I’m curious as to how people start new projects.
I usually just grab samples with little planning. I’m thinking about trying a new workflow tonight.
I want to make a bunch of samples and sit for a while just with sound design and then use only what I’ve created for a jam. Like a limited palette when painting.
I find it can be a bit overwhelming with too many samples and then the song writing process gets wobbled by the sound design stage when I do it all on the fly.
Does anyone else curate a sound selection before writing with the Digitakt?
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If not doing internal sampling, I like to crop and chop stuff with a clipper, limiter and eq in Ableton before loading the material into the Digitakt. I have an A4 and a Dominion 1 + a few pedals for sample creation. I enjoy doing that process too. Record while tweaking for an hour, just focusing on the actual sounds instead of ‘making a song’. Then I select a few happy-accident-snippets and maybe, not always but sometimes, create a few different versions of the same sample, with more or less reverb/fx etc. It’s nice to have a couple of different versions of the same sample. Usually one of them fit in the mix 
Less is more. The more you will set the limit, the more you will be creative.
I also recommend you to take some time to carefully select your drums samples from the tons of existing samples on your computer. Having 15 - 20 drums samples max very different of each part (kicks, snares, hats…) is easier to work an pick the right drum. You can always pitch, layer and filter to change each drums and generate news from existing.
About starting with a set of sample, it’s a good idea. You can try to impose a theme before your sample selection to be sure to match the atmosphere you are thinking.
I don’t do a sound selection, but I always get inspired first by a sample. It can be a noise sound or a chop from a record or something on youtube. I try to be minimal on my stored samples to use the max the sample I chose.
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I often start a project with one or two placeholder samples that act as a guide. I compose everything around them, and then I delete those original samples once they’ve given me the direction I needed.
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