Discovered the possibility of the soundpool after 8 months using it. Had the same thoughts as you initially. I understand your point, used different samples in one track too with locks on lfo, speed and filter etc. after Discovering the way soundpool worked it took me a while to figure out the advantage but now i do. It’s still no part of my basic workflow and have to work on it.
A great example what make me enthusiastic is: say you have a long accapella vocal sample and want a couple of words as a independent sounds/sample to trigger. You do the start/end points etc for each part once, save those independently into the sound pool. Next time you need one you can just press a trigger, assign the vocal stab you saved as sound and voila. Same goes for splicing up breakbeats. Another advantage is that whole breakbeat occupies just 1 sample slot but you can use kick, snare, hats etc in all fragments you created earlier in current and future projects.
This is quite similar as VA or ROM synths. The samples are basic waveforms and the soundpool are the presets. Just my way of looking at it and now it makes sense. Great feature.
I promise I will look into it, now that I understand what it is
Very late to the party but could I ask you to elaborate here?
Your kick + snare on the same track example. For this, I do the following. I make two trigs - a kick trig and a snare trig. On the kick trig, I hold the trig key, go to SRC and search for an appropriate kick sample. I do the same for the snare trig, for a snare sample. I then copy and paste the two trigs to other parts of the pages/patterns.
I do this without ever touching sounds, which I’m still hazy on. It sounds like you’re alluding to a much more efficient way to achieve this “two voices, one track” setup, via sounds, and I’d be grateful for more info.
Thanks in advance.
You know all the other parameters the Digitakt has, such as the filter, LFOs etc? That’s the difference between using a sound and just changing the sample via the SRC page.
Say you go into your shed and whacked a plant pot with a stick, recorded the sound and got it into your Digitakt. If you use just the sample on its own via the SRC page, you’ll only have that raw sound on the step. However if you pitch the sample down an octave, use an LFO to apply pitch modulation to the beginning, applied a filter to cut out some high end and add a pinch of reverb and you could turn that plant pot into a monster techno kick. You can then save that sound, with all the parameter adjustments, to the Sound Pool, which can be accessed from any project or pattern at any time.
Another example is if you create a bass out of a short waveform, you need to set SRC “PLAY” setting to “FORWARD LOOP” each time you choose the base sample.
But if you save this as a Sound, you’ll be able to fetch it instead of doing this manipulation each time.
It becomes all the more interesting if you’re using SLICE mode, as you’ll be able to save your slices as a Sound you can reuse later.
Thank you, both. Does this all still apply if I don’t have a shed?
OK cool, I think I get it. So sample + modifications = something I can save as a sound. If I then use that sound later, will the parameter pages show those modifications, or are they “baked into” the sound at that point? i.e. if I saved a sound which was the result of pitching a sample down an octave, when I later use that sound elsewhere, will the SRC page show it pitched down an octave, or will it basedlined from that point?
(Appreciate I could test this - I’m not at the Digitakt right now).
Thanks again!
What Elektron calls a “Sound” is all the settings, including the source sample.
When you load a Sound either from the Project Pool or the general +Drive, all the page parameters are set to those saved in the Sound (as a local copy that you can tweak).
When you do a Sound lock (from the project Pool) these parameter are kind of saved in the trig, like parameter locks, and you can see them same as parameter locks by holding the trig.
Cool, that’s what I was getting at, whether those saved settings are baked in, or still visible as locks when you press and hold the trig. Thanks.
I recommend a shed for those wood, earthy tones!
The only way to bake in the sounds would be to resample but this would take up additional space on your DT and wouldn’t be as convenient to access as a Sound in the Pool.
Am I the only one that imagines a pool party of a bunch of samples with parameters sipping cocktails and splashing each other with water?
An additional trick: save your favorite/most used Sounds in Bank P. And any time you need to populate the Pool (e.g. when starting a new project), select all sounds from Bank P and copy them to the Pool.
I must confess that I think you might be, but it is a lovely image, to be fair.
Not any more!