TL;DR - With careful adjustment, you can use keytracking and other modulation to get the best of all the Machines, to play break beats on the fly.
How to hack yourself a more versatile Grid Machine
With the advent of OS 1.10A on the Digitakt 2, keytracking can be now applied to a variety of parameters. Here, I would like to suggest some Ideas on how to use this new feature to implement a Grid Machine - the motivation being features of others machines becoming available on top.
I will also discuss a number of other ways of working with the Grid Machine to emulate features of the other machines.
I’ve done all my experiments with one specific use-case in mind:
Drum Breaks. All this is assuming you have a sample with drum hits laid out such that they perfectly match the grid. In other words: If you were to simply use the Grid Machine, you’d basically end up with a drum kit, where every slice corresponds to one drum hit.
My end-game is to be able to play a Drum Break, or rather slices of it, and be able to adjust as many parameters as possible, as freely as possible, with consecutive drum hits staying on time.
Some of the methods discussed here could also be useful in other scenarios, though.
How to set-up the Keytracking
One key setting that is needed in almost all set ups is the following:
Keytracking → Tune | -8
which perfectly counterbalances, and thus deactivates the change of pitch the keys are normally meant to accomplish.
The next crucial setting is:
Keytracking → Sample Start | [+120, +60, +30, +15]
which will shift the starting position along the length of the sample depending on what note you play, much like the Grid Machine. The Amount will depend on the length of the sample and some other settings. A little bit of trial and error will get you to the right amount.
With this out of the way, I’d like to discuss some Pros and Cons of different approaches.
REPITCH
Here, you need to set the length of the sample as short as possible, Bars=1, have a long sample and potentially increase your BPM to double time. For example I’ve done this with a 4 Bar Sample, i.e. 64 16th notes, set the BPM to 300, Sample length to 15 and keytracking to +30.
Pros
Using this with the Repitch machine, let’s you freely adjust the BPM of the track. The drum break will be on time and you can play different slices of the drum break in keyboard mode or with an external controller.
Cons
If the length of the slice reaches the end of the sample, it will be pitched down, off time and hence render the last portion of the sample useless. In the above example, the last bar or so was unusable.
You may eventually max out BPM, depending on fast you want to go.
STRETCH
In principle, this works with the same set-up as above, but comes with different advantages and downsides.
Pros
You can freely adjust both BPM and the pitch of the sample and still freely play slices of a drum break with every hit on time.
Cons
As above the last portion of the sample becomes basically useless, since it will be stretched off time.
The stretching can affect the quality of the drum sounds. This may be desirable, but generally it will destroy transients.
ONE SHOT + VELOCITY MODULATION
On the One Shot machine you can use a similar set up, with keytracking as above.
Additionally, you turn OFF the normal velocity to volume behaviour, you can instead use the Velocity Modulation on the sample start. Again this requires some trial and error depending on the length of your sample. I’ve used
Velocity Modulation → Sample Start | +120
Then on the Trig Page, I’ve set the Velocity to 32, Retrig to ON, VFAD to 32, LEN to 32, and RATE to 1/16.
Pros
Free pitch control and free BPM control without stretching. Free control over individual Trig parameters like envelopes.
Even without the velocity modulation and perfectly laid out drums, this can give you a much more precise version of the Grid Machine on any samples and let you easily scan it on a keyboard.
Cons
You cannot actually play in keyboard mode, because - as off now - the velocity fade is only applied to Trigs placed on the sequencer not the ones played in keyboard mode. I don’t know about external controllers, but I’d imagine it’s the same problem.
I have already posted a ticket with electronic concerning this oversight. Once they fix it, this will accomplish pretty much exactly what I want.
GRID MACHINE + EXTERNAL ARPEGGIATOR
I have not tried this myself, but I think this could work pretty neatly. If you use an external controller with a chromatic arpeggiator and play a single note, the arpeggiator will play the consecuitive drum hits for you.
Pros
Free control over pitch, BPM and individual Trig parameters, like envelopes. Respects Swing settings.
Cons
External gear is required.
Your thoughts?
I hope this helps and inspires some of you. Do you have any thoughts on this? Was this helpful? Did this work for you? Do you see potential for improvement?