After gaining some experience I think my preferred implementation of kits on Digitakt would now be this:
- 8 “bank sounds” per pattern bank, one per track, called “bank kits” or just “kits”. Therefore 16 kits per project.
- You can assign (toggle) the bank sounds to the tracks by holding TRK and then holding FUNC and pressing TRIG buttons. Easy to swap the persistent sounds in and out, or you could just use them as an Octatrack style part/kit, associated with the bank.
- To edit the sounds you just swap them in
- To save/restore the “bank kit” to/from project hold TRK and press YES for save and NO for restore. Can also use Save Ptn and Reload Ptn which use the temporary buffer instead of save/load to/from project.
- You can transfer a track’s default sound to any bank sound by using the normal track copy/paste operations. Useful to make a sound that you like persistent on the fly.
Introducing TRACK LOCK.
TRACK LOCK lets you set one or more tracks to never change its sound on a pattern change, and optionally to keep playing the same sequence. Now you can continue tweaking a sound without it changing on you when you switch patterns, or mix-and-match tracks from different patterns.
Locked tracks flash orange when they play notes, and sequence-locked tracks flash yellow.
To enter TRACK LOCK mode, hold [TRK] and press [PTN]. The status of each track is shown on the trig buttons. Normal tracks in white, locked tracks in orange, and sequence-locked tracks in yellow. To change the lock status of a track simply press the corresponding [TRIG] and it will cycle between normal, locked, and sequence-locked. To reset all tracks to normal status at any time, hold [TRK], then [PTN], and then press [NO].
To change a locked track to normal status without locking the sequence, hold [FUNC] when pressing [TRIG]. Going from locked to normal in this way is effective immediately. The sound will be loaded from the currently playing pattern and you will lose all changes. Using this method on a sequence-locked track will load the sound from the pattern but continue playing the locked sequence until the next pattern cycle or change, whichever comes first. Note that, conversely, when you lock a track, the sound becomes untethered from the pattern it was loaded from and will no longer affect the sound stored in the pattern.
If the sequencer is playing, going from sequence-locked to normal or using the reset function described above is effective on the next pattern cycle or change, whichever comes first. If the sequencer is stopped, it is effective immediately. Tracks that are queued to return to normal status will appear flashing white in TRACK LOCK mode.
Saving the current pattern works a little differently when there are locked tracks. When the SAVE TO PROJ function is used while there are one or more locked tracks, you will be asked whether you want to save the locked tracks over whatever is in the pattern, only save unlocked tracks, or cancel.
When saving to the temporary area, all tracks are saved, regardless of their status. However, the pattern sequences and sounds aren’t lost. The untethered track states are saved in the temporary area as well as the normal pattern data, so that when you reload the pattern, any locked tracks are as you saved them, and when you unlock any of them, the track(s) “hidden beneath” are restored. Reloading a pattern does not change the lock status of any tracks.
