I just bought my very first Elektron device, Syntakt, a couple of weeks ago and got another G.A.S. outburst yesterday when all of a sudden a Digitakt appeared out of nowhere on my desk.
I’m watching YT videos (Ricky Tinez, Loopop, Cuckoo, Captain Pikant, EZBOT and more) and studying the Elektron manuals … but it hasn’t made “click” in my head, yet, especially with these two topics:
Pages / Scale
Memory layout (+Drive/Pool/…), espcially with the Digitakt
I’m sure it will make click one day but I though maybe someone has made some clever diagrams/illustrations (expected some in the manual ) for both topics.
Anyway, do you guys have any recommendations for total noobs in the Elektron world in 2023, like what to read, study, watch, hear, listen to? Videos, blogs, podcasts, articles, sketchnotes, …
Thanks so much and all the best from Bonn, Germany!
Stefan.
Hey Stefan, welcome aboard. Glad you’re here. Ezbot on YouTube has some good videos detailing several of the machines (edit, nevermind see you’ve already checked him out). I will add that a lot of tutorials tend to go a little too quickly, especially for people new to the machines, but do go back and check out their videos when you get a little bit more comfortable with the layout and nomenclature. Also another member on here created fantastic “notebooks” for most of the machines. I’ll go grab the link to those and edit them. Good to have you here.
Here is that link to the notebooks. Definitely worth the price of admission.
…warm welcome…u’ve found the obvious and right place here…
if u combine the device name and certain keywords like +drive or pool and give that an internal forum search, u’ll always find the right answers…
for now, just know, everbody who ever was in first contact with elektron devices had heaps of questions and needed some amount of time to get things sorted while growing into this new kind of workflow there simpy is…and the vast majority became huge fans of their new tools…
enjoy ur virgin times…they’ll never come back…make naming things and frequent saving procedures ur first habit…
pages are just the summed up quickview of ur four different trig rows that each contains another 16 of those trig buttons in front of u…the FUNC knob is ur friend…try and hold it with all other knobs u can find…there’s always another shortcut waiting…all swedish machines are as dead simple as they are extremely deep and versatile…enjoy the klak klak zak zak workflow, that get’s faster and faster with every hour u spent with them…and enjoy the endless options of parameter locking for each n every single trig u got…
aaaand be warned…once u get used to them, they get kind of addictive…
while sure, it’s nice to have them all, but in reality, more than three at once is too much realtime fun for most of us…and these two takts u got right now right there cover pretty much all it needs already…just make sure they’re both on latest os…
if u wana run them all on their own and jsut heasphones for now, u should let st host the dt via st’s inputs to have always the option to catch samples with dt…one sampling device, one synth device, both driven by the the same sequencer concept and workflow is all it needs to rock ur sonic boat…promise…
Welcome to Elektronauts! As said above, you have definitely come to the right place, and the search function will be your friend. Over the years many conversations have accumulated, and there is a goldmine of knowledge in the memories of this forum.
What are you having a hard time understanding about Pages/Scaling?
Agreed, I’ve learned so much of what I know about my Elektron instruments from this forum. Searching any problems you have, and reading through what comes up, will help a lot.
Mostly though, just spending time using your Elektrons will be the most valuable. Fortunately, the Syntakt and Digitakt seem like two of the most fun devices in the whole line!
Welcome, Stefan! As others have said, you’re in the right place – there is tremendous knowledge here, and lots of dedicated users willing and able to help answer questions.
I don’t own a Digitakt, but all my other Elektron manuals show the data structure, as well as the signal flow, for each machine. It looks like you’ll find a diagram on page 16 of the most recent Digitakt manual.
For resources, I highly recommend Thavius Beck – his introductory courses are the reason I didn’t give up on my Octatrack when I first got it. And I cannot recommend @DaveMech highly enough – among other things he has a two-part, in-depth Digitakt course available on his website. I have been taking lessons with him for a while, working on different machines, and he is a master. He also has a great YouTube channel with tons of performance videos and explanations of different features.
Something you probably already know is that once you’ve gotten a handle on the Elektron workflow and sequencer, that knowledge will carry over from one box to another. Each of them have their own unique capabilities and functions, but they all share a lot, too, and that makes it really fun and easy to use them together. Keep us posted on your progress!!
The synthdawg notebooks linked above are definitely helpful. I get all mine printed out, including the electron manuals. It’s helpful to have it right there, open, while I’m learning. Don’t give up. So rewarding once you realize you know what you’re doing.
Hi and welcome! I also have Digitakt and Syntakt, and really enjoy playing them separately and together.
The memory management you asked about above is one of the least intuitive things, and moreover a little different between the two.
On Syntakt, the Sounds are saved presets of synth sounds to use as starting points, and you can just load them and go, and tweaking one in a pattern will save with the pattern.
The Sound Pool is a set of sounds that you can Sound Lock with—change a sound regardless of its machine, on a per-step basis. You do this by holding a step and turning the Level/sound browser button I believe. To get sounds in there, from the Sound Manager you can Copy to > Sound Pool for up to 128 sounds. These are very useful on Digitone with only 4 tracks (for putting a whole drum kit on one track, say). I like using it for adding several different sound effects on a single track.
And on Digitakt, Sounds work similarly, but are just samples plus the track settings added to them. I’ve used these very rarely. I think adding a Sound into a project loads the corresponding Sample into the sample pool.
Awww, you guys … #blush
You‘re so nice! Thank y‘all for the warm welcome! Much appreciated!
I immediately bought that ~250 pages PDF from SynthDawg and instantly loved the charts in the Architecture chapter 2.
Thanks for all you suggestions! I will try harder and study and learn and watch and listen …
I knew for a long time that these cool machines existed and played with them every now and then but it never made „click“, I never realized just how cool they are until recently. Now I‘ve fallen for them and want to know everything.
I‘m actually chatting with „The Captain“ on the other line and because he doesn‘t live far from where I live we might meet sooner or later.
I‘m currently writing down my questions and revelations and aha-moments with the two lovely devices and hope it helps somehow. Surely at least funny later on when I don‘t have any questions anymore but see what I once didn‘t know.
Bedtime here now, almost 1am!
Thanks again for the nice and friendly welcome and your interest in my situation! Really love it. 🫶
) for both topics.
