Let's build a Track on the Digitakt - Part 1: Creating the Chords 

Interesting

umonox great video! Keep doing these! Thanks a lot!

your welcome david. next part will be online soon, stay tuned!

yes, this process seems quite tedious to me. Isn't there some kind of chord mode ?

i repeated it so many times already, but ... i do it again! :-) Nope, the Digitakt has no Chord Mode because the Digitakt's Audio Tracks are Monophonic! Thats why there is no other way of doing it on the Digitakt directly. You could create your Chords in advance, of course - you could record them from an external Source - of course. But this was not the topic of that very Section ;)

stay tuned ;-) wont be long.

thanks mate. long time that i've seen you commenting on my videos ;-) glad you like it!

thanks mate! glad it helped you out. stay tuned for the next Part ;-)

thanks for the headsup mate! like i said: i have no music theory background, so i was only reading what i've seen :D But thats good to know! thank you.

Thats refreshing.. i keep feeling like people who claim to know no theory are only saying it to be hip, but this dude lsi like “A b”, and its like, nice.. hes really jus going with the flow 💫

This is not the optimal way to use the Digitakt. It is an interesting way to create a chord progression, but the ability to sample incoming audio with the Digitakt renders this almost completely invalid. You can turn on a metronome and record samples from any synth and any chord progression/inversion and load them as different samples and put them all on the same track immediately, as opposed to making several different patterns and tweaking as illustrated in the video. Ricky Tinez and Loopop both do great demos of this.

Danke :-) Freut mich dass dir der Kanal gefällt! Grüße

Youre Welcome Jo! Thank you :-)

umonox I tried to buy ur work on Patreon Nd was disappointed ur off the platform. Sad

Yeah, sorry man. It didnt work out for me. I stressed myself too much with this Patreon Page and this delayed my actual work here on RU-vid a little. And after 3 Months i only had 3 Patrons so i decided to shut it down. You can still buy my work if you want. I have a Bandcamp Page. This one is not abandoned yet :-)

umonox yes I did read your report on why you had to close your Patreon account. Such a shame and I cannot believe there were just 3 patrons. I’ve registered with Bandcamp. Besides buying your tracks, how do I get to buy your patches for the AR and Digitakt, just to learn your work flow. It would help me further. The music you create is my flavour Deep Tech Techno Minimal. Btw I bought my Elektron machines thanks to you. 😜

Wow, i should tell Elektron that i've sold their machines to you! Maybe i get a discount then?! :-D Nah, just kidding. I also have a Sellfy Page, but currently i've only shared some Free Patches for the Analog Four there. I dont have plans to share Patches / Patterns and the like at the moment. But if you really need a headsup, head over to my Facebook Page and send me a Message. Lets see what i can do to help you out. Cheers (btw: you can find the link to my Facebook Page in my Channel Info).

I was like he can just sample himself playing that on a piano saving him 40 minutes. that's cool though lol but very time consuming

yeah, its sweet, isnt it?! :-)

Thanks mate! If you wanna Sidechain specific Sounds only - while keeping the rest of your Tracks unaffected - this method still applies, since the Compressor always affects everything - everytime! For as long as Elektron is not adding dedicated Compressor Sends to each and every Track, this Method is still the way to go for precise application of a classic Sidechain Effect.

Yeah, it would be actually even faster to record from mono synth. But afaik digitakt have 4 voice poly so you could just input that with midi keyboard also

thank you mate! yep, this would also be possible but i find it much harder to control. usually the curves you have arent steep enough to make it sound great. and you still have to use the trigless trigs to retrigger the LFO on the necessary steps where the Bassdrum comes in. Simply P-Locking the Volume is easier and faster - and you can keep your LFO for more important stuff.

Its a nightmare. But a nightmare that offers great flexibility and is highly customizable ;-)

S. P. I sort of agree. The Digitakt is good as a drum machine and sampler, but this method of melodic sequencing is a headache. Just use the 8 MIDI tracks to control a synth. That’s what they’re there for.

listen to Disco 3001, he's totally right 😁😁

yep, works by placing multiple trigs and starting the sequencer while recording ;)

Oh shhh. That's dope.

So the tracks and step buttons are one in the same but they have combined physical input points to be used to trigger one shots and hole samples plus trigger them simultaneously at the beginning of the measure and trigger one shots of the entire pattern length? Am I grasping this in your opinion?

well, quite complicated thinking that you have mate :-) its much easier. you have one sample per track. each track triggers a note. several tracks use the same sample and trigger different notes -all on the same step. this creates the chord once you hit play. that chord is then sampled into the recorder (the recorder is armed so its waiting for the signal and then starts recording automatically). and from there it is assigned to the track where its finally used :) while writing this i noticed that my explanation is also somewhat complicated :-D but its really easy. just give it a try. works better when you try it out and hear what happens while you do it.

