The sequencer mindset
Sixteen steps and a page structure. A trig is a small record placed on one of them, and the loop keeps running while you edit it.
Every device in this catalog is a sequencer-first instrument. The sixteen large keys along the front edge are the [TRIG] keys, and they lay one bar of time out in space: step 1 on the left, step 16 on the right. A pattern is one trip across them. A trig is an instruction planted on a step, and the sequencer carries it out when the playhead arrives. At 120 BPM each step lasts 125 ms and the trip takes two seconds, after which it starts again. All the editing happens inside those two seconds, on a loop that never stops to let you work.
A pattern is a run of pages, and one page is sixteen steps. The row underneath is page 1 opened up: at 1/16 resolution those sixteen steps are one 4/4 bar, and the four beats fall on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13. How many pages follow the first depends on the device.
Reading the grid
Two groupings run across the row, and they are different sizes. Groups of four steps are beats. Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 carry the pulse, which is why a kick on those four is four-on-the-floor and why the toy below starts there. Groups of sixteen steps are pages, and the page is what the hardware turns when a pattern runs longer than one screen of keys. Tonverk holds 256 steps, which is sixteen pages. Digitone II and Digitakt II hold 128 steps, or eight pages. Rhythm on this grid is placement, so it asks for no playing technique at all. Hats on every odd step are straight eighths. Move a trig one step off a beat and you have written syncopation, and at 120 BPM you have moved it by 125 ms.
What a trig stores
A trig holds more than an on state. Every trig carries a small record of its own, and TRIG page 1 is where that record is edited. Four of its knobs behave the same way on all four devices.
- NOTE — the pitch, quantised to the scale in use. This is the parameter lesson 1 ended on.
- VEL — velocity, which scales the loudness of that one step.
- LEN — how long the note is held before it releases. On a short percussive source this changes nothing audible; on a sustained one it decides whether consecutive steps run together or leave gaps.
- PROB — the chance, as a percentage, that the trig plays at all. It starts at 100%, so every trig plays on every pass until you say otherwise. Lesson 14 is largely about this knob.
The rest of the knob row is where the devices differ. Tonverk gives E, F and G to the retrig controls RTRG, RTIM and RVEL, and puts COND on H. Digitone II and Digitakt II put LFO.T and FLT.T on E and F, FILL on G and COND on H. Syntakt has no separate COND knob: knob D reads PROB until a condition is set on that trig, and then the same knob reads COND.
Placing trigs and playing them
There are two ways of getting trigs onto the grid. GRID RECORDING is the placing method. Press [RECORD] and the key lights solid red; each [TRIG] key now toggles a trig on its own step. The sequencer does not have to be running, so a bar can be built in silence, or built while it plays and heard growing one pass at a time. Placement is exact by construction, since a trig lands on the step you pressed and nowhere between two steps.
LIVE RECORDING is the playing method. Hold [RECORD] and press [PLAY]. The sequencer starts, [RECORD] flashes, and the [TRIG] keys write trigs in real time as the bar goes past. Knob movements are captured at the same time, which produces lesson 14's parameter locks without holding any key down. Timing is then yours to keep or to correct, and the quantise toggle is [RECORD] held while [PLAY] is pressed twice. Syntakt, Digitone II and Digitakt II add STEP RECORDING on [RECORD] plus [STOP], which advances the cursor one step for each note you play. Tonverk has STEP EDIT inside GRID RECORDING in its place.
Two tracks, sixteen steps, and a playhead. Press play: the default is four kicks on the beats and hats on every odd step. Now edit while it runs. Move the kick on step 5 to step 6 and the third beat arrives late. Thin the hats to steps 1, 4, 7, 10 and 13 and they become dotted eighths of 375 ms, which do not divide into sixteen, so the figure crosses the bar line instead of repeating inside it. Take BPM from 120 to 160 and each step shortens from 125 ms to 94 ms. None of that required stopping the music.
Per-track length
Nothing requires the sixteen steps to end together. All four devices can give each track a length of its own. The menu is called SCALE on Tonverk and Syntakt and PAGE SETUP on Digitone II and Digitakt II. [FUNC] plus [PAGE] opens it, and [FUNC] plus [YES] switches between PER PATTERN mode, where one length governs every track, and PER TRACK mode, where each track wraps on its own count. In PER TRACK mode the tracks stop agreeing about where the bar starts.
A 16-step track above a 12-step track, drawn across 48 steps. The amber lines mark the only two places in that span where both tracks restart together. Each dashed line is one track wrapping while the other is mid-cycle.
Do the arithmetic on the smallest interesting case. Put hats on a 16-step track and a bass on a 12-step track and start both from step 1. The bass wraps after 12 steps, while the hats are three quarters of the way through. The hats wrap after 16, by which point the bass is four steps into its second pass. The two keep missing each other until 48 steps have gone by, because 48 is the smallest number that both 16 and 12 divide into. By then the hats have run three times and the bass four. At 120 BPM that is six seconds of music out of two tracks holding one bar each, and no two of those three bars are alike. Track lengths are set as fractions of the pattern: 2/16 up to 64/64 on Syntakt, and 2/16 up to 128/128 on Digitone II and Digitakt II. Tonverk moves a track's length in whole pages of sixteen, up to its 256-step ceiling.
On the hardware this lesson is TRIG page 1 and the sixteen [TRIG] keys. VEL is the per-step value lesson 1 already introduced, and it is the simplest case of what the next lesson generalises: a value that belongs to one step instead of to the whole track.