourage a different workflow though… vertical first (do the patch selection and mixing and fine-tuning first within a single pattern), then horizontal (copy/paste that pattern to extend the song’s length, and go back to edit the note data). If any changes in the samples or patches are needed, the user must make those changes repeatedly in each pattern. So the Digitakt is tricky for what I’m trying to do.

Also, it doesn’t record CC data from external controllers, and can only have one CC value per step even when entered manually. This is pretty limiting when driving lots of midi devices simultaneously, since I can’t turn all those knobs by hand in real time. Usually I can at least work around it by building more modulation into the patches, but it’s tedious to do that all the time.

I love using a Digitakt for jams – it’s really enjoyable and entertaining. Being pushed to stay within just a couple patterns per song keeps things simple and quick. But I’ve been wondering if I should find a different sequencer for longer compositions.

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Before anyone asks for examples, here are a couple which demonstrate the sort of thing which is easy to do on a Digitakt… Each is just one or two patterns long and evolves by adding layers.

In both cases, it’s mostly Digitakt (drums) + Blofeld (everything else). A Microbrute was also used to make the bassline a bit fatter.

Jamuary 2020 Day 4:

Subterranean Rainforest:

I had a lot of fun making these… but they both could really use more structural progression, and that’s hard to do on a Digitakt.

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Playing melodic on elektron machines is not possible or easy because strumming polyphony is not possible on sequencer… So I hope they will upgrade their future machines or the existing one…

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I write all my music on a keyboard (midi recorded) then sequence it. I will say the OP is right in that being sequenced based Elektron is not amazing for capturing expression but I don’t think any sequencer would be. And it’s a crying shame you can’t load midi files.

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TBH, I can’t load any files on it, because it’s not a class-compliant storage device. So I’m stuck with the stock samples and anything I record over line-in. At least it supports standard USB-MIDI though, and can accept firmware updates over sysex.

Anyway, I’ve been eyeing the Deluge for quite a while now. Its arranger mode seems like it might be more appropriate.