Very complete tutorial. A bit of a convoluted way to play slices, but it works. This is very similar to the way we set up and use slices on the dirtywave M8, but with the M8 you can map sample slices to notes so it is less bulky.
I watched your video when I just got the Digitack and couldn't understand what was happening. Watching it again 3 months later and it's (mostly) crystal clear. Awesome content, you have the most helpful and practical tutorials on Elektron machines.
I'll be honest, I never once thought about writing a pattern down. It seems so simple now, having each part / p-lock available at a glance. This is a life saver for single track sequencing. Really appreciate the insight on your personal method.
I don't write down my patterns while making music, but I noticed that it was helpful. I only wanted to illustrate what's going on in my head when making drums, but I might use that grid for actual music making =P
Thanks again. I appreciate your willingness to pull back the curtain on your process a bit. Really helpful to see how you imagine, map, construct and refine a beat.
I don't even use the Digitakt. But I do use a mpc or even fl studio and my friend I love this so much help rather than staring at a computer screen. very well approach =0)
I used FL Studio before I got the Digitakt. Working on the DT is slower, but I've been more inspired and patient and creative with it. And yeah, it's nice to not need a computer screen to make music =)
I really love the approach. And thanks for the trig lock trick...i usually do it on the step and have to wait everytime it comes around to hear the sound. Thanks for the great music btw
@@IvarTryti yeah, wanted to say it probably takes some time to get used to that workflow. Thanks again. Have to make some time to se that 80 minute tutorial :D
Thank you, Ryan! I've been thinking about it, but I'm not sure how to approach it. There'll likely be other tutorials up first, because it's easier to explain technical stuff than creative stuff.
Thank you, zkrauklis! I have a similar process for my melodies, where I whistle the melody I'm trying to make while tapping out each step. Thanks for watching, man!
Ivar, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, tips and workflow. I'm learning a huge amount from your excellent tutorials which are paced beautifully for the student (at least those of us with more mileage on the clock!) :)
My pleasure, man. I'm glad you find my tutorials helpful :). I was inspired by Cuckoo's tutorials; he has such a relaxed pace that is easy to follow along with.
Hey Ivar ! First, thanks for sharing your tricks, the paper and dices one is very interesting ! I like the idea to work with the brain, the ears and the paper right before twicking the machine, after all, we do as well when working with a computer ! I have a suggestion : if you use always the same technic with the drum kit storaged as a loop, why not having a template projet with a track where all differents notes are already prepared ? So you just have to fill a new track copying trigs already sliced ? Cheers for France, thanks for sharing knowledge !!
Thank you! And thanks for the suggestion! I made a sound preset for drum loops that has tune set to -12, overdrive set to 50% and other specific settings I use for drum loops. As for making a template project, it's definitely something I'd consider if I felt that finding and tweaking these trigs from scratch took too much time. Right now I've become familiar with the controls so I can dial in the starting points pretty quickly, and the filter settings for kicks and snares need to be done separately for each drum loop. The filter settings that sound good on one particular kick won't get good results on another kick, so these have to be dialed in every time, in my experience. My pleasure man, thanks for watching!
What is the benefit of using the same drum loop sample for every track and parameter locking the start point as the basis for your beat, as opposed to assigning a single sample per track? I could see how chopping a loop would allow to to basically use only a single track for your entire drum beat, freeing all the other tracks for melodic elements and chords, but if you are using most or all of your tracks for drums anyway, is there any advantage? I can see that with the way you organize your loops, you could switch a single sample and have the entire beat change the drum sounds so you could audition different "kits" very easily, which does sound useful, but is that the main reason or are there others? Thank you for your vids! I have learned a lot.
Thanks a lot for this! I hear a bit of NIN influence in your loops and even Thom Yorke. Any other musicians/bands you can recommend to study for inspiring drum loops?
It's my pleasure, man. And thank you! When it comes to drums, I'm inspired by Reznor and Yorke and also Massive Attack, Prodigy, Akira Yamaoka (of Silent Hill fame), Sneaker Pimps and Amon Tobin, from the top of my head.
