Only work around I could think of would be to increase the pattern speed which shouldn’t be as painful now with the song update. That is weird though, something I never really considered for the midi side of things (tbh, not a huge fan of using the elektron sequencer for external gear, at least for polyphonic synths, which has been felt further after using the Hapax or Deluge).
1 Like
Yes, for me it’s limited to a few tasks. Everything else is either played live or a stem. I just made a little drum roll with the ND3P and it took way too long to get the right speed and timing using micro timing. That’s one of the things that make me wonder is this is the best way to go but you also have to look at it like hey… Kinda cool that it’s possible at all…
Have been doing so but on OT, which in my opinion (not worth much as my time on OT is not that much) is more adapted (static machines) for longer samples.
Not my thing in the end though 
1 Like
Oh and I got a Deluge for the same purpose … didn’t gel with the UX. DT seems to offer more immediacy and the buttons are like ASMR.
Short answer, yes.
Longer answer: I use my Elektrons as a sequencing and sounds part of my music that’s produced in a DAW, so some parts I don’t really need to back propogate as they are already there on the boxes to be worked into a live set. Other parts that maybe didn’t originate on the Elektrons, I take loopable segments of stems and put them on the DT. Now with the arranger on board, I can easily arrange small 1, 2 and 4 bar sample loops so that storage isn’t really an issue, especially since I don’t need to back propogate every part of a song.
I kind of dislike “performing” my own finished material on a normal DJ system, so getting back to Elektrons as my live performance tool while maintaining a more song-oriented and polished sound is now much more acheivable on my DT/DN/ST setup with the new arranger to keep some consistent structure, and with the fact that I have a good handle on Digitakt-based time-stretched loops and chopping for my stems.
Would OT be more suited to some of this? Sure, but I’m currently getting the mileage I want out of the combo of devices that I have, and enjoying the process and results. YMMV
2 Likes
Back porting?
Importing.
Importing stems into ‘insert machine here’.
Stems are, in general long samples, say 16 bars of drums, or even a whole tracks worth of drums.
Is digitakt a suitable machine for this job? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
2 Likes
Yeah I sold my Deluge once I got my Hapax. Its a cool sequencer / groove box but it never sounded good to me and other sequencers are surpassing it with the types of midi effects they offer. Still has a killer arranger though.
Yeah definitely the best part about it is the arranger. The general specs of the thing are amazing too. If money wasn’t a thing I’d keep it around to get better at later probably. It is so different from what I spent years getting decent with (Elektron).
I got into sampling with gear more limited than the DT & found this import-old-ideas workflow to be super inspiring, but whole stems aren’t economical use of a sampler’s storage.
Have you tried cutting the length of the sample/stem down to a 4 bar loop that contains as much variation as possible then chopping the sample to 1/8 or 1/4 notes emphasise that variety?
Pardon, I’ve never used a DT or OT so can’t comment on either’s workflow. If you can’t chop MPC style, can you p-lock the sample’s start point in the sequencer to achieve a similar result?
2 Likes
I recently took this same approach with a track that was originally composed on the MC-101 and designed to perform and arrange live. I had luckily recorded it into Ableton with the four tracks separated before the 101 shit the bed and ate itself. While saving a project, it did something to the SD card and made it unreadable. Stupid me hadn’t backed up recently so I lost the track. BUT, it was recorded and arranged in Ableton.
In the interest of having the ability to perform it live again, I took the time to sample loops from each track into the Digitakt and arranged the various sections onto different patterns. This actually resulted in finding new ways to perform the track on the DT and take a new approach to composition. Sort of a remix. It only took a couple hours of work. Granted another box might have handled this better but use what you have right? The advantage of using a tool for something it might not be meant for is in finding new creative ideas and ways to approach things.
My take away in my experience was in starting a new track on the DT using full drum and sample loops. It was a new way of working for me and resulted in unique approach to composition I hadn’t tried before. Gave the track a bit of a chopped feel like you might do on an MPC and I found new ways to arrange, manipulate and tweak the samples resulting something I thought felt more complex and deep.
2 Likes
100%. This was my experience and it resulted in something really interesting.
2 Likes
So I recently played live for the first time in a long time and the first time with electronic boxes. I write tracks on the MPC One. I’m not a Dawless purist, just my laptop soundcard is broken 
. Similar idea to export stems out to play live with the equipment I had which included a DT. Hadn’t properly used the DT up to this point, so all my learning was to get to play live with it. I also have an SP404sx so ended up putting longer melodic 1, 2 or 4 bar loops and some one-shots on it and using the DT to trigger the samples. I recorded the drum hits onto the DT and re-programmed the drum patterns for the different parts of a track. Was interesting to hear the difference to how a kick or snare sounded on the MPC originally and how different it was on the DT. Also used the DT to send MIDI transport to a Circuit Mono Station for bass lines (ran out of time to get the MIDI CC working to change sessions on the CMS, so did that by hand). Recorded the MIDI bass notes from the MPC directly and then just tried to find a similar bass sound.
