Would you recommend the Digitakt if

Elektron Gear Digitakt
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Hi Elektronauts, I’m looking to go OTB. I’ve been lurking here for months. Please help me decide on purchasing a Digitakt!

I have some Logic experience but I want to make electronic music on hardware. Laptop screens are not fun. I have a Minilogue and may pick up another synth or two. I play keys, guitar, bass, etc., and I want a box that allows me to layer musical phrases into loops. Kind of how I imagine clips work in Ableton’s session view, but I’ve never used Ableton.

I’d use one-shot samples to build up drum parts, playing them in time, manually, maybe quantizing or not, then I’d sample in some electric piano from MainStage onto another track, perhaps slice up the phrase and trigger the slices with the sequencer, or else leave the phrase intact and apply fx…

…then maybe add some bass via chromatic keys, or else play in a line on my bass guitar…

You get the picture. I’m a guy who PLAYS music, not a guy who PROGRAMS music. If it’s not immediate, then I won’t use it. Are you like that too? I love morphing the music electronically (IDM-style stuff), sampling, mangling up the samples, adding electronic/sequenced elements.

The MPC seems interesting, but I like a piano keys interface rather than a grid-of-pads interface. Pads make me want to play a boom-bap style, which I find limiting. And the Octatrack looks like a clicky programming nightmare to me…optimized for performance rather than for creating something out of nothing.

Ultimately, I’d want to bring the tracks back into Logic via Overbridge (when available next year) for further arrangement and processing.

Do you think I’d be happy with a Digitakt?

TL;DR - I’m looking for a box that’s a multitrack phrase looper as much as a sequencer / sampler / drum-machine. Is the Digitakt a good creative tool for people who know how to play other instruments (e.g, piano, guitar), to sketch and develop ideas?

Thanks!

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Hi,

you want to record audio and instantly loop/playback? >>>octatrack
you want to record / slice audio and rearrange parts non destructively >> octatrack
you want to apply FX to incomming audio >> octatrack

digitakt can’t do that.
i think what you need is an octatrack!
but it’s a tough guy to learn

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I think most of the appeal of Elektron stuff is in it’s programed approach. The DT is playable and you can live record the parameter changes- but playing things instead of programming things in neglects key features of Elektron gear.

You can plug a keyboard into an MPC and play it that way- that might work for you!

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Hi Philippe - let me clarify… I don’t mind stopping the flow after recording samples in order to save them. I know I said “looper” but that’s not necessarily the right word.

Digitakt’s implementation of slicing is passable for me. From what I understand, you can assign different triggers to different locations in a long sample. Is that true? I remember watching a video of someone chopping up the Amen break in this way… but I forget whether the chop happened on the Digitakt or in Ableton… I’ll have to go back and watch it, unless someone already knows the answer.

For FX – interesting point… I’ll need to think about that one, whether I’m OK applying them post-recording.

If I had to choose between “hard to use” and “less functional,” I’d choose less functional. I make lots of music on a guitar, even though it’s less functional…

So–once you learn Octatrack, how is the creative experience? I guess I was put off watching all that button clicking… and on the other thread, with people comparing it to multi-variate fractal calculus… uh, yeah…

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Thanks Ryan. Can you tell me more about what’s neglected?

On the Digitakt, if I were to play a phrase into it with a MIDI keyboard triggering a sample/sound, doesn’t it lay it on the sequence grid for processing via p-locks, trig conditions, etc.?

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Well, the biggest selling point of the Digitakt(or most Elektron gear for that matter) is it’s ability to “p-lock”(parameter lock) where you hold a trig on the sequencer alter a parameter and it changes that value for that trig only. There’s even conditional trigs which is a huge selling point but definitely steers deeper into programming creation. But if you want a pattern to be longer than 4 bars, you’ll either have to program it in with conditional trigs or go into the potentially messy territory of pattern chaining. The MPCs patterns can be significantly longer if my information is correct.