This may be a general sampling know how I lack, but what makes you prefer using a single sample and trig lock the offsets as opposed to having oneshots and lock sample#? is it the convenience of subtle offset making it sound a little human, or avoiding the sterile pure sound of a single sample?
I prefer using a single sample because you'll be avoiding the pure sound of a single sample. When using drums from a loop you'll be getting some room sound, maybe the tail end of an open hat in your kick, or a tiny bit of bass from the kick in your snare, stuff like that. Also I find it easier to navigate a drum loop waveform than a list of samples when laying down trigs, but I think it's just a preference thing.
Hi, Thanks for your amazing content! I love your very relaxing presentation style :) I have a question which I was asking myself on the other video also, what's the point of recording double speed? Thanks!
Thank you very much! I'm glad you like my style =D. Speeding up before sampling saves space on the Digitakt, and also lowers the quality of the sample. This is usually not a good thing, but I think it works great for trip hop and have been doing it for almost all my drum loops.
can you copy trig locks between tracks? for figuring new beats it would be i think easier to use track one as kick, track two as snare and track 3 as hat (but using the same sample, essentially the same as you have it now) but it would be easier to orient in the beat visually and when you satisfied copy it all into track one? only thing that would be different is that the sounds wouldnt choke when separated into tracks
Yeah, you can copy trig locks between tracks. I think that if you work on 3 separate tracks, and all use the same sample with different starting points, it requires a bit more work to merge them all into 1 track at the end. If you copy, say, track 2's sequencer data and paste it into track 1, then it's going to overwrite what's already there. For example, if you only have snares at steps 5 and 13, and you copy-paste it into track 1, all the kicks and hats already there are going to be replaced with empty trigs, since there's only data on steps 5 and 13. What you *can* do though, is to copy individual trigs and paste it into a different track. If we use the same snare example, if you press and hold trigs 5 and 13, then press COPY, you can paste it all into track 1 by holding only trig 5 and pressing PASTE. Unfortunately, the trigs themselves won't copy track 2's settings, you have to p-lock them for them to carry over when copy-pasting. This might defeat the purpose of spreading out the beat across 3 tracks when you have to p-lock everything anyway. If you don't mind having to p-lock everything anyway, and you don't mind copy-pasting individual trigs, then you could easily make a beat on 3 separate tracks and then put all the trigs into 1 track at the end. Hope that helps!
Hi Ivar, thank you for sharing music and tricks on the digitakt. I'm a new digitakt user myself, so this might seem as a stupid question, but why do you record your drum loops pitched all the way up to pitch them back to normal after sampling?
My pleasure man, thanks for watching :). It's a fair question, and the main reason is to save space. The Digitakt has only 1GB of space to work with, and by doubling the speed before sampling it, you're halving the file size. You're also literally degrading the audio quality, so this isn't always the best choice. I like the 'lofi' sound these samples get though, and if I need to add in more highs, I use the bit reduction snap trick I describe at 4:45.
it's an old school trick from when samplers had very little memory, one which also gave them a characteristic gritty sound that people now associate with the era, and often desire.
Thank you Arne! I didn't study music formally, but I did start early. I started playing with Cakewalk in 1998 and fell in love with the piano roll :P. I switched over to FL Studio back when it was called Fruity loops 3 in 2001.
This particular process seems so complicated. I’m guessing it’s about freeing up other tracks, right? While still being able to change the drum samples. What about just creating a beat you like, record it one time and put it on a track.
This is a rather long-winded way to make a beat, for sure. Recording a beat you like and putting it in one track is very similar to what I'm doing here, but it will be missing the messy sliced up sound I like so much. When rearranging a drum loop like this you're getting snares with a bit of the previous hihat in it, or a kick with the middle of a ride in it, or a hihat with low end from the tail end of the kick before it. If you prefer a cleaner and more focused sound, then this process is a lot of work for not much gain :)
No, not yet. The drum loops I've been using lately aren't quantized, so the perfectly spaced slices almost always miss the mark on those drums. I haven't experimented much with it yet, but have seen some great tricks using LFOs on sample slot and slice number that I'd like to try out some day!
