digitakt: making a complex beat from scratch

In this video, I'll walk you through every step of my beatmaking process for making more complex patterns with the digitakt — from the main riff to the drum groove, bassline, melody & harmony — so you can see exactly how it all comes together, I'll also share some tips & tricks about conditional trigs and elektron workflow.

0:00 • full beat preview
0:22 • intro
0:42 • sample selection
0:50 • making the riff
1:11 • amp envelope information
2:41 • riff tonal variation
4:09 • using conditionals
6:43 • laying down the harmony
8:11 • how to chop chords correctly 128 steps
9:00 • harmony preview
9:42 • making the bassline
10:06 • conditional trigs in the bass
10:50 • bass & chords preview
11:26 • laying out kick pattern
11:41 • kick & riff
12:00 • snare placement
12:21 • ghost notes
13:04 • snare preview
13:26 • making hi hat pattern
13:44 • hi hat preview
13:57 • extra percussion
15:46 • using foley for percs
14:29 • main goal of using percussion
16:12 • percussion counterpoint
17:06 • start & endpoint trick
19:00 • percussion preview
19:13 • whole groove + main riff
19:32 • further adjusting the riff
20:27 • step retrig trick
20:41 • everything we made so far
21:47 • writing the melody
22:15 • melody structure tip
23:00 • melody, chords & riff preview
24:54 • outro regards & final performance

We’ll go deep into:
• The riff that drives the whole pattern.
• Kick, snare, hi hats & percussion placement.
• Using conditional triggers to keep things fresh.
• Trying to use counterpoint for some call and response action.

Hope you enjoy this beat from scratch video and hopefully pick up some ideas for your own patterns! If you have any questions, drop them in the comments, and if you found this helpful, consider subscribing.

Links:
▶ bandcamp: https://kyegi.bandcamp.com
▶ instagram:   / kyegi_  
▶ tiktok:   / kyegibeats  
▶ my label: https://dajnow.bandcamp.com