Polyend Tracker

hold on with both hands. pump your legs.

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not tracker specific, but a very well articulated + easy consumption based explanation that can be applied to any beatmachine.

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Not even a little.

@HiGrade1 as useless. Thanks.

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Some more Tracker + Modular fun right here. Just a short loop for the fun of it.

EDIT: I added a link to some free samples in the video description :wink:

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I think itā€™s global. Per track would have been super dope thoughā€¦ I love that on the Octatrack!

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Really niceā€¦ though I feel like my heads hurting trying to convert this info into my Octatrack and or other machinesā€¦

I guess the basis of it is to attain seperate swing on each track which Octatrack can do. The problem comes with grouping the swing into 3/2 and so onā€¦ will have to investigate some moreā€¦ thanks for sharing!

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Can anyone who is familiar with both speak to the value of the Polyend with itā€™s hands-on but limited tracks and FX vs Renoise?

Essentially wondering if most find the hardware workflow makes up for the limitations or if Iā€™m better off just sticking with Renoise.

If you know your keyboard shortcuts and have something like a launchpad, Renoise kills it. The sound engine of renoise is also way better. + it has much much much better timing

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This is what I suspected. Thanks.

yeah, itā€™s possible to change swing values throughout the pattern, just like the tempo fx works, iā€™ve also found that the swing latches into other patterns that donā€™t have swing FX inserted, until you restart transport on the pattern w/out swing. not sure if a bug but i donā€™t really have a problem with it!

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i think I 50 is the middle point (no swing), values lesser than 50 seem to be negative swing, so things can sound a bit wacky when you use it around these values depending on what you are doing, 50+ is more of your standard swing thingy that adds a pretty nice groove to stuff. i would love to know how the swing is shifting stuff in detail but iā€™m sure we are gonna have all those details when 1.4.0 is finished

The trial of renoise is pretty much feature complete, so just try it and see.

Oh, Iā€™ve had Renoise for awhile. I love it. Was just wondering if it was worth it to try out the Polyend. Suspected it would feel to limited, which seems to be confirmed.

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Renoise, if you know all the keys, is pretty close to a hardware workflow. I donā€™t think youā€™re going to find the Tracker more efficient or anything like that. If youā€™re making music with Renoise, you should keep using Renoise.

The benefit of the Tracker is less ā€œhardwareā€ and more ā€œstand-aloneā€. So if you find yourself not sitting down to make music with Renoise ā€” because it requires booting up a PC or youā€™re distracted by twitter or you want to sequence synths that are over here and your rack is over there and you spend all your time just fiddling with cables or something ā€” thatā€™s where the Tracker starts to shine.

I also think the Tracker, with itā€™s simplified feature set and focused UI, is a fantastic way to learn trackers or maybe get into them even if youā€™ve never enjoyed them before. Itā€™s much less intimidating than Renoise. And thereā€™s definitely a ā€œlimitations beget creativityā€ argument to be made for it. I find it easier to start things on the Tracker than Renoise just because I have to make fewer decisions to get going.

But again, if youā€™re already productive with Renoise that wonā€™t be a value to you. Just stick with Renoise.

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So Craig was wrong. Its not per pattern? Cheers.

Weā€™re both kinda right. Depends what you mean by global. I said it works per pattern (and @mangofresa confirmed that you can put in many different swing settings in a pattern). For example, FX Swing of 55 for steps 1-4, then up to 60 for 5-8, then back to 55 on step 9, etc etc. Likewise, you could have pattern 1 have a different swing to pattern 2. What you canā€™t have is different swing on each of the 8 tracks in a pattern - one swing setting is applied to all in that pattern. Tracker seems to receive a Swing FX and apply it to everything until itā€™s told otherwise.

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Ah. I was hoping per track. Cheers for clarifying this

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No worries. Polyend are very receptive to feature requests on the GitHub:

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Quick question since iā€™m a modular noob.

I have a little modular setup with an Erica Black Sequencer and some other stuff of course. I really dont want to get drum modules or a sampler. I loved the tracker when I had it and will get another one next month.

I assume I can run the trackerā€™s midi out to a midi to clock module and run that to the Black Sequencer and start/stop the Black from the polyend???

I really love the tracker for drums and the black for my moduler and was just hoping this works before I purchase it.

Thanks!

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Just speaking from my experience, I gave Renoise a try and within 10 minutes thought, ok I would love this with a hardware interface.

I think the reason is because I spend ALL day typing on a laptop ā€“ emails, documents, etc. So my muscle memory for QWERTY keyboards is based on those things. I donā€™t think about where the letter keys are ā€“ I jut type. Trying to associate new tasks to the same keyboard layout would not work for my brain. I kept looking for the ā€œeā€ or ā€œrā€ keys even though my fingers know PRECISELY where they are in a different context. It was weird. lol.

Having the Tracker workflow in hardware is lovely for a ā€œnewcomerā€ like me. I use that word in quotes because the Tracker has brought home the fact that the Elektron sequencer/parameter lock workflow IS a tracker workflow. The Tracker is the perfect distillation of it in hardware and superior to Elektronā€™s approach is some ways, particularly in the visualization of the patterns and everything that might be going on (or not!).

Hope this helps.

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