After 12 years in Pro Tools I finally got myself Ableton Suite and a Push, and my system has a bunch of redundancies now with the digitakt. I love my Digitakt, I just don’t feel like I need it anymore. My workflows in Ableton are faster for much of what I want to do, and I no longer have to struggle to record everything from my digitakt to Pro Tools in the middle of a session.
I need to get about 25 projects, each filled with multiple banks of patterns, off the digitakt and onto my computer. I know I can record each track in each pattern into my DAW through a stereo out, but that will take me days or weeks to archive. As far as I know, Overbridge doesn’t yet have the ability to record stereo effects, reverbs, or delays on individual tracks, only on the master, which would require solo-recording each track in each pattern, then time aligning them.
If there’s an alternative way here, some software that can back all of it up, or something I’m missing, I’d appreciate some guidance.
Also, if anyone has any really compelling reason I should keep the digitakt, I’m all ears! I’ve loved this little box the whole time I’ve owned it, I just see my workflow getting a lot faster with software alternatives.
If you’re talking project data, then you can just drag and drop to back that stuff up using Elektron’s transfer program. If you’re talking about actual audio, then you’ve already surmised the situation pretty effectively and I’m not certain that I have anything to add to it unfortunately.
Well, it’s fundamentally useless without a hardware device, if that tells you anything.
What it backs up is the samples themselves, the arrangements, the parameters and effects settings associated with projects, any samples which were modified, song mode data. Essentially everything that is needed to restore your data onto a live digitakt.
The issue here is that the digitakt does not create complete audio tracks, it uses fragments of audio in the form of samples and sequencer commands and effects and parameter locks etc, so that each time you play a track it’s playing an arrangement of everything in real time made out of it’s fundamental components, therefore the only way to create longform audio out of these arrangements, is to record them.
Either by recording longform into a daw or resampling within the recorders time constraints, the audio must somehow be recorded as the machine only contains arrangements and tools and building blocks.
It is your patterns and projects etc which give them sound via the sequencer but they don’t exist in any tangible form until you track them out either as stems and an effects track, or as a stereo track with a full mix.
The too long didn’t read here is that the project backups are only useful if you’ll have access to the hardware.
Of course I didn’t invent the system, but that’s how it works, if that helps at all to understand the position which you’re in.
Well, if you really want to record everything track-by-track, you can hard-pan the outputs to capture 2 tracks at the same time. (They’d both be mono of course; you’d lose any stereo field info this way.)
Still, even with Song Mode, that seems like a lot of work.
One suggestion: If you’re really set on 86ing the digi, have you considered recording everything in well-chosen groups, as if you were the Beatles (or whoever) bouncing things down to 2-track?
You’d have to make a bunch of permanent decisions, but it’s a time-honored tradition.
That’s great info. That was my assumption with this - it’ll be great if I get another digitakt or piece of hardware, but not necessarily useful otherwise. Thanks for taking the time to write out the detailed response, I will likely do this just in case
This is a great idea, and generally I like committing to sounds like this. I’m afraid my organization systems on my patterns and projects might be a little haphazard to develop a system around the group technique, but I’ll try some version of this. I bet it’ll speed up my process
To be perfectly honest the digitakt market sucks right now. The $400 or less that I’d probably get if I sold it does’t get me anywhere close to a dtII. It’s actually worse than that because I have 2 of them and even selling both, I could maybe barely get a used dtII out of the money. The value in that did not sufficiently motivate me to try so I’m viewing that as more of an “eventually” type of gameplan.
If you have an immediate need for that $400 then I can see wanting to get on with the sale since you’ve effectively found a workflow that replaces it, but for me, even bringing an MPC live II into my composition process, there were some things about sound design and just the songwriting process in general where I found the elektron workflow was so much more straightforward, articulate and advantageous that I’m usually writing with multiple devices involved anyway (more often than not really).
I know that for ableton users, many can and do enjoy using it as a standalone workflow and the process is very cohesive, so for you, it may make more sense to get rid of the DT but I’d try and find a balance between how advantageous it is for you to get rid of it now vs having the time to sort out and record your projects rather than feeling pressed to power through it.
If you’re happy with the projects you created on the DT and you’d like to continue developing or finalizing them in the box, then I’d record them in whatever way gives you the most ability to continue working in your preferred working style at the highest level of quality possible, even if that means recording some of them as individual soloed tracks with effects on the stereo track.
Doesn’t mean you need to record all tracks that thoroughly, but being able to go through it and make the best decisions rather than feeling pressed to just get the stuff off the device will ultimately make your life easier.
Gotta do what’s best for you though, so good luck with whatever you settle on and let me know if there are some other questions that I might be able to give you any perspective on.
Luckily, I’m in no big rush to sell. I’ve had mine for about 5 years and got it for a steal back then, about $500 for a barely-used unit, so even selling it low I don’t feel like I’m taking a loss for the years of value I’ve gotten out of it. I’m also aware of how long it will take to unload everything off this thing. Last night I had the misfortune of opening up a session with one of the coolest recordings I’ve ever made on it. Took me a few hours to stop playing with it and check it off my list of finished recordings.
The Digitakt has been a great tool for me, but I think a lot of that is due to the fact that I’ve been using Pro Tools for a long time. It’s a software that, for me, has been such a challenge to use as a creative tool in the box that the Digitakt has been a necessary part of my workflow. I’ve used the Digitakt as a way of getting out of a highly technical software to feel inspired, and also as a means of recording great sounds straight in without needing to do much processing.
Getting Ableton, though, I feel like I have all of the means to do the creative things I’ve wanted to. The Digitakt was a sort of workaround for the challenges Pro Tools presented. Many of the things I’ve been using the Digitakt for are suddenly easy in ableton for the first time, and I don’t have to go back and forth between my computer and an external tool. The distance between an idea and its execution has never been shorter. That said, I’ll see how much offloading these projects onto my computer changes my opinion of how much I need the digitakt, and it seems like a lot of producers use both the digitakt and ableton. So far, the projects I’m recording into the box are pretty inspiring. I’m not sure I could have made them without the digitakt