Polyend Tracker

[The Junglechrist]

Finally motivated myself to make a little demo with proper sound recording from the thing :

[miminashi]

Cool demo, Junglechrist. I've been wanting to hear more jungly stuff from this machine.

Can anyone comment on how well this thing performs as a MIDI clock slave? Is timing integrity maintained? A lot of sequencers tend to get a bit wobbly when they aren't the master, which in this case would ruin the whole tracker aesthetic.

[taylor12k]

it occurs to me, after looking at the tracker as a "granular sequencer" as knobs so nicely put it.... that a digitakt may be an interesting comparison. both offer 8 tracks of monophonic playback and the elektron-way of per step parameter locks and probability is quite like the tracker's abilities... but with more "lanes" than the tracker has... as well, the digitakt's 8 tracks can all run at different lengths, for nice pattern phasing. the tracker has that beautiful display and seemingly fairly quick workflow though.

[The Junglechrist]

A few more short demos from me available on my label Youtube channel :







[moderator feel free to remove if not appropriate]
Also for those who know and like my music over here, I've teamed up with Polyend so they'll give away one Tracker to a random person who pre-order my new EP "Fluorhydrique" on vinyl : qrates.com/projects/20054

[Voltcontrol]

A few more short demos from me available on my label Youtube channel

Keep 'em coming!

Ps cool EP, like the music a lot and hope it comes out the presses as designed. Have just pre-ordered. B-)

[mome rath]

wow I need this, what a perfect machine
buzz-in-a-box, almost

[The Junglechrist]

Another short demo focused on working with one shots :

[The Junglechrist]

Here is a new video on the use of single cycle waveforms :

[LameAim]

So Polyend released... 27 videos today?

[Voltcontrol]

So Polyend uploaded.... 27 videos today?

Makes sense to release a bunch of tutorials in one go and very neat in time right before the customer units start shipping. Well done!

[francoprussian]

What's with the wonky key caps in that video still above? I've noticed it in other pics before as well.

[Basterdman]

All the recent videos just increase my want. I know the first batch is spoken for. I heard the next batch wont be until the end of summer.

[LameAim]

I’m really liking what I’m seeing in these for the most part, but... where’s the reverb?

Think I remember hearing in a couple of different videos that the reverb was still being worked on when the demo units were being sent around. Will it be present in the units being shipped out now? Or is it coming in later?

[Tofupancho]

Could be they’re trying to implement all of this round of media/influencer feature requests and bug fixes before committing to a form of a CPU hungry feature like reverb.

[wuff_miggler]

how much do i have to read to find out if this thing has all the same pattern commands that renoise does for crazy amen mashdown happy times?

[Rost + Licht]

May you enlighten us with some of those pattern commands? Never used Trackers but Ableton bores me sequencing wise since longer. I have the feeling once you get used to locating the 'right' spots in the tracker grid that you want to change and get familiar with the copy paste , you can get some really varied and fresh songs going on it. Just small 'fx' like tight panning or the occasional backroll could make such a difference to the staticness of live.

[wuff_miggler]

in general on a tracker - you have channels for each sample. (vertical rows)

every time you want a sample to fire (you go into its channel) and define which hex value represents the sample point you want to have playing. Things keep playing through until you interrupt it.

now - the power of a tracker is - yep - cool you have your sample start points defined....but say as a sample is playing you want it to start reversing on a dime....well....there's a pattern command for that.

then - say you want the snare not to just play - but to retrigger, and arpeggiate - yep...theres a pattern command for that.

The beauty of all this - lets say you want the snare to play over an atypical amount of time...just define the start and end point - and "interpolate" - the tracker will retrigger sample slices for that duration. Which makes trackers essentially uber controlled granular samplers too

[steveoath]

Sort of, I think is the answer. I don't think it is as deep as renoise (perhaps nerdseq portable will be closer to that).

There are commands (step fx in Polyend speak) for lots of crazy shi...stuff. but you are limited to 2 in each track at each step. Weirdly I can't find a list of the step FX. Perform mode looks really interesting though...



Don't think there are different track lengths available but I may have got this wrong as I don't own one.

[naxuu]

Weirdly I can't find a list of the step FX.

The FAQ has a list, under the question "What are the available step FX for the Tracker?"
https://polyend.com/faq/#Tracker

[wuff_miggler]

well - damn - i was skeptical about a hardware version of a tracker.
this might actually be cool as shit. all that pattern command stuff is all firmware based - im sure they could add stuff to it as time goes on
but what it comes with is pretty cool!

[steveoath]

Weirdly I can't find a list of the step FX.

The FAQ has a list, under the question "What are the available step FX for the Tracker?"
https://polyend.com/faq/#Tracker

Ah. Cool. Thank you.

There is so much going on here I wasn't aware of. Random notes within your scale!! Yes please. I can imagine that paired with the chance effect making some amazing melodies.

[wuff_miggler]

Microtuning addition is great too - glad to see more manufacturers adding this.

[bradclay]

I keep checking my email to see if mine shipped....which is very silly of me considering I ordered late.

[LameAim]

Inquired about this from one of the testers - looks like there is no reverb in the Tracker at this time. Definitely gives me some pause in my view of it as a possible Digitakt alternative.

Hoping I'm wrong about this...

[22tape]

Yeah I'm still holding out for more than 133 seconds of memory, 12-16 tracks, and reverb. If not, "Audio Workstation" is quite the misnomer, imho.