Not to say that you can’t get interesting perspectives/output with a differentiation in approach to creation- but if you want to stay in a more performance based creation method, I wouldn’t recommend Elektron gear!

Also, as far as programming music goes, the DT DOES make it really expedient, intuitive and fun. So if you were looking to throw a different method of creation in- the DT would be the best first step towards that new method!

Good luck!

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You mentioned that you are a live player more than a programmer.
Digitakt is definitely a sequence programming machine. But it is immediate and it is fun in a way that when you prepare a sample, you could imagine yourself tuning an instrument…but not really playing it.
You can live record trigs and hook up external keyboards but frankly like ryan said the main appeal is manually p-locking steps in various ways (not easy to do with an external controller, it is much more : push and hold a trig on the sequencer and turn an encoder to define a parameter target value). The cool thing is that you quickly get extremely complex sequences that would never have come from a traditional setup with instrument playing.

But it is not an immediate recorder / phrase looper / live audio mangler like the octatrack can be. You have to manually record. Manually Edit. And then sequence.

and you cannot really slice different parts of a sample in a same recording. on a sequence you can lock a different sample start point for each step (trig) but it is not as powerful and precise as in the octatrack.

from what i understand you are more looking at something like an octatrack but it is really hard to learn and you said that it would be discouraging. Did you looked at other options like Toraiz SP-16, or even Maschine MK3, or even…OP-1 ?

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You want the OT. Save up and get the OT. Digitakt is really sweet and fun, but what you state here is that you want the OT.

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I just bought an RC-202 stereo looper to pair with my Digitakt. Look into one of those or the bigger RC-505. It has midi, so you can slave it to the Digitakt. With this setup you can build up patterns on the Digitakt and then play along with your instrument and build up live loops on the RC that are perfectly in sync. The bonus is that you can then sample these loops into the Digitakt to have instrumental loops that are perfectly in time with your track.

The RC looper even has a time stretch algorithm, so if you adjust the BPM on the Digitakt your instrumental will time stretch to it. The time stretch isn’t the best quality, but for minor adjustments it works fine.

To top it off, you get some basic effects on the RC that you can apply to the input, so you can add reverb or delay or other effects to your instruments.

PS: I think you would be happier with a separate looper because the ones included in the sampling stations tend to have more limited functionality.

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wait till overbridge and new firmware, no point in owning this till then unless you are a hobbyist. if so, buy now, it’s super cool kit

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Digitakt is good enough for Headless Horseman to bring the little box on stage.
It really sounds great, and with latest firmware runs pretty nicely.
Get one second hand if you’re unsure, resell without money loss if you don’t gel with it :smiley:

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That’s probably me, haha!
I will say I use the OT for completely live improvised looping of guitar, synth, theremin, and vocals, over beats from a Rytm. I never play the same thing twice and most of the time I just fire up the OT and loop away, no math or programming involved…

However you do need to program it beforehand to be able to do so, but to get a relatively simple looper setup with some drum tracks and fx shouldn’t be that hard. Then it’s like that every time you turn it on, and becomes pretty simple to use.

The fractal programming is when you want to play in a phrase and have slices of it instantly rearranged, spread across multiple tracks in harmonized pitches, with evolving rhythms, resampling that and morphing it into a beat, and on and on and on… For example… But you don’t have to go there… But you can :monkey_face:

I’m not going to recommend or not recommend it, but it does do what you’d like, and no calculus is required! :slight_smile:

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I love the Digitakt, but I don’t think it’s really what you want.

The main problem for your purposes is that it doesn’t do timestretching, and doesn’t easily (there are workarounds) use longer melodic sequences.
That means that if you record your synth riff at 126bpm, it’s stuck there. Again, there are workarounds, like programming in different sample start points, but these only work sometimes and are much more suited to percussion than melodic or harmonic parts.

