Just the TD-50 brain. I’m not much of a drummer, so playing a Zendrum lets me use 8-10 “sticks” to make up for my poor hand-foot coordination. The Zendrum’s whole thing is to allow highly sensitive dynamics over the full MIDI velocity range. John Emrich’s demos go far beyond what most people do with it, except maybe for this guy.
No, I haven’t tried triggering the blackbox via MIDI. To shine, the Zendrum needs a fully multi-sampled kit (like BFD) or the TD-50 to get the feel of real drumming with dynamic variation.
This little machine is still on my radar, but I’m not sure why. Seems like a bargain at the price, but I’m not sure what I’d do with it except use it while traveling, which I do a lot.
I’m quite interested in the blackbox. Was wonder if you could answer a few questions.
How’s the touchscreen on this feel? Responsive? High quality? In one of your other videos you’re tapping the screen pretty rigorously, does it feel solid enough to do that over long term use.
It is responsive, certainly. Accuracy in the sequence edit view takes some getting used to when you aren’t zoomed in a good amount. But using multi-touch to zoom in that view is easy. It feels solid but I couldn’t say how long it may last or how well it could deal with extended punishment, because I don’t have any experience with touchscreens going bad.
If Aaron’s majestic personality is anything to go buy I’m sure this little box will go very, very far. The man fielded many esoteric questions with aplomb, he’s home running that shtiz. Love him all told.
Touchscreen tech in synths has definitely improved especially recently. I know korg had some large missteps with integrating touchscreen on their workstations over the years. As have a few other companies, so it still seems like a wildcard when one is present as the main interface.
I will say though I’ve been tapping beating into my iPad2 since like 2010 and it’s worked the entire time excellently, so I’m not anti touch screen. But I’m definitely pro proper touchscreen quality and implementation.
I wouldn’t be so concerned about the quality of the touch screen, more than the abscence of plenty, when it comes to physical controls. I get why they’re not there, it’s not a flaw in the design, it’s just that I love my knobs and switches.
That’d be my mine gripe with the MPC Live. It’s a great machine. And the interface is solid. It’s just not very enjoyable. Whereas the Elektrons, with buttons all over the place, their trigs just trigger something trigless within me, and I keep coming back for that trigger trip.
The ratio of knobbing and buttoning to touching is actually quite high so that the touches just seem a reasonable part of the mix. It’s mousing that would take me immediately out of all musicality: I simply can’t have any fun with even the best-designed software interface, and I’ve never played an external controller accessory that felt good.
I should say, though, that editing sequences can negatively impact your frame of mind. If it’s more than one bar (16 steps), you have to pinch-zoom, or else the note boxes are too small to punch on and off reliably. And after pinch-zooming, if you leave the seqencer then come back, it doesn’t remember your last resolution, so you have to pinch-zoom --and possibly scroll to your point of interest–all over again. I bet they could add a “remember last sequencer screen” setting to the firmware.
Yeah, but I like being able to access multiple tracks simultaneously as on my Deluge. It’s nice having a 16x16 grid on the Blackbox, though I think a lot of people are going to have fat finger issues with that. More steps than 16 is unusable for editing, though it makes for a nice overview. My complaint, as I mentioned above, is that the grid defaults to 32 steps when you have 2-bar or greater quantization, which stops up your playflow. They should just allow you to specify a default grid size. Better: have a “remember last” setting so that when you return to the sequence a second later, it doesn’t keep re-presenting you with the 32-step micro-grid.
Live, with a setup, with people looking at you, where you’re moving around at least a little bit, I think the big Elektron buttons are a must. The Blackbox could only be a backup or a secondary in that context.