The brilliance of Model:Cycles is in its immediacy.
Its four main sound controls don’t feel like sound design parameters, they feel like performance tools.
In bypassing sound design, you are thrust right into performance and pattern creation.
Would absolutely love to see a synth only version of Tonverk that adopted this principle of immediacy, with a handful of maybe 8-10 macro based polyphonic synth machines, that you could route into a suite of maybe 6-8 FX.
It would be the depth of possibility of Tonverk, combined with the stark immediacy of Model:Cycles, in a synth only groovebox that quickly launches you into the stratosphere. Gotta have more groovebox!
The Model:Samples is also great for this. I upgraded to a Digitakt II and couldn’t justify keeping the Model:Samples, but I do miss just jamming on the Samples. I dream of Mk2 versions of the Model boxes with Overbridge support and a built in battery (that doesn’t burst into flames, ideally).
In the same place too. With Digitone or even Syntakt, you could find a parameter to automate or lock on a step, but then you have to remember where it is.
Syntakt also added samples, meaning sample prep. Sure you don’t have to use samples, but the point being, the immediacy of Model:Cycles is due to ease of use with what is essentially a macro system rather than a sound design system based on specific parameters.
Immediacy translates very well into portability. When you take a device somewhere, do you really want to do sound design or do you want to start playing?
Don’t get me wrong I love sound design but it’s essentially work versus play, with the macro system steering you into play while still maintaining at least some sense of design, except the design is part of the performance.