This is why you’d use the MIDI functionality to program external synths with the DT. Which is quite well set-up for doing that in theory, but it is still quite buggy in practice (with promises from Elektron to improve it soon…)

I think the DT is an amazing instrument, but it has to be played. It’s not a clip launcher. As others have said, an Octatrack or maybe MPC would be a better choice.

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Thank you everyone who has replied so far. A lot to consider!

I’ve since watched Cuckoo’s Octa vs. Digi video and I’ve ruled out the Octa. I like what it does on paper, so I understand why many of you are recommending the box to me, however I know myself well enough.

These two comments especially resonate:

What I want is not a new piece of gear, but something new in my music. I can see the potential in the Digitakt, which is what draws me to it.

I’ve been clinging to a comfortable way of thinking, trying to fit a new box into the old framework of multi-tracking, which I’ve been doing for 30 years since my 4-track Tascam days (oh why did I ever sell it?!)

So I’m going to take another look at the MPCs, but you’re all helping me talk myself into the Digitakt… which is what I intuitively want… and isn’t that what threads like this one are all about? :slight_smile:

ps - another useful input comes from this person’s videos - some cool lofi hip-hop and other genres on the Digi, incorporating live instruments: https://www.youtube.com/user/LuisHouses/videos

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…hands on, whatever u do, straightforward thinking and jamming, a midi harbor for all that might come along in the future…an old mpc with jjos, will do!!!

the new mpc live combines even elastic audio flawlessly these days…like the octatrack…and like ableton…the dt has NO elastic audio!!!..just to mention that again…

the dt has balls when it comes to sound…like all other elektron gear, the sound is always first cream…and .the handling is always tricky in first place…
even if ur already used to elektron gear,it’s aleays challenging here or there…sometime because it’s too simple, that u can’t see the solition right in front of u, sometimes because swedish coders are not only coders but also real music nerds…
they give give u complete creative freedom, but u gotta fight for that freedom in first place and befor all the bliss can happen to u, too…so once u start free jammin’ while capturing and mangle it in realtime, u know what u did before to get there…

so, fastest solution for u would be the mpc live…ur into it within a week…some final solution could be the octatrack…u start to wrap ur head around it within a few more weeks…but then it might opens ur musical mind up in a way u never imagined before…the dt is just a damned good drumsampler that can go beyond if u start abusing it…

the mpc sounds only as good as the content u put in there…the ot always sounds good, no matter what u feed it with or how much u mangle up ur content…
all midi options of the dt, are pretty much the same as in the ot…only difference, on the ot, it really worx already…can’t say that 'bout the dt yet…but we will get there…sooner or later…mpc midi is a pretty straightforward kind of sequencing…you’ll hit record and play…with keys or pads…no matter what…and what u hear is what u get…elektrons way ro handle midi sequencing is quite a different approach…as the whole the sequemcer concept of elektron is…because the sequenzer is an instrument of it’s own…some like that, some prefer the old school way of a limitless track recorder as the mpc concept provides…

the old ot, which has no big difference at all to the new ot by now, is easy to get far under a thousand bux these days…
and one last huge difference between elektrons and mpc’s…sequences on a mpc can be individually long as long as u want them…with pre fixed individually tempi…elektron can double up tempi, halftime tempi within a petern and what the heck else, but end of the the it’s allways maxed out within 64 steps per pattern that follows one overall tempo u can always change on the fly…
well, the dt can also now play pre fixed tempi per pattern…but 64 steps are the max measure of all elektron sequencers…

and one last thing 'bout the dt…it samples in mono only, which is a bit part of the good sound secret in this case…and two and only fx are a beautyful delay and a beautiful reverb…on the master bus, fx sends so to say…and all sounds can only take part here within a mix…no individual settings apart from parameter locking events in the sequnce grid…so, the dt has a very specific way to sound like, when ot comes to big delay and reverbish clouds…

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buy, it try it, keep it, or send it back for full refund

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