Never bothered using the soundpool either.
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The +Drive didn’t make sense to me until i started actually getting my hands dirty with my own patterns and projects. I recommend that you start a new project, primarily just focus on adding individual samples from the existing +drive sample library, and get an understanding of how the RAM works.
“Sounds” and the sound pool are much less important than they seem, in my opinion. Most of the time you are working with Digitakt, you are just loading individual raw samples and then manipulating them on the fly.
Once you have more experience, you’ll see the uses of the Sound Pool, but I personally wouldn’t worry about it when you are just getting comfortable with the elektron workflow in general.
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agreed. i rarely touch sounds with the DT even after 3 years of owning it. they are necessary in other elektron machines (i own the Analog Keys so learnt about sounds when i got that) – not so much with the DT. you can happily do without them and just swap out samples, learn the rest of the machine’s more rewarding nooks and crannies instead.
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I use the sound pool to make “kits”, so when I need “909” or “808” or whatever, I just load from the sound pool, and not bother to unload default samples on a new project, nor menu-dive into the +Drive, etc …
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This is not a common point of view, so take it with salt. But what really helped me understand not just the Digitakt but all Elektron gear was understanding they are software trackers (like ReNoise or SunVox), applied to groovebox hardware (like the MC-505 or Electribe).
The groovebox part is usually easier to understand, so start there. That’s where you have “projects” that contain some large number of “patterns”. Each pattern holds (in the case of the Digitakt) 8 “tracks”. Each track holds a group of settings (SRC, FLTR, AMP, which sample to play, etc.) and a collection of “trigs”. There’s one trig per step of the sequencer, and it can be on or off. If on, it plays its track’s sample with the track’s settings. If off, it doesn’t 
There are a few extra bits for performance — for example, you mute tracks or chain patterns together — but for the most part, at this point you know all you need to know to do all the groovebox stuff. And you could use the box with only this knowledge and be very happy and productive.
In fact, I’d recommend doing this for a day or two to get comfortable with the sequencer before moving on.
The part that defines Elektron (and requires warping your brain a bit), is when you get into the stuff that behaves like a tracker. You see, in traditional tracker software, each trig on each step can play whatever sound it wants with whatever settings it wants and whatever FX it wants. It’s chaotic but incredibly flexible.
Elektron gear lets you do this, too. Because I told you a few lies above.
First I said that a track holds a sample and a bunch of settings. But it turns out, those are really just suggestions. They’re the default values that get assigned to any new trigs on that track.
Because the other lie I told you was that trigs are just either “on” or “off”. In actuality, each trig holds within it every parameter of a track, from the sample used to the shape of the filter envelope, and can thus change any of them per step of the sequencer.
This is ridiculously powerful. But if you stare at it long enough, you start to realize that tracks are an illusion. There’s no reason your kick should only play on track 1. You could put a kick anywhere you want on any track you want because the trig is what actually holds all the settings that make it sound like a kick. You could hand craft each trig with completely bespoke settings each time you place it! You can do anything!!
And it’s true, you can. But that would take forever, so it’s useful to take a step back at this point and appreciate the helpful workflow Elektron has built for you.
Setting every parameter of every trig would be mind numbing. So instead, each trig defaults to the settings set on its track. And trig can override any of those settings any time it likes. This is what Elektron refers to as a “lock”. It’s not the best terminology, IMHO, but you can think of it as “locking” a particular setting in place, so that it doesn’t change when the track’s defaults change.
This works great when you want to make small changes per trig. Like, “I have parameter locked a slower attack on the filter of this trig” or “I locked this trig to reverse playback”. But sometimes you want to lock an entire sound — not just its sample, but also its FLTR and APM settings, etc. — to, for example, swap between open and closed hat on a single track.
This is where sounds come in. A “sound” is a sample plus all its settings. So if you lock a sound, you get all of its settings, too, without having to laboriously recreate them each trig.
This is also where the “Sound Pool” comes in, as only sounds in the project’s sound pool can be locked.
Anyway, to sum up, Elektrons are really complicated because they give you a huge amount of flexibility. But you don’t have to expose yourself to all that complexity at once. Start by working just as a groove box. Then dive into some of the performance stuff like mutes and chains and temp-saves/temp-reloads. Then add a lock or two to change things up. Then lock whole sounds or explore more drastic changes.
The name of the game is keeping yourself from getting overwhelmed. Something that might help is knowing that, at the bottom of it all, there really is a fantastic method to all the madness.
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This a really helpful write-up, and while I thought I had pretty good understanding of these concepts as I’ve been messing around with a new Digitakt this week (which I’m coming to from the Digitone), this helped me think about them in a new way.
Now I just need to focus on more time getting familiar with how the DT is different from the DN, and a little less time with lingering doubts that maybe I should have picked up an Ocatrack instead.
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I’ve been there! The Digitakt is 100% worth learning on it’s own apart from the OT, though. Getting comfortable with it will pay dividends. And if you want something different later on, the OT will still be available and waiting.
[quote=“DEEPMOSES, post:11, topic:147854”]
Digitakt:
[/quote] The Cuckoo Video
This helped me SO much. Watch and pause as you go to work things out yourself. Went through it about 3 times over a few days and stuff started to click.
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I’ll be honest I’ve never watched the video, but I know many people refer to it so I posted it here. I just pressed and twiddled until things started making sense, I knew pretty quickly it was a keeper, 3+ years in I feel like I’ve mastered it but I know there are still ways of using it I’ve not fully explored 
I wouldn’t advise watching mega-tutorial videos for someone with ADHD. with that or not, it’s generally better to learn by doing. when you’re working on a track and go “f*ck, how do I do that?” just google it. chances are, there’s a short and sweet video out there explaining it.
just yesterday I tried to remember how to do sound locks with the Digitone. googled it and five seconds later had my answer. which included using the sound pool. so then I googled “digitone sound pool” and five more seconds later was adding to it and locking sounds per trig. learning time over, back to the track I was working on.
learn as you need, not all at once. you’ll remember it that way. and you don’t have to sit there for an hour watching someone else explain parts of a machine you already know or could easily figure out on your own.
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I think this is the most succinct explanation I’ve seen… thats exactly what Elektron boxes do.
In other words, OP… the whole sound pool is a way to save settings that can then be quickly applied to individual steps/trigs.
In other other words, if youre just getting started and youre overwhelmed, you can ignore the sound pool because it’s a power user trick to help you do complicated things more quickly.
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Love sound pool for sound locks
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Maybe I can give one piece of general advice. Take it to the couch or bed. Don’t plug in headphones! Go through all the buttons / menus / etc. Do that a few times and you’ll know the device much better.
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Thank you for the incredibly detailed and helpful response!
Seriously, can’t thank you enough!
My brain thanks you for speaking a language it deems agreeable!
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