im charmed by this device. it doesnt go too deep but has a comfortable amount of room to develop music. drum loop based musics are a natural fit. this is an excuse to use sample collections you feel weird using in your daw, and to make samples of riffs you made, or to actually get into your ipad music stuff you bought! this is sort of a different world to make stems for, or really just another way to flip your stems. i needed something like this.
i do wonder about a few things however… why isnt it possible to specify pattern numbers per track for each song step? that seems logical since you are able to switch them live in live mode it seems. why not write them into song mode? also why not use 0-127for all parameter values? seems like it would just be better to have consistent numbering systems across the board.
i really like the full size interface and would prefer the updated features of the mini in full size with dedicated buttons and knob etc. will there be an updated large unit?
i definitely needed a simple way to arrange sequences into a song structure and this seems interesting so far! i love the clean present sound. its definitely a place where some projects of mine will live for a while! i may perform from it too. good job polyend!
This stems most likely from the fact that the Polyend Tracker has based its UI and behaviour off of Buzz Trackers (like Octamed, Protracker). The behaviour that you are describing is actually more akin to LSDJ Trackers (Nerdseq, LSDJ on Gameboy, or M8).
Polyend is actively asking for people to comment on that here:
A quick workaround for this would be to start the song from perform mode with shift+play, then control perform mode via MIDI CC in to the tracker (which includes track pattern number at CC 41-48). CC can work a little nicer than scrolling through track patterns manually through the UI, and is infinitely automatable.
yeah seems like an amazing way to automate pattern selection per track. it just seems like with that possible, its missing from the arranger. but if it works it works! over cc does it switch immediately or cue for the end of the current pattern?
if you mean sending CC/PC from the Tracker, then that should be immediate. Program Changes are immediate as well, but it really depends on the receiving device. Elektron boxes are notorious for their weird Program Change behaviour.
Receiving CC should be the same, PC doesn’t do much at the moment, but there is an open wish to rectify that:
ok it seems to want to que up the next pattern instead of invoking it when the cc command is received. im also getting freezing when i send it pattern change cc commands. is this known? and is there a way to make it respond to the pattern change immediately?
this sounds boss! i took it alone on the couch today and loaded up stuff from my sample collection and wow! my wavetables work beautifully. i feel like alice in wonderland a little bit. im in a great place and i still have 3 tracks left!. the limiter makes 4/4 tracks pump but i wish i could enable it on any track but not others or by an amount. it does sort of give it a live vibe. i feel like this could sound good on a large system.
can you get a solid sync between 2 trackers? im sure someone has done it. the events sound very tight to me. how much actual jitter is there playing samples back? is it rendered before being output?
Indeed. I’ve seen people syncing two trackers via an third party clock without issues. I personally haven’t tried it yet, but am considering doing it at some point.
I’m not sure i quite follow what you are asking. Samples are loaded to RAM to ensure fast response times and the only thing rendered realtime are some of the step effects, delay and reverb as far as i can tell, those are not rendered/printed on top of the samples themselfs.
so this has got to be the most fun right away as ive ever had with musical stuff! and the realization that the way upwards is best practices and method based dawns on me. the wavetable and granular engines are astonishing! i feel like ill be filling up the 16 midi channels too. i may need another one.
wavetables are definitely THE way to go for bass and synth sounds! NI massive and massive x are easy to find with a simple search and they work well! also the architecture waveforms in wavetable format are amazing! and they sound sorta hype on tracker! this is becoming a favorite sequencer! i love how the resonance is never too much, even all the way up.
Wavetables are my favorite as well. Especially since you can find so many hidden gems even just from everyday samples in there. Also don’t sleep on Vital for creating Wavetables (it’s free).
Oh yeah! You can find a lot of sweet spots that way, especially if you S&H automate the position.
Also this wish might interest you then:
all the quirks of this method of sequencing translate well to house and honestly to almost any style i imagine. i have yet to really try midi other than triggering serum over usb which worked very well. im testing out a tr6s at the moment. im hoping i can relegate my drum samples there and take advantage of the per sound and master effects and other midi control too.
