Hey, I thought it would be fun to take some time and talk about what we all use to make music/sounds/whatever it is we do with it.
Hey, I thought it would be fun to take some time and talk about what we all use to make music/sounds/whatever it is we do with it.
Korg Prologue (8-voice), Polyend Tracker (for drumz and sample mischief), Elektron Model_Samples (because for portability and messing around, it’s the easiest) and now I just purchased a Syntakt. Run stuff into a mixer>interface>FL Studio. Sometimes I will also plug in my G&L Fallout guitar and make guitar sounds and play with those as well. Also have a Novation Circuit (OG) floating around that I admit I still love, despite my hate for Components. I’ve been trying to streamline my pedals down to what I NEED, but you know how that goes…
How do you like the Tracker? That’s a piece of gear I’ve always flirted with but never had the guts to pull the trigger on or ever had a chance to play with.
I’m pretty mad at Polyend for preloading samples that are licensed only for non-commercial use with attribution. I’m used to assuming whatever comes with the gear is safe to use in my music, but they don’t even tell you who to attribute the samples to so I don’t know how it would even be possible to comply with the license terms. I asked their support about it years ago and never even got a response.
Edit: I suppose I should actually comment on the device itself - it’s great for coming up with rhythmic ideas and such but a really clunky workflow for sound design and mixing.
That is pretty weird, I never would have considered that with factory samples/sounds.
RE: Usability - That does kind of make sense from what I’ve heard, that it isn’t really a sound design thing as much as its more for arrangement.
it’s fun! really kind of forces you to focus more on composition rather than sound design. radio sampling is great if you’ve got stations playing easy listening. intentionally limited resources to the point where you might wonder if it should cost as much as it does. song mode is pretty great for doing arrangements. no stereo playback unless you play the left and right channels separately. i find myself paying less attention to mixing just because it’s less immediate than on a daw.
The Tracker is great BUT it does have some quirks and limitations that still are frustrating because it is like 75% of the way there. For example, adding certain effects or parameters to samples (like chorus) are ‘additive’ and take a while- then if you don’t like what you hear, you have to scrap the altered sample and start over again. So, there are some things that I’ll say aren’t great. But if you are into more dnb/glitch/EDM or any heavily-sample based music, it’s totally worth looking into.
That’s interesting about adding/removing effects and definitely worth considering. I would probably tend more toward loading my own samples but still relevant.
I have been drawn to the idea of trackers and have tried a few out (e.g. renoise, sunvox on android) because I’m a big fan of stuff like Venetian Snares.