Just to make sure I fully get it, but: you resample the whole beat so it can be chopped up, and easily replaced by another sample (thus swapping all drum tracks at once), and to also open up 1-2 extra tracks for melody? It just seems like a lot of work for somebody like me who's very new and just learning, all that resampling, where you lose more direct interaction and overview at the cost of a few extra tracks.
You're right, it is a lot of extra work, and you lose the overview you get when dedicating a track per drum sound. I almost always create my drum loops separately from making music, so I slowly but surely build up my own library of drum loops to just pick and choose from. This often speeds things up for me since I don't have to spend as much time sculpting the perfect drums from scratch when working on a new track. That said, it's just a preference thing, and those extra tracks you get are worth it for me!
Awesome, thanks for the interest! I don't know anyone who speaks Japanese, but it would be awesome if I could find someone to caption this in Japanese =)
Right off the bat you're approach seems overly convoluted just for the sake of it. Your turn it up with a compressor???? You know there are like 4 volume knobs for a sample right? What the hell is that about?
It sure is! I've simplified my approach, but have kept a few things: -Double the pitch of all samples, and double the BPM. This halves the size of the sample so it takes less space on the +drive. -Add slight amount of delay and reverb. -Compress rather than raising volume: this pushes the drums samples themselves down into the delay and reverb, and depending on how extreme the compressor settings are, will make the delay and reverb pump a bit. This is a tedious process, but it can all be done on the Digitakt itself and you'll end up with nice and crusty drum loops that are ready to use in later tracks.
Very complete tutorial. A bit of a convoluted way to play slices, but it works. This is very similar to the way we set up and use slices on the dirtywave M8, but with the M8 you can map sample slices to notes so it is less bulky.
I watched your video when I just got the Digitack and couldn't understand what was happening. Watching it again 3 months later and it's (mostly) crystal clear. Awesome content, you have the most helpful and practical tutorials on Elektron machines.
Haha, that's awesome to hear, man! Thanks for watching, I'm glad you found it helpful :)
One of the best Digitakt ( and DN) tutorial series. learning synthesis and compositions from your eloquently practical demos. Bravo and thank you.
Thank you, Am! I hope to do more of them, they're fun to make but takes a lot more planning and preparation than making tracks.
This is quality content about Digitakt! Thank you very much! I have learned a lot by watching your tutorials!
This is such a unique (at least from what I've seen) and awesome workflow, I'd love to give it a try!
Thanks! I hope the workflow suits you :D
@@IvarTryti I tried it out on a song, it was hard for me but it was fun and I was fairly happy with the results!
@@hexwavemusic That's awesome to hear!
Can’t praise this enough - excellent demonstration of working process. Thanks for this!
Thank you very much, I'm glad the video was helpful :)
I'll be honest, I never once thought about writing a pattern down. It seems so simple now, having each part / p-lock available at a glance. This is a life saver for single track sequencing. Really appreciate the insight on your personal method.
I don't write down my patterns while making music, but I noticed that it was helpful. I only wanted to illustrate what's going on in my head when making drums, but I might use that grid for actual music making =P
thank you for spending your time sharing your knowledge - love your approach to tutorial, the visual elements help a lot
It's my pleasure man, I'm glad you found it helpful. Thanks for watching!
Thanks again. I appreciate your willingness to pull back the curtain on your process a bit. Really helpful to see how you imagine, map, construct and refine a beat.
It's my pleasure =D. Thanks for checking it out and for the kind words!
wow the trigger lock thing you did at 19:30 is so helpful! awesome!
Thank you very much, Martin! I actually only learned that trick very recently, and I'm working on putting it in my workflow too.
You are very structural, organised.
Thanks for sharing this
Looking forward to the next one
Thank you very much, Christian! I tried to keep things as easy to follow as possible.
It was interesting and helpful lesson. Thanks, Ivar!
