As much as I love grooveboxes, there is one thing that I am not super into: one octave button keyboards. I’m by no means a keyboard player. I’ve mentioned before that I’m the equivalent of a two-finger typist. But, I like to play around the octaves, see if there is a chord inversion I like, or move the melody in each direct to see which sounds better to my ear. With one octave (and octave up/down buttons), I just don’t have the ability/patience to do that.
All that is to say, I haven’t loved my progressions lately. I have a Keystep that I should be using for the task, but sometimes I want a quicker setup (gear not in use for a particular jam is on the shelves next to my desk) and pulling it out just adds more cords (and also chords, hehe) and takes up more desk space.
For this jam, I wanted to do two things. First, use some different samples that are stored on the Digitakt. I have had this thing for a year and realized that I have barely dug into any of the factory samples. So, I found a drum kit, percussion, single-cycle, and stab that I haven’t used before. The percussion part was fun. I tapped out the rhythm I wanted into the trigger, then set the LFO to sweep the sample slot (with all the percussion lined) to create a varied rhythm part.
Second, I wanted to use two MIDI tracks to control the same device, here the Volca Keys, and then mute and unmute for pattern changes without actually leaving the pattern. It also worked out really well.
After getting the audio into Ableton, I added Supermassive Chorus to the Volca part and a bit of reverb and insta-mastering to both parts.
