As production software became increasingly powerful throughout the ’90s and ’00s, hardware samplers and sequencers began to look obsolete. Why would anyone want to work with a limited and expensive piece of equipment when soft samplers offered vastly superior sampling capacity, increased polyphony and total recall of projects? By 2010, production hardware appeared to be following the paradigm popularised by Maschine – bespoke controllers designed to work in tandem with powerful software.
The past decade has seen a reversal in this though. Many of the most successful music-making tools in recent years have been those designed to draw musicians away from their DAWs without completely losing the conveniences offered by software – products such as Akai’s excellent standalone MPCs or Arturia’s Beat- and KeyStep range. With Digitakt, Elektron tapped into this trend perfectly.
Although the Swedish brand already had a successful lineup in the form of Octatrack, Digitakt was a more mass-market affair, with a cheaper price and more accessible workflow. It captures the softwaremade-hardware balance perfectly, with quick and capable sound design tools reminiscent of something like Ableton Simpler, but housed in a slick and satisfyingly tactile and inspiring instrument.