Hey, Building chords in that way. Ok, I understand. A meticulous task, perhaps most def worth it on pitch modulating the notes of chords on it. Thanks for your responses.

The Digitakt is a Drumcomputer. Its the fact THAT stuff like this is possible and that it can sound so great in the end. Its not about the work, actually. The MPC Live can do this much easier, sure - but the MPC Live is basically a DAW in Hardware and this is not even well implemented. Its much more pain with everything else! And lets not speak about Sound Editing Capabilities - which are basically non existent on the MPC Live! The Digitakt shines in many aspects, its easy and you do stuff with it that you wouldnt expect a Drummachine to be capable of ;) Thats the Elektron DNA - the machines always do more than what they are intended for. And thats the fun part of working with this Hardware. Hope this makes sense to you ;-)

It does ;) Also don't get me wrong, I think the Digitakt is great. As I said, it's interesting to see what you can do with such a small box. And I understand the fascination of doing everything with one device. But in the video description you imply that this is the way you normally approach building a track with the digitakt (and not only showing all the possibilities with it). I just couldn't imagine doing that for every track, as I feel it would interrupt the creative process of chord finding and stuff, detracting from the fun I would have with the device. Also, what do you mean by "Sound Editing capabilities non existent on the MPC Live"? That statement irritates me a bit =D I now fear all the sound editing I did on the MPC Live was just an imagination! :P What do you miss on the mpc live that the digitakt can do?

Yep, thats indeed my workflow - i really do this for every track - when im using Chords. I used the OP-1 for that purpose once, just recording the Chords which made life easier of course, but: The cool thing about this method is, that "happy accidents" can happen along the way. you switch waveforms and a sound comes up which doesnt work for the Chord - but may work somewhere else. so you fiddle even more and you come up with something you absolutely NOT had in mind before - but it sounds cool and instantly shifts your track into a completely different direction. You wanted a Chord Progression, but ended up with a Lead Sound or a Pad/Ambient Kind of thing and this influences the whole track progression. I really like this. Because, as said before, i often dont have a clue what i actually wanna do. Accidents like this are very welcome in that case ;-) What i mean by "Sound Editing Capabilities basically non existent on the MPC Live" is: The Program Edit Mode is very limited in what it can do. Although you have Filters (a lot actually) and you have the Envelopes for them, you have the AMP Envelope and Stuff and you also have Velocity Zones and you can Layer Samples and stuff. Yeah, although this is all there, it's Implementation is not well thought out. The LFO - for example - has shamefully few Destinations which are fixed (Pitch, Volume and stuff). You cannot assign it to something else. It is also always retriggered, which limits creative possibilities quite heavily! Lots of the Filters dont have real Character and - sound the same to my ears. Layered Samples cannot be edited separately, they all share the same Settings for their respective Keygroup. And the Effects - especially the Reverbs - are completely useless! All these different Reverb Modes sound the same, basically (apart from the Gated ones) and they are not able to produce Stereo Width on their own - although they are Stereo ^^ Overall, its a pain in the ass to get to the Sound you want and bringing it to Life is basically not possible because the LFO has fixed Destinations. So you end up using good Samples and you use the Program Edit just for basic Editing - and thats it. What a waste. The Potential would be huge here, but Akai hasnt implemented these things with Creativity in mind. Yeah. Thats what i experienced. Sure, one can say that i simply expected the wrong thing here, but the overall Design would allow for huge things on that MPC. Its a shame that Akai wasted this opportunity. And lets not speak about all the bugs which still not seem to be fixed (Keygroup All Editing for example - wasnt working for me without switching back to a dedicated Keygroup and then to KG ALL again. I changed Parameters and then i left the Mode and got back into Program Edit, KG ALL was still selected but editing something had no effect at all. I had to select a dedicated KG again, then switch back to KG ALL to make it work - for that very moment. Stupid) [edit] and in regards to your last Question: I think that the Digitakt can make something great out of every Sample - no matter what you use. And the MPC Live cant - because of the reasons i told you before. For me, personally, this is what matters most however. I dont always want to put a new Sound Library on my Device the moment i want to get new Sounds for a new Track. I want to use whats there and want to shape it into a form that sounds great and works. This is (currently) not possible with the MPC Live's Workflow - and especially with its Limitations in the Program Edit Mode!