Thank you Rafsl! I'm glad to hear it =)
This opens the Digitakt up for me. Always struggle with having a direction when using it. Thanks Ivar! Can’t wait to give this a try!
I'm really glad to hear it, man. Thank you!
Very cool, thanks for sharing your ideas!
Wow that was a compete master class and very professional , well done :-)
Thank you very much, SJ! I hope it was helpful or at least interesting =D
I don't even use the Digitakt. But I do use a mpc or even fl studio and my friend I love this so much help rather than staring at a computer screen. very well approach =0)
I used FL Studio before I got the Digitakt. Working on the DT is slower, but I've been more inspired and patient and creative with it. And yeah, it's nice to not need a computer screen to make music =)
I really love the approach. And thanks for the trig lock trick...i usually do it on the step and have to wait everytime it comes around to hear the sound. Thanks for the great music btw
Thank you, tomicasino! I actually learned about that trick not too long ago myself. Huge time saver once yoy get used to it =)
@@IvarTryti yeah, wanted to say it probably takes some time to get used to that workflow. Thanks again. Have to make some time to se that 80 minute tutorial :D
Thanx Ivar-this has me reaching for my Electribe n goin to work
Thanks for watching! It's awesome to hear that you were inspired to play with the electribe =D
Fantastic, thank you for this.
Would quite like to see your approach to making melody on the takt
Thank you, Ryan! I've been thinking about it, but I'm not sure how to approach it. There'll likely be other tutorials up first, because it's easier to explain technical stuff than creative stuff.
gotta say its a very impressive and inspiring method u teach here
nice tutorial !
Thank you very much, Roy!
Dude, really interesting insight on the process of "uploading" beats from mind to the machine. Been watching your digitakt videos for a while. Cheers!
Thank you, zkrauklis! I have a similar process for my melodies, where I whistle the melody I'm trying to make while tapping out each step. Thanks for watching, man!
Ivar, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, tips and workflow. I'm learning a huge amount from your excellent tutorials which are paced beautifully for the student (at least those of us with more mileage on the clock!) :)
My pleasure, man. I'm glad you find my tutorials helpful :). I was inspired by Cuckoo's tutorials; he has such a relaxed pace that is easy to follow along with.
Dankeschön Ivar! It's hard to get a workflow, thanks for sharing your way to approach it!
Thank you! I'm glad you found it helpful =)
Same sound boosting by filter works well in Yamaha RM1X
So much work! Wonderful! Thank you so much!
Thanks for watching, man :D
Thanks a lot again, masterclass piece
Thanks for the kind words, man =D
Thank you a lot for your job! Your lessons are so useful!
Thank you! I'm glad to hear the tutorials help =D
Thank you for the video! Is it possible to bring a video about LFO approaching?
Thanks for watching! LFO tricks could actually be a pretty lengthy video, there are many neat tricks involving them!
awsome way for teaching bro :D
Thank you!
Thank you so much , blessings 🙇🏿♀️
Thanks for watching, Ryan!
Great!! Thanks for this!!
My pleasure, and thank YOU for the request :D
Thank you very much for this. Subscribed!
Excellent tutorial... Would you be willing to do a similar tutorial for the little brother, the Model:Samples?
Hey Ivar ! First, thanks for sharing your tricks, the paper and dices one is very interesting ! I like the idea to work with the brain, the ears and the paper right before twicking the machine, after all, we do as well when working with a computer !
I have a suggestion : if you use always the same technic with the drum kit storaged as a loop, why not having a template projet with a track where all differents notes are already prepared ? So you just have to fill a new track copying trigs already sliced ?
Cheers for France, thanks for sharing knowledge !!
Thank you! And thanks for the suggestion! I made a sound preset for drum loops that has tune set to -12, overdrive set to 50% and other specific settings I use for drum loops. As for making a template project, it's definitely something I'd consider if I felt that finding and tweaking these trigs from scratch took too much time. Right now I've become familiar with the controls so I can dial in the starting points pretty quickly, and the filter settings for kicks and snares need to be done separately for each drum loop. The filter settings that sound good on one particular kick won't get good results on another kick, so these have to be dialed in every time, in my experience.
