Any tips or tricks for using one Digitone track for drums?

Elektron Gear Digitone/Digitone Keys
#1

Hey all! I’m looking to use #jamuary as an opportunity to dive deep with the Digitone, and am trying to develop an approach that maximizes a single track for drums/rhythms. Any ‘naughts with tips? I’ve watched a fair number of YT videos on the DN, but reckon some non-Youtubers might have some suggestions as well.

Cheers!

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DN and Percussion
#2

I use the Digitone a lot for drums.

  • P-Locking to different sounds is best bang for buck. So you can intermix hats, kick and snare on the same track.
  • Copying a sound, and then plocking a version of it with the arp turned on so I can do triplets.
  • Hi-pass filter with high resonance and a quick envelope will give you a better sounding Kick than lowpass filters, which I found initially un-intuitive.
  • Using the individual oscillator detune page will get you noisy harmonics fast. Its how I build most of my snares and hats these days.

I haven’t started day 2 of Jamuary, so maybe ill do a demo of some of the drum stuff I use.

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#3

Nice stuff! The plocks were already a technique I’ve been leveraging…any particular tips for using the arpeggiator with drums? Obviously it’s sort of a substitute for retrigs, but what else?

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#4

Using the micro timing to shift trigs, you can layer two or even three sounds by placing a 2nd trig on the previous/following step and shifting it as far as it can go forward/backwards.

At the risk of stating the obvious, probability is great for creating variety.

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#5

I usually save two versions of a kick, snare and hat; one with arp set to 1/16th note speed, and one at 1/32nd note speed. The 1/16th version will let me play for example 3 hihats in a row using only 1 trig if I set its length of 3. That way I can use the other trigs for different drums. The 1/32nd version is used to substitute retriggering.

To prevent the drums from stealing each other’s voices, make them play different notes from each other.

I like to set the trig condition on the kicks and snares to negative fill. That lets me “mute” them by holding the fill button but leaves the hats alone. If I want to mute all the drums, then I mute the entire track.

Hope this helps, and good luck with January =D

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#6

Those are all great! The arp variations to save trigs is brilliant!

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#7

As well as careful use of microtiming, I like to use plocks or an LFO to adjust the amp envelope attack and decay ever so slightly on snares for a bit of “human” variation. I find it humanises percussion, especially snares, a little more than just varying velocity. I still think the DT does a better job at humanising drums but you can get close to it with the DN.

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#8

I always feel like I am doing a lot of manual work humanizing on the Digitone. Ill give this trick a shot.

I do similar LFO tricks to emulate pitch envelopes on drums. There is a really pronounced version of this on todays Jamuary. Jamuary 2020 - any plans?

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#9

Lots of great tips here - thanks everyone! Just got home from work, so perhaps I can try some of these out before I call it a night.

Long live Elektronauts :sunglasses:

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#10

I like to find a sweet percussive sound, whether it’s a high hat or a blocky sorta sound, and I resave the sound with an arp pattern attached to it. Then I throw it in the sound pool and sound lock it, basically it’s an arpeggiated sound that’s locked. Very cool stuff can come about.

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