This Digitakt-centric piece was an interesting one, initiated in Phoenix and finally performed days later in Portland. I’ve been noodling on the Digitakt sampler for a few weeks now with exclusively my own proprietary 300 sample library I made sampling some of the modules in my modular rig. With the exception of this sweet upright piano I found, recorded on my dictaphone (complete with insane tape noise) and sliced up backstage in Phoenix, everything you are hearing is a one of a kind modular synth sample, meticulously designed and mastered by yours truly. When I finish making demos and beta-testing this library, I’ll be releasing it first on the Steem blockchain at a significant discount (I’m thinking 20 steem?) which seems like a good deal considering the huge amount of fussy editing involved.

I’m filming this video days later in a coffeeshop in Portland, OR with an iPhone I'm holding against a glass while trying to perform pattern changes (forgive shakes) and write some realtime modulation to show off what the Digitakt does best: simple melodies and samples layered and performance-locked to infinity. To the Electron uninitiated, performance-locks basically enable you to set any parameter of a sound on a per step basis. Example: full wet long decay reverb on the hi-hats on beat 1, reverb time becomes tiny on step 3, wide open with filter rolled off step 5 and back to default step six. What’s even more bonkers is you can write these steps by enabling record and just jamming on the box. As a huge fan of glitchy Autechre effect modulation, this is an almost endless wormhole to explore. Considering this methodology is employed in all of their boxes, I can’t help but see a monomachine and digitone coming on future tours. I’m streaming multitrack directly into my laptop (convenient for coffeeshop capture) on a single usb cable (amazing) and adding additional effects and modulation to the stems in Ableton to tie the room together.