Design is about tradeoffs. Great design is about understanding a domain deeply enough that the tradeoffs all enhance some desired aspect at the expense of others. The form and expression of objects of great design is often as much about what they don’t do as what they do.
Sometimes these great designs land, and people are moved by them. They find them elevating. Freeing.
Sometimes they’re real stinkers that miss the mark, are ridiculed, and become obsolete.
Sometimes they’re both to different people.
But if the LS were a blank canvas of 200 pads that could be assigned any color or trigger or message, it wouldn’t be any of these things. It wouldn’t be anything, really. Just a kit, with no decisions made and no particular experience studied, labored over, and showcased. If I had that, I’d feel like I had really missed out.
Why do you keep saying “your esoteric use cases”? Mine? I don’t want those things, didn’t ask for them, and wouldn’t presume to. I understand what the LinnStrument was design for and how it works. You mentioned those things, not me. To that end, I simply answered the question “why doesn’t’ the LinnStrument do…?”, because you asked.
But I digress. I’m not cheerleading, I’m just in a position to know. If you think the LinnStrument is all but obsolete, then go chase those other devices that you mentioned, and see if they get you any closer to whatever it is that you aspire to do. But to say “such a pricey transaction and time investment warrants thoughtful consideration”, as if to suggest that Roger Linn somehow owes you something or is otherwise thumbing his nose at your particular needs or sound advice, well…
That is both unfounded and unwarranted. At very least, hardly a “sober assessment”.
The LinnStrument has been a blank canvas that can be assigned any color to any pad for quite some time using Ben Fuhrman’s app (or MIDI sysex messages)—and yet you’ve been finding it elevating and freeing all this time, no? In fact, Roger Linn is considering adding a capability to preserve one custom lighting config across power cycles. So if instead of using an external MIDI processor to map each pad there were a way to map each pad’s note and channel directly (like Fuhrman’s app for color) and save this in a few onboard presets, you’d still be able to use your LinnStrument the way you always have, right?
It’s like the sequencer: I never use it because I’ve never needed it, but I know it’s there. Maybe someday I’ll use it, but in the meantime, it’s presence doesn’t bother me one iota, particularly since @JohnTheSavage says its programming hasn’t crowded out any other development. It wouldn’t make sense for me to begrudge anyone else using the sequencer.
I don’t agree that the LinnStrument is all but obsolete, but it’s showing its age in 2021 in light of emerging options. It’s now going obsolete, just a question of how fast. It remains to be seen how the other options work out, but even if alternate controllers aren’t a particularly popular topic at Elektronauts, I’ll post about it. That’s because Elektronauts is a civil place where people respond contentfully to posted content. Most people refrain from characterizing other people’s words, which is the very definition of online incivility, where the bad discussion drives out the good.
Look, blipson, you keep moving the proverbial goalposts here, and changing the context of your words, in turn trivializing my responses. You’re throwing around a lot of speculation, and criticizing the design and functionality of tech that you don’t fully understand. As such, I’m dropping this discussion.
To be clear, I wish you well in your pursuit of alternate tunings and temperaments, and I hope the ideal controller comes along to suit your needs. I simply endeavored to answer some questions, based on my own (modest, but informed) insight, about how and why the LinnStrument works the way it does, and what might be reasonably expected of it going forward.
I disagree with you, and we’ll have to leave it at that.
I must admit having used both the Sensel Morph and the Linnstrument for some time, a crucial difference is that the Linn feels a lot more like a proper instrument. Sure the Morph has a lot more customizability. But the practicality of being able to show up in a jam/rehersal/studio-session hook up the Linnstrument to a synth or DAW, using usb or regular midi and configure the parameters on the device itself without downloading drivers and utlilty apps is really a plus.
Additionally, might be my skills as a techie that are lacking but I never really got the morph to behave the way wanted to. For instance if you disable pitch bend some of the CC slides are turned off as well… anyway I dont think the linn will be “obsolete” any more than standard midi keyboards will be. Sure something more fancy or technically better might show up, but the fact that it feels robust, musical and immediate will keep demand up. Only real concern are about much it is a one-man company and what the future holds if mr. Linn at some point decides go on well deserved retirement.
