6:17 I figured out later on in the video that you CAN live record! Figured I'd put this here before those of you who already know what's up comment on it.
I agree with your assesment. It's weird and frustrating at times but fascinating enough to keep me messing with it. I resample small bits of one or more tracks all the time, you can preview or sample selections of steps. You gotta get into the fill mode and the arp they recently implemented. (;
I finally caved in last week and bought a Polyend Tracker, after watching a lot of your videos. In the end I loved the music that other musicians got out of the Tracker more than for example MC-101 or Circuit music. So very much looking forward to what you do with this!
I’ve worked with a lot of samplers and grooveboxes in my time, and I had no prior experience with the tracker paradigm before getting the Polyend Tracker, but after using it for 8 or so months, I can safely say that it has the most intuitive and beautifully designed interface that I’ve ever experienced. I encourage you to continue to learn it because muscle memory will eventually take over and you’ll become fused with it. “Long live the new flesh!” -Max Renn, Videodrome
I do not understand the thumbs down. Your video is well recorded, you give your honest first impressions, and you clearly know what you are doing. Thumbs up and thanks from me.
It’s the favorite thing in my studio right now. Did you see the latest firmware update? There is a way to switch to a more traditional horizontal timeline if you don’t like trackers vertical timeline among other neat additions and fixes. You’re also missing a bunch of shortcuts that make navigation and certain function and programming quicker
I just checked, it looks like they released it between the time I filmed this and the time it was released. Excited to dig into it, thanks for the heads up.
Great editing. So often do videos show someone figuring something out and it's not interesting. Now I know this thing is ridiculous but you really got somewhere with it. Thanks again for the great vids.
Nice! I'll definitely spend some more time with it to explore more features and musical ideas, but I'm not sure whether it'll become one of my go-tos yet.
@@GabeMillerMusic It's a strange one, it doesn't feel as inspiring and free to work with as MPC's etc, but the outcome of the actual music is way more inspired and different every time, I seem to choose different styles when working with it, it's a breath of fresh air tbh.
Stoked to see you found the tracker. Super fun kit. Love mine. I like your grooveboxes comparison videos but one piece of kit you haven’t reviewed that I believe you’ll fall in love with is the Sythstrom Deluge.
Nice initial appraisal. The tracker interface is great for us oldies because for a lot of us it's how we started making electronic music back in the 90s, so using the Polyend felt like coming home. There's a bit of menu (or screen) diving, but once there everything is well laid out. It's essentially a version of Android so received quite a few software updates. If you have suggestions or criticisms you could fire them through to Polyend and fixes might even feature in a future update. The latest software allows you to switch between vertical and horizontal scrolling if that's more familiar to you, so they may take on board your point about the limiter.
“look at that absolute sausage” made me LOL. I’ve been fascinated by these but more myself and a cool as these are I could never get into something that felt like sorting an expense report as my machine for producing hiphop
As soon as you said on paper and in practice comparison scenario, I felt like I knew that was coming. Based on how you create I knew going in a tracker was gonna be a different work around for you, not as quick to get into as compared to some of the other Groovebox styles you work with. Looks great, I love the look of it, however not for me hope you enjoy it for the time you have it, thanks for another great video.
10:55 still watching the vid so forgive me if you address this later (and you've probably already found this out searching around) but you can stop the roll by inserting a note off/cut/fade by turning on record and then turning the data knob left on the step you want to put it on!
Hello, what’s your preferred method for routing audio to from the tracker to your interface/ recording equipment? Would like to stream with it but not sure if I need something other than a line cable into interface and set it to monitor in my daw. Thanks!
I ordered one a long time ago and I'm still waiting for it to ship. It looks like the global chip shortage is at least partially to blame. Hopefully I can get my hands on one at some point.
@@GabeMillerMusic He's going to start shipping next week. I've been using the m8 headless for a couple months, and it blows the PT out of the water. You should join the M8 discord.
It's a pretty capable device. I love how you can add some randomness and "chance" to the notes + a separate LFO for volume, panning, Cutoff and finetune to make the sound more organic and evolving. WIth the "fill" functionality, you can speed up your workflow. Using the arpeggiator effect is nice, but it might be unclear at first how to use it as you have to use both the arp effect AND the chord effect. Check out the performance fx, they are great for spicing up a live performance. I wish it had more than 8 tracks, because if you want to play an instrument polyphonic, you have to spread the notes across multiple tracks. Having the possibility to add multiple notes to one step would be nice, but I guess the CPU is he limiting factor here. It would be fun if we could sample the sounds from the built in NES emulator.