"sound editing capabilities basically non-existent on the mpc"..... are you serious??? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z4AG6AJhrYs.html - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Sbkhg9JwpYY.html . Thats just crazy talk my friend!

Is alot of work

Yep, i know. My brain is calibrated to this damn yellow knob though - so im always touching it, no matter what! :-D And at the time i made these Videos i didnt knew better - since i NEVER read manuals!

different type of machine

No. The Digitakt has Mono Tracks only. You would need a MIDI Utility of some sort that distributes the Notes played on the Keyboard onto the individual Tracks via individual MIDI Channels to play a Chord with these.

ok, very thanks!

I had to watch it at 0.25x speed to understand what is he doing

Keystep pro

Button pressing... key pressing.... mouse clicking it’s each to their own

You can connect a midi keyboard for the melodic stuff easily.

I said the same thing, on KORG ES2 I start work and in 15 min I have a song, or a pattern for a song.

@Cathode Ray Mission I wouldn't say its Elektron. It's not. It's rather this approach. I also got a pattern done in 15 minutes with the digitakt, but I barely use chords. And if I do, not with this approach. This is a powerful sampler-drum machine, not a polyphonic synth. It's not the digitone.

it can (if you mean audio). But this is not the point. This series is meant to show you how a full Track can be created by only using the Digitakt and nothing more!

No, I meant MIDI. This workflow is horrendous...

it can record up to 4 notes via MIDI on a single track. But then again - this is not the point, i did a Video about that matter already ;-) if you solely use the Digitakt, this is the workflow. And remember: Not everyone has the money for lots of separate Gear to do the job. And some also dont want to grab a lot of external gear all the time as hooking it up could take longer than just creating the stuff on a single, portable machine. Unless you have space and can have all of your external gear hooked up all the time. I dont have that space - and quite a few other people neither ;-)

oh and btw: with MIDI you still cant trigger the Digitakts internal Tracks polyphonically ;-) If this is what you were after: Thats not working!

umonox small question,a single track can only record up to 4 notes? Meaning I could play a,b,c,d,and not e through a midi controller?

Thanks for your comment mate. The idea behind this whole Chord Creation process was to show that it is possible. And it has a couple advantages - it free's you from feeding something in externally if youre on the go and only have the Digi at hand - and it gives you the freedom to mix and match sounds in a chord which isnt easily possible on a regular Synth, at least not in this way. Remember: You can use a dedicated Pattern in your Project just for this purpose. Once you have the foundation for these Chords, you can go back later, change something, resample again and again ... from then on its actually faster than putting something in externally. Its just the beginning that takes work ;-)

you have mastered the machine, that’s for sure!

That would be a good way to do it too but I think he likes focussing on just using one piece of gear. Also he only did use one track for the chords as he resampled them and stuck the resampled chords on just one track. It’s quite a long winded way to achieve a chord progression but it’s good to show how you can make chords with the Digitakt alone with the included samples.

The channels are mono and keyboard mode is one channel only. Playing a chord doesn't work so you can do this workaround to turn your digitakt into a polyphonic synth, kinda. :)

What about if you plug in something like the arturia keystep can you record chords then?

@@mylesdk1787 no. Only the sound of the last key pressed will trigger. That is what they mean when they say that DT audio tracks are mono

To be honest, sure. But music is not just about sound, it is about expression. How do you choose to express yourself with sound? Some people prefer tactile stuff; the steel strings of a guitar, the cow skin of a drum, whatever. And yeah, you could get a MIDI controller and play around with that - but then you all of the sudden need some instrument plugins, nice samples, pretty decent computer, effect plugins, a DAW (of course), and don't forget the audio interface for minimum latency! That's a LOT of choices to be made. And that can be a huge hassle, just to get it all working nicely. Then your computer crashes because the new update of that cool plugin doesn't play well with the most recent version of FL Studio.

You mean, a simple midi POLYPHONIC synthesizer, which is not so simple anymore, not to mention price. Maybe volcas?

I have to watch it at 0.25x speed to understand what is he doing

:-D wouldnt say that this is spit balling - it's totally possible! ;-)

Strat Cat I like that! Elektron gear seems to stir up emotions in us as consumers. I couldn’t understand their gear and justify the price point. Next thing you know I end up with with the Digitakt...,.

@M Jnes: It's like ... wtf, all those limitations for that price?? Until you try it for a moment ... and been soaked into creativity within seconds :-D From then on you never look back ;-)

@@umonox Yep..somehow an Octatrack MKII ended up on my desk. Got it paired up with my Arp Odyssey and i think i left the planet a couple of times.....

@@umonox lol