Got mine home and have played with it for only a couple hours.
Thoughts so far - the machines sound incredible!
Super intuitive to use. Was making a beat immediately. Even my 8 year old figured it out in no time.
After going through the factory patterns it’s clear this a full fledged Groovebox and not just a drum machine. Although I wish there were more factory patterns - there’s only 32 I believe. They’re a great inspiration and learning tool.
Still wrapping my head around the FX track. I can tell it’s going to be a wonderful performance tool but it’s also deeper than it appears on the surface. Feels similar to how the power of an Octatrack comes only after you set up scenes to do something creative.
The modifiers was the only thing that doesn’t feel intuitive. They are not so much ‘modifiers’ that change or modify what’s already in the sequence. But rather alternate performance input modes.
Intuitively I assumed that a velocity mod would modify the velocity of trigs already existing in the sequence. But it seems to simply allow for different levels of velocity to be played in. Not modifying the sequence at all really.
Also it felt like there was some over lap in functionality between the decay parameter in the synth engine and the adsr in the amp envelope. I’m sure there’s a creative use for that that I will discover.
Overall I’m seeing this be a great compliment to any other elektron machine. As it’s so versatile. And so far I’m finding it to stand on its own better than the DT, MC or MD!
Looking forward to pairing this with the Circuit Tracks the most. The CT will add that little bit of sample playback that people seem to think the ST should have as well as adding the polyphonic synth tracks that also seem to be an early feature request.
Back to digging into the syntakt!
Thanks Elektron for making more creative and inspiring gear!