Once I had a set list, I wrote transition patterns on the DT using elements of the track that was coming next (I know this is discussed already on the forum elsewhere as an option for DT transitions). Daisy chained the audio CMS into 404 into DT.
Pros: You don’t need to worry about running out of sample time on the DT. The sp404 has FX you can apply during the performance. You can pick up a 2nd hand SP404sx for pretty reasonable prices these days.
Cons: It’s another box to add to the mix and it sounds like you already have synths in mind.
All-in-all took a good while to prepare everything but was fun to play. Ultimately I think there is always going to be a fair bit of prep to play live, but once you have a repeatable plan, it should get easier/quicker. Also once you have the project on the DT it’s easy to edit and add to.
5 Likes
This is exactly what I do as described above. Entire full length song stems aren’t economical, nor do they really work on the Digitakt in general for me.
I pick smaller loops out of my tracks (1, 2, and 4 bars) that can serve as reconstruction kits for a live performance version of my tracks.
I tend to produce mostly house/disco/funky dance tracks with a side of synthwave, so these styles lend themselves to chopping up like this.
3 Likes
I used to use and MMT8 to do Live PA, then switched to an MPC1000 for a few years until the OT mk1 came out, got that and never looked back, it takes a bit of organization to split all your stems then load them into kits and sequences on the OT but it’s worth it, playing 3m long vocal sync’d perfectly with the original DAW bassline on another track while single shot kicks and hats looped on others, not to mention the MIDI tracks driving a 303, another mono synth, and a multi channel patch on an old Virus. Worked great! My live sets have only improved over the years, swapping out newer synths and samples, covering house techno and DnB genres. The OT is fantastic, take the extra time to combine its strengths with your DT and you will have a blast!
2 Likes
Do you normalize your stems and remix them again in the OT ? Any set target volume ?
1 Like
I try not to normalize because then I’d have to rebalance the mix levels, (which I still have to keep in mind, but not to an extreme degree) I usually have the 8track set to master with gentle compressor and get a hot signal out of the OT, I think most people do this too. Additionally experimented with an outboard limiter and one of those finalizer boxes. Currently I’m running out of the OT which is mixing all my external Synths via thru channels, and about 4 tracks of samples out to a separate filter and delay box to the main venue inputs. Getting that “mastered” sound with live gear while protecting any spiking bad behaving synths is important especially when sandwiched between DJ’s who are playing already mastered songs. It is fantastic to hear your gear crystal clear on a big system! I usually question why I’m dragging multiple thousands of dollars worth of stuff out to a show when colleagues show up with a thumb drive of tunes, but then I hear how amazing my rig sounds and I’m happy, it’s the little things in life 
Like with any DJ set focus on getting a consistent balanced signal out and you’ll be fine, also record yourself practicing and if possible the show performance too, early on I corrected some drastic mistakes that I couldn’t hear in the booth, but sounded awful, keep experimenting keep learning!
3 Likes
So many approaches to learn from in here! What a relief to get that validation.
Yeah, but what do guitarists often do - they bring a couple guitars and some pedals. Easily breaking $2000. I think my rig costs about $2500. Quality instruments cost money.
2 Likes
I do this as well. Finishing a track in Ableton and exporting parts of it back to digitakt.
For my liveset I prefer to keep everything in 1 project so I need to be a bit creative with the sample slot limitation. What I do now is creating 2-3 sample chains of my mastered track (e.g. 1 with percussion sounds, 1 with fx sounds) and import those 2-3 samples in my DT project. Each sample chain has usually 5-6 samples. Then just use p-lock the sample starts on the sequencer. I did this recently for about 15 samples and it took me about 30 minutes to get this ported into the digitakt.
Two bonus tips (or is this common knowledge?)
- For extra wide fx sounds I create two sample chains where I export the left and right output separately and assign them to two different tracks (panned left and right). When everything else is in mono these sounds really stand out
- To further save on the sample slot limitation I also created a 5-6 sample chains with regular drum sounds (808, 909, hand drums, shakers). Then I created “sounds” based on these samples and assigned them to my sound pool. This way I have around 70 frequently used percussion sounds readily available ( via func + level knob) while only using a few sample slots.
4 Likes
That why DT is the best Digi box. You guys are incredibly creative. 
2 Likes
Welp, I would say that unless you plan things extremely well, or are doing something simple enough, I would not recommend creating a full produced song on the Digitakt, which is what I ended up doing 
Plusses:
- You can quickly try things out and design sounds without recording anything
- ASMR click click
Minuses:
- Overbridge cannot record panning or individual track effect sends
- Even if you “assigned” tracks in the beginning, track-invading will likely happen.
- Teasing things apart is a royal headache.
Therefore… I bought a new dedicated music laptop, partially financed by two laptops I no longer needed. I’ve recorded things into Ableton, the old-fashioned way bit by bit, with the live side using the DT for audio/midi interface and a handful of tracks I can bring up on demand and perform. The laptop I decided on (the HP ENVY x360) is very small under 12" across so it functions well on a gear desk, yet has good port selection and CPU power.