Used in 90’s on Commodore Amiga. I’ve got a 1010Music Blackbox Studio n love it not sure I’d grab this. Can you set 1sample to repeat every X beats like you can on other Trackers? Thanks man Wish this and the Blackbox had more effects built in. Spoiled by Force and MPC I guess
I'm glad you did this video. I don't know what to think about the tracker. It DOES seem to be the perfect sample groovebox, but I never heard of trackers until now.
after i bought the polyend tracker some time ago i bought renoise :D love them both.. still use ableton. love to change the workflow by switching between tracker and classic daw.
Didn't read the comments, so maybe mentioned already, but you can also grab sounds from the radio, which is pretty interesting. Since you can resample the audio at the wave level, 1 radio sample (of something as boring as someone talking even) can give you a bunch of waves to create with.
Yeah it's one the features I haven't had a chance to dive into, but I definitely want to in a future video! Thanks for the reminder to try the resampling.
I spent like a decade using trackers. They have perks, but... I don't miss it. The spreadsheet approach just never felt quick or inspiring, even when I had all the operations in muscle memory. In particular, it was very difficult to make songs sound organic instead of mechanical, and workflow was more "work" and less "flow".
Excited to see your initial thoughts since yes, it does look perfect on paper. Interested to see how the beat slicing works. I love the MC-101 but slicing up samples is a nightmare on it.
The Roland grooveboxes don't specialize in sample manipulation, you're better off with an MPC for that. If it needs to be a really compact device, look at the Circuit Rhythm. I know nothing about that thing except that it focuses on working with samples and is more portable than MPCs, though not quite as portable as the MC-101.
No apologies necessary for not liking the things you mentioned! As an "xennial" I can say that I agree with everything you said as well. I thought I wanted one of these things pretty bad and even had a special ed. Legowelt on pre-order/reserve from SW but when I found out about the Rhythm and watched some reviews (yours included) I canceled it for the very reasons you lay out in this video. Almost counter-intuitive interface and workflow, large learning curve with tiny buttons! I used the remaining $400 difference to get another mic, a long cable, new drum throne and some ring lights. ;)
As a longtime Renoise user, I have to admit that it's hard to justify the Polyend. It's a cool looking box, but the best tracker experience is had by mastering a lot of hotkeys, like with a lot of power-user software - and that's something you do by having a lot of keys to start with. This goes double for how Renoise works because it's so heavily customizable, and a great deal of the time savings within Renoise comes embracing it fully, setting up a template project with controllers pre-assigned and building out presets and macro knobs. I could see the Polyend being made great, but it could take a long time for the software to mature.
The polyend is a lot more fun to play with on the couch or on the way. Because of the tracker interface, it is just a matter of muscle memory kickin' in before you fly all over the interface. It also did not replace Renoise for me, but they can live together :)
Thanks for your honest opinion. I remember playing with tracker software in the 90’s and found it to be tedious to program. This machine gives the process a more tactile workflow and some interesting sample engines, but, ultimately, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it as an instrument. I’m sure there are those who can make amazing music with trackers, it’s just not me.
I got a Polyend Tracker after the Octratrack, Electribe-2, original Circuit and MC-101. So all my opinions have been coloured by using those previous machines (some more than others). Got to say I didn't fall in love with the Polyend Tracker, *and* I used to be a tracker user back in the Amiga days. The Polyend just has too many limitations, and aspects I find frustrating. The way patterns work, the dreadful UI in the song mode, the lack of hands on controls, poor sampling for external sequenced MIDI, many of the effects are horrible or simply do nothing (like EQ). It was extremely buggy for long time, with a lot crashes, but it seems better now. All of this has knocked my enthusiasm for the device. I'll certainly hang to it and give it another try or two in the future, as I still see potential in it. But yeah it's a hard device to love
@@Александр-й7б9и Easily the Octratrack and MC's (I've since bought a MC-707) Both extremely powerful, and easy to use once you get their workflow. There's nothing else on the market quite like the Octratrack. The Electribe-2 was extremely disappointing, and I eventually sold it
I would love to throw one with my MPC I already have but it's a bit expensive for that I think I would rather go with a old push pad actually for another stand alone device..
You could spend the rest of your life looking for a more battle tested interface than the tracker. Hope you stick with it enough to get a sense of all the creative ways the system interacts with itself.
Do the Synthstrom Deluge next, I'd be interested to see how you interact with it. People say it's very intuitive, for me it was hard going at first (lots of button combo's) but after learning it more and more I find it the most open ended sampler and groovebox. Nice video btw, I have to many samplers and as much as this is interesting I'm not sold, I like the granular sampler part a lot.
I love the Polyend Tracker…however one feature one on it that would kill my music generating ideas is the fact that it has a NES emulator to play Old school Nintendo games on it (Mario bros 1, Excite Bike, Mega Man), as someone with ADD, (the Internet is bad enough) the Polyend Tracker will be the end of me. Having said this, The Polyend Tracker is a wonderful device that is an amazing Akai MPC alternative (it _does_ do time stretching) with midi sequencing that gives the Elektron Octotrack a run for its money. Plus Polyend is good when it comes to upgrades for the Tracker…Novation good.
