Hardware Sequencers

octatrack versus cirklon? owners of either or both anyone? driving old synths?

The Cirklon has five MIDI outs or so, plus the optional CV/gates. The Circlon is also much more flexible with regards to pattern lengths, etc.

The Octatrack has LFOs and stuff, don't think the Cirklon does?

elektron sequencer is great but the cirklon is a dedicated sequencer so ...

The elektron machines are also around half the price, so..

Does anyone actually have experience with a cirklon or is it just because rdj uses one?

i love the Octatrack but as a MIDI sequencer it is really weak.

the MPC is much stronger in this aspect and easier to use as well.

never used a Cirklon but if you look at the online docs/youtube vids it looks really powerful.

  On 12/16/2014 at 10:29 PM, modey said:

The elektron machines are also around half the price, so..

 

Does anyone actually have experience with a cirklon or is it just because rdj uses one?

octatrack : 980 ukp

cirklon (without cv option) : 999 ukp

and it got nothing to do with rdj using one. Sequentix are creating some nice sequencer.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun06/articles/sequentixp3.htm

ouch..lotta dough..i was thinking of getting a mtrx

http://www.fyrd-instruments.com/MTRX

quite a different concept with all the buttons and just the one dial..

  On 12/17/2014 at 10:56 AM, digit said:

i love the Octatrack but as a MIDI sequencer it is really weak.

the MPC is much stronger in this aspect and easier to use as well.

This. The Octatrack's definitely got some tricks up its sleeve with the LFOs, arp, retriggering, etc. But it seems to record notes at the wrong time (or maybe that's just my shitty sense of timing) and because of its monophonic structure you'll probably find it pretty awkward to use. Also the way it handles incoming and outgoing CCs is bizarre. The OT is much better as a weird sampler/mixer/processor/looper thing than a MIDI sequencer.

Never had any problem with OT's MIDI sequencer. And can't say that it is weak. It is weak like midi seq capabilities in Renoise then.
It's my first hw sequencer though

The song mode on the black Elektrons is pretty crap compared to the Machinedrum and the MonoMachine, btw. The MD and MnM can set a new tempo per line in the song, start patterns from any step, have any duration, etc. Whilst the newer Elektrons have one tempo for the whole song and can only play whole patterns.

  On 12/17/2014 at 8:57 PM, psn said:

The song mode on the black Elektrons is pretty crap compared to the Machinedrum and the MonoMachine, btw. The MD and MnM can set a new tempo per line in the song, start patterns from any step, have any duration, etc. Whilst the newer Elektrons have one tempo for the whole song and can only play whole patterns.

the minor differences between the electron gear is so confusing ..

  On 12/17/2014 at 7:53 PM, telefunken said:

Never had any problem with OT's MIDI sequencer. And can't say that it is weak. It is weak like midi seq capabilities in Renoise then.

It's my first hw sequencer though

I think Renoise is a really good comparison, aside from the fact that in Renoise you have as many tracks as you want, and much polyphony as you want per track. It just takes a little more brainwork if you're after specific results. The garbage in -> garbage out MPC approach I think is generally more intuitive though not as sort of parametric or inspiring or jam-friendly.

  On 12/17/2014 at 8:57 PM, psn said:

The song mode on the black Elektrons is pretty crap compared to the Machinedrum and the MonoMachine, btw. The MD and MnM can set a new tempo per line in the song, start patterns from any step, have any duration, etc. Whilst the newer Elektrons have one tempo for the whole song and can only play whole patterns.

I don't know if by "black" Elektrons you were including the Octatrack but I just checked and you can both set the tempo and set offset and length for each step in its arranger.

  On 12/18/2014 at 3:44 AM, bitroast said:

 

the minor differences between the electron gear is so confusing ..

 

 

Yup. "Gotta catch 'em all" ;)

oh shit, tempo per step?! it really is like a tracker. that means I could do all kinds of crazy swing stuff. I have a feeling I'm gonna fuckin' love the monomachine

  On 12/18/2014 at 5:01 AM, modey said:

oh shit, tempo per step?! it really is like a tracker. that means I could do all kinds of crazy swing stuff. I have a feeling I'm gonna fuckin' love the monomachine

Ahem, per step in the arranger/song editor. In tracker parlance this would be more like tempo in the pattern list, as opposed to the pattern editor (using a command) as is usually done in a tracker. In a way, though, this is even cooler, because you can "recycle" pattern content, especially since both the Monomachine and Octatrack can set muting of specific tracks in the song/arrangement, much like the pattern list of Renoise 2.0+.

Ah, gotcha! That's pretty cool too.

Actually, is it possible to say, switch from a looping pattern that is being adjusted live (e.g. fucking with param locks, notes etc), to a predefined pattern chain, and back again? I'm just wondering if I could do live performance stuff on it and then switch to my guitar for a solo while it plays a sequence. No big deal if not, but would be awesome if possible!

  On 12/18/2014 at 5:25 AM, modey said:

Ah, gotcha! That's pretty cool too.

