I’d love to do something like this with the octatrack and the cirklon, or the polyend tracker and the cirklon.
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I’ve been working in Renoise a bit lately and it’s got me warming up to this. Although there’s stuff in Renoise that I can’t stand, like Midi and VST implementation and how sluggish the UI is at times.
Does anyone know if Tracker is using hex commands, it seems like everything is simplified. You choose a track FX command with the big wheel then it’s just 0-99 or something. I’m not seeing the usual hex stuff in any of the demos.
no hex in the polyend tracker
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The Nerd Seq Standalone looks like it has more tracks and will probably be a lot less expensive. No FM radio or whatever, but far more bread and butter sample sequencing.
Doubt it.
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Don’t get me wrong… because I do think that’s a cool vid, but it does seem like a lot of the magic comes from the prep of the loops, midi CC’s and such like on the Kurz beforehand. Or perhaps I’m just no sharp enough to click as to what it is that the Cirklon is doing that is irreplaceable… that’s more than likely TBH.
Anyway, the Polyend Tracker… I need to get off the fence with it as the splinters are pretty uncomfortable. My background is in trackers up until about the mid-00s and so there is a bit of a nostalgia-buzz. But also that I know it let me do things that are much slower or more difficult using other devices. A lot of the limitations that are frustrating other people don’t seem to phase me too much although I could definitely wouldn’t complain if there was more memory available in the production version.
Going to be spending more time with my DT to see if that itches the scratch but right now it seems to be a battle of ‘cool case with a pre-order’ versus ‘chances of cool new gear getting lost in corona-chaos’…
I think Polyend might have run out of the hardcase included in the preorder now, They mentioned something about it on their FB but I don’t know if they’re officially run out now.
Ahhg you are probably right. I didn’t see the street price for Polyend’s tracker is ~$600 USD. For some reason I thought it was ~$1000 (I swear that price was in one of the early leaks). So it’s likely to be in the same ballpark, pricewise.
They were almost out a couple days ago, they might be out as we speak.
They will have some for sale when tracker is officially released though.
One thing he mentioned on the midi side of nerd seq was 4 note on one track which even at 8 tracks suddenly makes it a bit more reasonable. Polyend trackers work flow does seem quite nice. For me I think M8 probably seems the most interesting of the portable trackers. They all have there bright points though and M8 is still a long way off it seems. The randomization options on the Polyend seems super well implemented with the ability to set ranges and work with in scales, you probably will be able to just generate decent music by selecting some reasonable options in various randomize settings.
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i preordered through Sweetwater on announcement day. they don’t charge until it ships!
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the first comment, RDJ (Aphex Twin) making a comment about the polyend tracker.
HI, no I wasn’t helping up until now, I was invited early on in the design process and I really wanted to help as they are a brilliant company but I was already involved with something else which is in the works !-) The Polyend tracker is a beautiful thing, well I’ve only played with it for about 20 hours at this point. I will be contributing ideas/tweaks but obviously this can only now influence the software not the hardware, seriously impressive machine though.
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If I follow my own psychological pattern when it comes to things like these, I will eventually buy this thing and sell something else. I’ll try and intellectualise the whys or why nots, but the heart already knows what the brain can’t yet comprehend, that I will proceed with a purchase which I will most likely then revert a few months later, when I post it on for sale on some local vendor site.
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You can always think of your buy/sell-cycle as “renting for a while” instead of picturing it as losing money due to a “wrong” decision.
IMHO there is nothing wrong about renting stuff.
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Yes, I tend to look at it like that, but there’s also the settling down of the mind, to simply move on now with my productions. A new kit is always distracting. But such a sweet distraction it is 
Thats so true - i always buy something, learn it, get fraustrated and sell it LOL
Im thinking the Tracker could be good with the Blackbox as a feeder of loops of a track half finished. I think the Tracker will have a much more creative and effective approach to sequencing and track composition than the Blackbox (which is strong in ways the Tracker isnt - recording midi notes, timstretching, lots more outputs etc)
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That’s exactly as I see it as well. Should this turn out to be the case, the Prophet goes and the Tracker would essentially become my new instrument for composing, with the result going into the Blackbox.
The Blackbox sequencer is very powerful, but only a certain things. Nuanced structuring and editing sequences, isn’t one of them
that would be a ‘too portable to be true’ portable rig 
Yeah, it’d be super slick
What always puts me off in the end with Elektron instruments, is that it’s not in their nature to take a pattern further into a more complex structure, unless you’re going for it live. Which is fine, they’re designed that way and the Model series is the essence of that - build a pattern, make it work on stage, and be cool with it.
But I keep hitting that song writing wall with their stuff, and the Blackbox is exactly the opposite. If you don’t have enough clips or loops in there to make something coherent, it usually requires sampling or similar to get there. The sequencer’s not all great, nor the multi sample mode, for actual composition. But once you got stuff going, building into something more coherent is a lot easier and hell of a lot of fun.
So the Tracker might be where stuff’s born, and the Blackbox could be where it’s put together.
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That’s essentially how I’ve used the Prophet with the Blackbox. Which is slightly tedious from time to time, but the Prophet’s so awesome, it’s still worth it. But it’s difficult to be spontaneous with such a rig. For me, at least.