My pleasure man, thanks for watching!
What is the benefit of using the same drum loop sample for every track and parameter locking the start point as the basis for your beat, as opposed to assigning a single sample per track? I could see how chopping a loop would allow to to basically use only a single track for your entire drum beat, freeing all the other tracks for melodic elements and chords, but if you are using most or all of your tracks for drums anyway, is there any advantage? I can see that with the way you organize your loops, you could switch a single sample and have the entire beat change the drum sounds so you could audition different "kits" very easily, which does sound useful, but is that the main reason or are there others? Thank you for your vids! I have learned a lot.
interesting question
Fantastic
Thank you =)
Thank you thank youuuuuuuuuu ❤️❤️
Haha thanks for watching man =D
Thanks a lot for this! I hear a bit of NIN influence in your loops and even Thom Yorke. Any other musicians/bands you can recommend to study for inspiring drum loops?
It's my pleasure, man. And thank you! When it comes to drums, I'm inspired by Reznor and Yorke and also Massive Attack, Prodigy, Akira Yamaoka (of Silent Hill fame), Sneaker Pimps and Amon Tobin, from the top of my head.
This may be a general sampling know how I lack, but what makes you prefer using a single sample and trig lock the offsets as opposed to having oneshots and lock sample#? is it the convenience of subtle offset making it sound a little human, or avoiding the sterile pure sound of a single sample?
I prefer using a single sample because you'll be avoiding the pure sound of a single sample. When using drums from a loop you'll be getting some room sound, maybe the tail end of an open hat in your kick, or a tiny bit of bass from the kick in your snare, stuff like that. Also I find it easier to navigate a drum loop waveform than a list of samples when laying down trigs, but I think it's just a preference thing.
Hi, Thanks for your amazing content! I love your very relaxing presentation style :) I have a question which I was asking myself on the other video also, what's the point of recording double speed? Thanks!
Thank you very much! I'm glad you like my style =D. Speeding up before sampling saves space on the Digitakt, and also lowers the quality of the sample. This is usually not a good thing, but I think it works great for trip hop and have been doing it for almost all my drum loops.
@@IvarTryti OK thanks!
can you copy trig locks between tracks? for figuring new beats it would be i think easier to use track one as kick, track two as snare and track 3 as hat (but using the same sample, essentially the same as you have it now) but it would be easier to orient in the beat visually and when you satisfied copy it all into track one?
only thing that would be different is that the sounds wouldnt choke when separated into tracks
Yeah, you can copy trig locks between tracks. I think that if you work on 3 separate tracks, and all use the same sample with different starting points, it requires a bit more work to merge them all into 1 track at the end. If you copy, say, track 2's sequencer data and paste it into track 1, then it's going to overwrite what's already there. For example, if you only have snares at steps 5 and 13, and you copy-paste it into track 1, all the kicks and hats already there are going to be replaced with empty trigs, since there's only data on steps 5 and 13.
What you *can* do though, is to copy individual trigs and paste it into a different track. If we use the same snare example, if you press and hold trigs 5 and 13, then press COPY, you can paste it all into track 1 by holding only trig 5 and pressing PASTE. Unfortunately, the trigs themselves won't copy track 2's settings, you have to p-lock them for them to carry over when copy-pasting. This might defeat the purpose of spreading out the beat across 3 tracks when you have to p-lock everything anyway.
If you don't mind having to p-lock everything anyway, and you don't mind copy-pasting individual trigs, then you could easily make a beat on 3 separate tracks and then put all the trigs into 1 track at the end.
Hope that helps!
Hey Ivar, just. curious, why not use Sounds more? That way you can just sound lock a step and even save sounds for other projects as well?
Where can I find part one!? Thanks!
Here you go!
ruclips.net/video/YSCrbF-u7gE/видео.html
Hi Ivar, thank you for sharing music and tricks on the digitakt. I'm a new digitakt user myself, so this might seem as a stupid question, but why do you record your drum loops pitched all the way up to pitch them back to normal after sampling?