I've been looking at this. Workflow looks super complicated but after reading the comments I'd love to see the NES emulator and recording from embedded Fm radio those two quirky additions may be the reason I end up with one.
Bro, workflow is super intuitive and easy. I've never used trackers before and and after few days with it i was feeling at home , without looking to manual! :)
Well done on getting to it (and going in blind! haha). Truly my heart bleeds small tears for this device ://. I wanted one for so long, and they were out of stock everywhere. Meanwhile I found Renoise, a well-loved software tracker, and now cannot see the point of downgrading features just to get the same in a box (even if it looks awesome). But also they've had a ton of software bugs, and hardware issues too (you noted the buttons sticking, but there have also been jog-wheel issues too. It apparently freezes /crashes often for some too - I'd advise anyone to do the research and read some things from existing users first, to know of the issues (and also limitations) before jumping in. you can always get a feel for tracking with renoise, sunvox and other trackers to see if the workflow suits. Also, not sure about the pricing there, but it's gonna jump up in price soon too. Really really wanted one, and love some of the stuff people have made with it, but just feel kind of sour about it now. A shame :(
That's a bummer. From what I've seen, Polyend has been pretty good about releasing regular updates to fix bugs and add features, but it does feel like the Tracker is kind of a work in progress. I think people are either going to love it for *exactly* what it is, or they'll go with something else.
Hhahahahha....omg.....I really wanted to get the sp 404 mk2....but that's out of stock everywhere I could get it....this thing is in stock...also the circuit tracks is innstock....but these are both hugely different from the sp....what to do what to so....
Polyend Tracker, MPC, MAschine, Circuit... All these great devices and one major big flaw that I cannot get over... Sample Time... Why why why why why do they all have such limited sample time? It is 2021, people run around with phones that have 16gb RAM and devices that stream wav files without noticable latency and still these manufacturers decide to just put a few seconds of sample time on these things. I really would like to use all these grooveboxes and samplers but I can't since I'm working with a lot of huge stereo samples and non of them can handel them, at least not in a set bigger than 30 minutes.. Hope they will start to add decent RAM capabilities to the next generation of devices..
I believe sample time limited more by software than hardware. And since all of these devices built by small companies (or small department of big company) they are on budget
@@Александр-й7б9и I don't believe they're on budget, they're just cheap and lazy. Software is the cheapest thing to do. That's why roland put more menus than buttons in their devices for example.
@@new.romance999 if we speak about forms and menus only then I can agree about low software costs. And system software not cheap at all. Also there are not much(if any) unemployed or willing to change job good firmware programmers in the market. Especially for sound hardware
Hi, Why don't you use demos on youtube to make your first week with it, just as we do and you expect us to do, the video could be interesting to see where and what you learn ? ;)
I did watch a couple of demos before diving in, just not just not super closely. There's usually a good bit of manual checking in these sessions that gets cut because it slows the video down.
That’s an interesting looking piece of hardware, but that workflow seems really tedious. For the same price you could get a Maschine MK3! Great video Gabe!
That's not really that surprising, go to any video on RU-vid and you'll find that the number of comments is a fraction of the number of views on a video. It takes just a little bit of extra effort to leave a comment, so not everyone does it, sometimes they just watch a few minutes of a video then bounce (or are just lurkers, which is totally fine). Also, this is actually quite a few comments for being pretty early in the day. My videos lean less topical and more "timeless", at least over the course of a year, so it can take time for a video to gather steam. I've had videos get stuck at like 2,000 views for months, then suddenly take off and get closer to 50,000. I'm playing a long game.
What a waste of time, reviewing this and making this device!! Get yourself a decent Computer with DAW software and Vst plugins, with hardware input device (keyboard) if you want to do music!
Lol I don't know how to tell you this, but my channel is MOSTLY self-contained stuff these days. Some of us actually like music devices that are more portable, hands on, and limited. And I do usually mix stuff in my DAW if I can stem out a track easily. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine, but I have a very low tolerance for gatekeeping of the "right" way to make music.
@@GabeMillerMusic I see it more as an unusable product, imho, but hey I only speak for myself, everyone has different thoughts about things, and that is a good thing! Otherwise the world would be very boring! An old friend of mine, very famous back in the days for doing pc game music with trackers in the industrie, but it's a good thing imho that there is progress in the way we make music, tools etc. And don't mix very old (limited) methods. But then again! In My Humble Opinion! Did I mention that earlier! I don't say that all your content doesn't have my interest...😇😊
@@Pauluz_The_Web_Gnome you may notice that when you give your opinion and advice to people who don't ask for it, it's not always welcome or appreciated...
