To celebrate the release of Elektron's Digitakt 1.50 firmware update, here's a collection of sample chains to throw into a Slice machine and go crazy! These sample chains are provided on a free/name your price basis, and are royalty-free.

For those not accustomed to using sample chains, they are an efficient and exciting way to create music, as they allow for multiple sounds to be accessible from a single ‘slot’ of a sampler via slicing the sample into various parts. The sample chains were designed to be used on the Digitakt slice machine, however they can be used on any sampler which incorporates slices, such as the Elektron Octatrack, the Akai MPCs, Native Instruments Maschine, the 1010 Music Blackbox, the Pioneer SP-16, the Isla Instruments S2400 and many more. They also work very nicely in software samplers such as Simpler or Sampler built into Ableton Live. There are many samplers which do not offer sample slicing options such as the Elektron Analog Rytm, in which it will be very difficult to use these sample chains.

These sample chains are presented all in 16-bit, 48kHz mono format, in order to work best with the Digitakt. They can however be loaded into any sampler which supports slicing, and will be particularly useful where a sample can be auto-chopped by region, ie 64 or 32, depending on the amount of samples in the chain. The amount of samples in the chain is indicated at the end of the name of the sample chain – for example, ‘Chord Chain 64’ suggests that the sample chain contains 64 slices of various chords.

Here is a description of the various chains, a little bit of background on each one and intended use cases:

Prodigal Chain 64
This is a very special chain of 64 sounds from one of the greatest dance music acts, whose late frontman was known for his spiky, vividly-coloured hair. These sounds were created via modern means of stem extraction, where songs are run through an algorithm which separates the various instrument stems. If you wish to know the specific songs these were sampled from, feel free to reach out to me.

Rave Chain 64
Another special chain – this one is a collection of 64 sounds from the classic Rave Generator 2 VST, and as such is perfect for those classic rave sounds we know and love. For more information on Rave Generator 2, check out studioslave.com/free-plugin-rave-generator-2-from-wavosaur/.

Chord Chain 64
This is a chain of 64 chords recorded from various synths, over the years. I cannot recall which synths these were, I tend to sample loads of sounds from synths when I get them and I wasn’t always as efficient at naming and categorising as I am now! As there are 64 slices, they are short, ‘stab’ like sounds, which may be great for the music you are making. However, I recommend playing these at lower pitch (an octave down for example) which will result in longer chords. Modulate these with the LFOs and add reverb/delay!

Fractal Chain 64
This is a chain of 64 short, mainly percussive sounds from the iOS app, Fractal Bits, which I highly recommend as an endless source of weird and glitchy sounds. I recommend placing notes on the Digitakt grid and applying random locks for all sorts of inspiration.

Model D SCWs 64
This is a chain of 64 single-cycle waveforms from the Moog Model D synthesiser. This is an efficient way to have lots of monosynth timbres in your music while having a tiny file size. For more information on single-cycle waveforms, consider visiting reverb.com/uk/news/using-single-cycle-waveforms-in-hardware-samplers-and-synths.

Happy music-making!
Robbie/LØSTLVLS

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