 

Actually, is it possible to say, switch from a looping pattern that is being adjusted live (e.g. fucking with param locks, notes etc), to a predefined pattern chain, and back again? I'm just wondering if I could do live performance stuff on it and then switch to my guitar for a solo while it plays a sequence. No big deal if not, but would be awesome if possible!

Yup as far as I know :) It's really easy on the MnM too, it's just one button to switch between song & pattern mode. As far as I know you can freely jump in and out of recording regardless of which playback mode you're in. I haven't messed with this much on the MnM but it works great in the OT.

A couple caveats to pattern-chaining (without the song mode) are 1) all the patterns have to be within the same bank and 2) you can't chain the same pattern more than once. You just click the trig keys corresponding to the patterns you want, in the order you want, and as long as you're keeping the first one held down, it will remember all of them and keep playing them until you repeat the process to select the next pattern(s).

One neat trick with song mode is that if you have a pretty long pattern and you just want to work on a small section of it, you can set up that section to loop in the arranger. Then when you're in grid record mode that section will be repeated so you can zero in on it.

Oh wait, so it'll repeat a chain? Holy shit, I'm gonna be unstoppable with this thing. Only playing each pattern once is fine with me, my patterns in Renoise tend to never repeat without variation anyway. It actually sounds like it's gonna fit right in to my workflow. Can't wait to get it!

  On 12/18/2014 at 4:18 AM, sweepstakes said:

I don't know if by "black" Elektrons you were including the Octatrack but I just checked and you can both set the tempo and set offset and length for each step in its arranger.

OK, that's good to hear! The OT is the only Elektron I haven't tried, I was wrong on that one then.

I have an mpc1000 with JJOS which is so far the most fun ive had with a sequencer. Like all of them it can be annoying at times but with the JJOS you get a step sequencer which lets you drop notes in individually on a grid which makes life easy and fun.

In saying this my next major buy will be the octatrack to possibly replace it. Love sequencers

ive just bought an octa after grokking the elektron workflow with the A4 & now you just drop this (obv awesome) pattern chaining tracker nonsense on to me

give me something simple to try out to see what you all are talking about?

ive also got major wood for a cirklon - probability and other tracks affecting other tracks? it sounds better than fruityloops

  On 12/18/2014 at 5:10 PM, lala said:

ive just bought an octa after grokking the elektron workflow with the A4 & now you just drop this (obv awesome) pattern chaining tracker nonsense on to me

 

give me something simple to try out to see what you all are talking about?

Pattern chaining - Make a couple (let's say 4) patterns in the same bank. Hold down the pattern key. Hold down the trig for the first pattern you want to play. Then click the second, third, and fourth patterns you want to play. Let go of everything. They will all now play in order. Try it again in reverse order. Try it with patterns with different parts. Try it and wig out on the crossfader (with some scenes set up). Try it and wig out on the freeze delay. Try it with a couple tracks intersampling each other. Et cetera...

I might have been a little severe regarding the MPC500, it's already a nice versatile and very usable tool for sequencing, you just have to get into that tedious programming before it becomes less tedious. The unit I use have a cursor button which is hard (actually harder and harder) to push, which makes the whole thing a tad more complicated. But I'd rather not complain, I've been using quite a lot of new equipment lately and I don't want to fall into that consumerist trend too much. I'll probably stick with it a little bit more (don't want to use it for too long though because it's not mine and I don't want to buy it from my roommate but rather to sell it for him and find something else).

I have to look at this thing with step sequencing with the MPC1000 with JJOS and might go for that at some point. Or a QY700. Or something else, pffew the possibilities are too many.

And when I'll be very rich (lolz) I'll purchase a Cirklon because those videos I saw the last past days were very awesome.

EDIT regarding the comparison between Renoise and some Elektron gear : for me one of the huge thing in Renoise is the way you can use LFOs, it makes this sequencer very modular in some way and I doubt you can find that on a hardware sequencer?

anyone would like to elaborate how to sequence with a mpc? yeah stupid question but never had the time to understand it. or any online ressource recommended?

MD has one LFO per track. The LFOs can be assigned to other tracks, so in practice one track can use 16 LFOs. The MnM has three LFOs per track.

Yeah, Renoise's LFO is fucking great. At least that you can use your LFO like lookup table for something else (to tune Comb or Delay etc) and navigate this table with another LFO or X/Y — awesome.

With OT's LFOs you can do interesting tricks too. You can use your LFO with designed waveform as static lookup table too, but you can't automate navigation, you only can scroll waveform in LFO Designer. But every LFO in Sampler section can use this waveform, so you can do crazy things just by scrolling this 'lookup table'

Step probability trick:

Setup LFO as Random, assign it to Vol, set speed to 0, synchronize it to TRIG, set Depth to 0. Then set machine's Vol to -50 for example (or p-lock it to step) then you can p-lock LFO's Depth to ~50 to step and get some kind of step probability.