My pleasure man, thanks for watching :). It's a fair question, and the main reason is to save space. The Digitakt has only 1GB of space to work with, and by doubling the speed before sampling it, you're halving the file size. You're also literally degrading the audio quality, so this isn't always the best choice. I like the 'lofi' sound these samples get though, and if I need to add in more highs, I use the bit reduction snap trick I describe at 4:45.
it's an old school trick from when samplers had very little memory, one which also gave them a characteristic gritty sound that people now associate with the era, and often desire.
que bueno hermanito saludos
How Do u start making music? Cause u know So much about sampling? Do u use a mpc or something Else before?
Thank you Arne! I didn't study music formally, but I did start early. I started playing with Cakewalk in 1998 and fell in love with the piano roll :P. I switched over to FL Studio back when it was called Fruity loops 3 in 2001.
Can't find part one
nothing wrong with your approach, Timbaland a big America producer starts with vocalising beats etc. Great tutorial
Thanks, John. I do feel strange making mouth noises on cam, but it's what works for me =D
This particular process seems so complicated. I’m guessing it’s about freeing up other tracks, right? While still being able to change the drum samples. What about just creating a beat you like, record it one time and put it on a track.
This is a rather long-winded way to make a beat, for sure. Recording a beat you like and putting it in one track is very similar to what I'm doing here, but it will be missing the messy sliced up sound I like so much. When rearranging a drum loop like this you're getting snares with a bit of the previous hihat in it, or a kick with the middle of a ride in it, or a hihat with low end from the tail end of the kick before it. If you prefer a cleaner and more focused sound, then this process is a lot of work for not much gain :)
Thank u
My pleasure, man!
Link to the previous tutorial?
Here you go! ruclips.net/video/YSCrbF-u7gE/видео.html
Has your workflow changed at all with the new update?
No, not yet. The drum loops I've been using lately aren't quantized, so the perfectly spaced slices almost always miss the mark on those drums. I haven't experimented much with it yet, but have seen some great tricks using LFOs on sample slot and slice number that I'd like to try out some day!
@@IvarTryti I've had a little success repitching then resampling. It's hit or miss though.
it'd be nice if it were easier to audition sounds so you don't have to change the main page parameters.
I agree. It's my biggest feature request. trig+yes to preview would be amazing
Didn't they already realize that?
Magic zone
Just to make sure I fully get it, but: you resample the whole beat so it can be chopped up, and easily replaced by another sample (thus swapping all drum tracks at once), and to also open up 1-2 extra tracks for melody? It just seems like a lot of work for somebody like me who's very new and just learning, all that resampling, where you lose more direct interaction and overview at the cost of a few extra tracks.
You're right, it is a lot of extra work, and you lose the overview you get when dedicating a track per drum sound. I almost always create my drum loops separately from making music, so I slowly but surely build up my own library of drum loops to just pick and choose from. This often speeds things up for me since I don't have to spend as much time sculpting the perfect drums from scratch when working on a new track.
That said, it's just a preference thing, and those extra tracks you get are worth it for me!
I want a Japanese translation
Awesome, thanks for the interest! I don't know anyone who speaks Japanese, but it would be awesome if I could find someone to caption this in Japanese =)
dude
Right off the bat you're approach seems overly convoluted just for the sake of it. Your turn it up with a compressor???? You know there are like 4 volume knobs for a sample right? What the hell is that about?
It sure is! I've simplified my approach, but have kept a few things:
-Double the pitch of all samples, and double the BPM. This halves the size of the sample so it takes less space on the +drive.
-Add slight amount of delay and reverb.
-Compress rather than raising volume: this pushes the drums samples themselves down into the delay and reverb, and depending on how extreme the compressor settings are, will make the delay and reverb pump a bit.
This is a tedious process, but it can all be done on the Digitakt itself and you'll end up with nice and crusty drum loops that are ready to use in later tracks.