MIDI Loopback Video Tutorial for the Digitakt

Hello boys and girls!

Here is a little video tutorial for the Digitakt. I’ve been using the MIDI loopback all the time for a few months and got a few questions here and there on my other videos so I thought I’d make this. It’s beginner-friendly but I also show some more advanced things you can do with it (beyond the 8 additional LFOs). Hope you like it! :

It’s my first tutorial and I plan on doing a few more so any feedback is greatly appreciated. :slight_smile:

Peace! :heart_decoration:

EDIT : I just made a follow-up to this tutorial where I describe how to use the MIDI loopback to create a Song Mode on the Digitakt, I’ll put this here :

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Awesome great vid !

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Clean graphics, very clear explanation. But probably not meant for noobs like me. I feel I need to learn more about midi before being able to set this up. But thank you for this very clear tutorial.
A little off-topic:
I also watched Dave Mech’s tutorial on the retrokits 002 set up, but just can’t get it to work…I’m on the 1.11 beta version firmware…I wonder whether this has anything to do with it?
Maybe I need to start with a normal midi cable, make things work, then step up to the retrokits.
Thank you again!

thanks, great video! :+1:t2: nice, consistent style… good separation and clear presentation of information, professional production

little feedback: some of the text were displayed a little to short for my liking, so i had to pause the video to read/understand (and look at the corresponding the pictures) but maybe it is just me…

@hanslr Thank you for the kind word! I tried to make it beginner-friendly but I can see how it can be confusing if you’re not familiar with MIDI in general. I feel like I’m still a MIDI noob myself but I would be happy to try and answer some specific question maybe? As you mentioned, OS 1.11 might have something to do with your issue, maybe someone around here can confirm if the MIDI loopback works with it?

@nionmu Thank you very much, that’s exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for! It was hard to find a balance between SLOW AND BORING and QUICK AND UNREADABLE, aha, but thank you I’ll work on that. :slight_smile:

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@AldoVino thanks for the great vid!

Maybe I’m going about it incorrectly but I was wondering how you handle turning the midi tracks lfo off when switching patterns or muting tracks if you want the modulation to go away?

I like to use midi loopback tracks as variations on a single pattern , per track, so I can just mute/unmute a midi track for variations. Simply muting a midi track doesn’t turn the lfo modulation off.

My workaround is to place a trigless lock on the last step of the page of the midi track with the lfo I want to turn off with the sequencer, and I set the LFO depth to 0 on that trigless lock. I then nudge that trig right till it doesn’t pick up on the regular loop of the track. But when I want to turn off the LFO modulation I can just mute the midi track and it sets the LFO depth to 0 with the trigless lock after the track pattern finishes.

You have a different way of going about this?

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Yeah it’s kinda annoying how the LFO acts, once it was triggered it won’t stop unless you manually tell him to stop. Your workaround seems very effective tho, never thought about this! I use a different workaround, not sure if it will help you in your setup :

When I want to be able to cut LFO modulations quickly, I set up an other MIDI track to reset all other MIDI tracks LFO depth. I set all my other MIDI tracks to listen to the same channel and with my “reset track”, I trigger a LFO that quickly send a 64 value to the LFO depth (CC 109), this put them back to zero. This way I can stop all LFOs by just pressing one key, it’s pretty handy but have some major drawbacks : you lose all your LFO depth values, you have one less MIDI track available…

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hi @AldoVino :slight_smile: thank you so much for this tutorial!

do you know if this works sending the midi thru instead of the midi out to the midi input?

cause I kind of need the midi out for sending clock to other gear but I would like to try this in my setup. so it would be great to know if it is possible to do with midi thru :thinking:

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If you are using midi loopback on the digitakt, the thru will function as an out as it is passing the digitakt signal from the midi out to the midi in thru itself.

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What @jefones said! :slight_smile:

By definition a Thru port is outputting the signal that is received at the In port, and in this case that’s the signal from the Out, therefore in this particular setup Thru = Out.

So just connect the Thru port to your external gear and you’ll be good to go. Remember to use a separate MIDI channel or your CC manipulation might affect your synth or whatever

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nice! I just enable clock send using midi loopback and clock is sending out via midi thru :slight_smile:

thank you both for the reply @jefones and @AldoVino!

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Did you ever get the retrokits cable to work? I know the cable has it’s own chip to flash firmware onto (and there are different FWs for different gear). That might help the issue. Should be able to DL on their website.

These are terrific! Thank you so much. I’ve owned the digitakt for a while and have wanted to delve into this for a while.

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You’re welcome, I’m glad this was helpful!

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@AldoVino , do you know if these techniques are possible on the Model Samples? Love your ambient generative compositions on YouTube!

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Hey thanks, unfortunately I believe you can’t send CC and Program Change message from the Model:Samples, so while you could create a MIDI loop, you couldn’t do as many things as with the Digitskt. :confused: It’s still worth a try tho!

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I just watched both of these videos and found them very helpful! Also I watched a lot of your jam videos when I was deciding wether or not to buy a Digitakt, so thanks a million for those as well!!

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Oh that’s so cool, thank YOU for watching all the stuff. :slight_smile:

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I was thinking about this the other day and wondering… Is it possible to make the loopback trick work by going from the DT OUT, into multiple other synths/fx/pedals, and use the last device in the chains’ OUT/THRU, go back to the DT IN, thus creating a BIG loopback? Hope that makes sense. Any thoughts or insight is appreciated.

Current Setup: DT (OUT) > Moog GRANDMOTHER > Pioneer EFX-500 > Akai MPD226 > DT (IN)
Everything syncs up to clock perfectly. The Grandmother and the MPD226 are able to send midi to the DT with no problem. So physically there is a giant loop there, but I’m unsure if/how to make this configuration work, for the loopback trick.

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Yes. If the other devices provide MIDI Thru, this arrangement is no different to connecting the DT’s Out to its In with no intermediate devices.

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