this is an electribe! I want it. it’s billed as a “music production station” and it seems to fit the bill pretty well! it’s supposedly a synth-based sequencer with some drum samples included, as opposed to the similar (by which I mean exactly the same) looking electribe SAMPLER, which is a sample-based sequencer with some synths included. I’ve been in a dilemma with my own setup trying to figure out whether I should lean hardware or lean software, which isn’t helped by the fact that my gear is split pretty closely down the middle (arturia microbrute + midi fighter 3d/twister + game boys)
so an electribe seems pretty well suited toward what I’d like to do, which is make moody house music with my microbrute providing lead lines. and there’s the added bonus of being able to hook up my gameboys to it as well to switch back to the other style I work on (space-y future bass-ish stuff) without any problems.
part of me thinks that I’m idolizing the idea of dedicated music production hardware too much, but as someone who had to hack things together software-wise to get things to work, having something that I can just turn on and start making music in appeals to me a LOT
I just can’t handle samplers I think! I really like starting my process by going through and crafting an instrument sound before I start using it and having that crafting process influence what I write, so the idea of doing that a bunch of times without actually writing afterwards in order to even use a piece of equipment turns me off of the concept
What may turn out to be the killer feature of the new electribe generation is that it now exports to Ableton Live sets. KORG even says it’s a collaboration with the folks at Ableton.
Your patterns and parts are saved to scenes and clips. Open these files on your computer, and you see them inside a Live Set.
There’s even a copy of Live Lite in the box, but — yeah, you probably don’t need that.
No need for explanation here – this is huge. You now have a battery-powered unit you can use away from Ableton Live that can make drum parts, melodic parts, and even live sample, and then you can finish off songs and arrangements back on your machine. If you like starting songs on hardware and getting away from the computer, or if you want to integrate KORG’s hardware with your live set and then later turn jams into songs, it’ll be a beautiful combination.
That’s pretty neat, I didn’t know about this, neat.
For the price I would really, really recommend getting an emx-1 or esx-1 instead of these new electribe things. They are way awesome groove boxes with less modern cruft and you can pick them up on the cheap
yeah, I was actually looking at the emx-1 before I started checking out the electribe 2! I had seen it a bunch in the circle I run with (norcal chiptune/lo-fi community) and I’d been impressed by it!
my hangups with the emx-1 are that based on the research I’ve been doing (frantic googling and youtube is the most rigorous obviously), I’m not as much a fan of the drum samples on the emx-1 and it seems like there isn’t as much filter stuff you can do on them, since the filters are only applied to the synth parts. which is my other hangup with the emx-1 – it allows 4 synth parts only and 9 drum parts (as opposed to the electribe 2’s freely assignable parts), which is fine for most intents and purposes, but I like airy large synth pads stacked on top of each other, and I’m much less drum focused in general in terms of my layering. even for percussion-driven stuff like deep house I’m ok with trying to get away with 4-5 drum parts.
so I think it’s just weird quirks of the kind of music I like to make that tilt me toward the electribe 2, but if I find an emx1 for cheap then I’ll probably just snatch that up instead
there’s something so cool about korg’s commitment to affordability! like this is a 4 voice analog synth for FIVE HUNDRED dollars which is really great!
and it has that awesome little screen for displaying your waveform
Thank you based Takahashi-san. Only regret: no wood side panels. This things got a very similar MSRP to the Microkorg, a decade old entry level 4 voice digital synth with 5 parameter knobs. These guys are pulling off a kind of magic here.
Oh yeah. This thing is drool worthy. There is no way they aren’t gonna sell half a million of these check that oscilloscope mannnnn they gonna use these things in schools
I’m hype for that volca FM tho. Although I guess if you wanted a decent fm synth you could just mod a genesis. FM synthesis is really under appreciated these days. I like noise a lot.
I love how the Volca FM has enough operators to use old Yamaha DX7 patches, where as Yamaha’s new Reface DX doesn’t. Assuming the Volca is in the same price range as the rest of that series, it’d be like a quarter of the price too.
I got a Volca Sample for Christmas, and I’m still getting used to it, but it’s pretty rad.
I’m really excited about that Pocket Operator Office. It seems like they’re taking inspiration from all those YouTube videos of song covered by hard drives and printers. The final Man… Or Astroman record was the first place I heard the dot matrix printer shriek in music back in 1999 or so. Who got that ball rolling on that?
oof, yeah I’m looking at the volca fm and it’s looking really great! if it ends up anything like the rest of the volca series, I’m probably going to snatch it up when it’s released
so this is more of a software post but I downloaded nanoloop for android and I’m really into it!
nanoloop is a sequencer/synthesizer that was first created for the original Game Boy (DMG) – for a while, when you were talking about making chiptune on a Game Boy you were talking about using either LSDJ or nanoloop. LSDJ is definitely the most popular tracker for Game Boys these days, but nanoloop’s super interesting interface always intrigued me, and since I’m on my electribe hype train still I decided to take a dip here.
for nanoloop, you’re either talking about nanoloop 1.x or nanoloop 2.x, with the iOS and android versions using the 2.x synthesizer structure. 1.x was made for the brick Game Boys, but 2.x is where the software really differentiated itself, mostly because it was made to run on the Game Boy Advance and took advantage of the more advanced sound capabilities
it’s fun! it’s easily the quickest sequencer I’ve played around with, with the main problem being that the interface is a little obtuse and hard to parse. I kind of like that, honestly, but it was tough going at first to even make a kick drum
I’m using it as a warm-up to get used to composing in a sequencer style, having a pattern loop over and over (and over and over) again while adding/muting parts and adjusting pattern-wide parameters. eventually I’d like to be able to just bring equipment without pre-created parts and improvise something on the fly, kind of like Surgeon does here:
The phone versions of nanoloop are a bit less obtuse than the Gameboy one, so you can either think of it as the better version or training wheels for the real version.
GB flash carts finally dipped into my price range a couple months back, so I have a legit copy of LSDJ now. I’m really bad at thinking in the mode trackers require though. Nanoloop is much more my speed.
Well, death ray and shitwave are really my speed, but I aspire to nanoloop.
Plz also help with LSDJ I got a flash cart from 1CC on SB 1.0 ages ago and bought a refurbished Game Boy and my eyes just glazed over when I started reading that tutorial on the LSDJ wikia