Right, as we’ve discussed over on the Morph thread, the Morph simply doesn’t cut it as a professional instrument, if for no other reason than the 3V floor issue. The Morph misses by aiming too low, and, for example, the Lumatone misses by aiming too high, at least in terms of price (which you might also say about the Continuum). But now there’s another, more generalized touch controller coming to market, the Erae Touch. So you see, manufacturer’s are perceiving demand and getting close to providing everything the LinnStrument does, but better, and at a lower price. That’s what I mean by going obsolete: it’s not obsolete yet, but progressively going there in light of makers’ attempts in the past 2-3 years’ to meet a market demand that the LinnStrument also aspires to meet.
Kinda bummed there isn’t a more robust thread here for the Linnstrument–not just for discussing the merits of the device, but how it can be used with other gear. I am new to the Linnstrument and was hoping there might be Elektron users who also have a Linnstrument and might want to share tips and tricks.
Anyway, here’s something I posted over at KVR, so I am re-posting it here:
“Playing the Linndrum (as a sampled VST) with the Linnstrument: While waiting for my Linnstrument to be shipped last week, I purchased the entire sample lineup from Samples From Mars (56 GB of samples from a vast array of vintage synths and drum machines for the insanely cheap price of $33). One of the sets of samples they offer in their collection is the Linndrum. So, I loaded the kits up in Battery 4 inside Logic, created a simple sequence on the Linnstrument, and filled a little tiny world with Roger’s stuff!”
I mean, there’s not a very robust thread on the official KVR forums, so I’m not sure why it would be better here. I know there are a bunch of ’naughts who are very happy Linnstrument owners (myself included), but I’ve never really had questions about it or had issues with it, so I don’t really know what to say.
Yeah, good point. Newbie enthusiasm here, I guess. I have been looking through the threads at KVR, so maybe that’s why the thread hasn’t really kept current here.
Just to chime in here as I think I haven’t done so in this thread yet. I use the linnstrument128 with the DT and DN. It’s great for playing pseudo MPE 4 voice patches on the DN, but also serves as a really nice controller for the DT, if set up correctly. I have it configured so that each row corresponds to a different track on the DT while the columns correspond to the different pitches. So it’s like chromatic mode for all 8 tracks simultaneously with velocity sensitivity. Good fun!
Hey, thanks for the tip. I haven’t yet had a chance to use the Linnstrument (also a 128) with the A4MKii, but get how I probably will do that to get multi note expression (same sound on all four tracks all set to different midi channels). If I ever get back to trying to figure out whether I want to use the OT that sits quietly beckoning to me, maybe I can set something up like what you do with the DT.
I appreciate the references. I bought the Linnstrument after going to Roger Linn’s Forum at KVR–he was actually providing a new user with some tips on midi stuff on Thanksgiving day and that kind of sealed the deal for me. I have also read pretty much the entirety of the Hydrasynth thread9, which is why I brought it with the Linnstrument this weekend to my cabin (sitting out a Blizzard in this Winter wonderland).
I will be sure to check out the other forum you mentioned.
I’ve found that the Hydrasynth is the best hardware MPE synth to use with the LS. Somehow, I’ve never gotten my Black Corporation modules, despite their greatness, to respond to the LS as nicely as the Hydrasynth. SWAM instruments are also great with the LS’s CC Faders config.
Well, “robuster” than Elektronauts at any rate. Cost is an unfortunate impediment with alternative controllers of various kinds, otherwise I think a lot more people could roll the dice and possibly end up adopting them.
I thought about a Linnstrument a couple of years ago, but wasn’t able to justify at the time. This year, I bought a Cobalt8M and a Hydrasynth Desktop, so have two modules that are MPE compatible. Suddenly, the Linnstrument made a lot more sense to me. I’ve also been using it with Pigments and Equator 2, both of which I bought on the cheap during Black Friday. I am not a heavy hitting “musician” (I use that term loosely), meaning I prefer playing with a soft touch, and the LS lets me to do that in really cool ways, whereas I really do not like the pads on the HS, so its kind of a perfect match, and all the crazy stuff you can so easily modulate with x,y, and z axis in HS Mod Matrix, kinda unbelievable how easy and cool it is to work them together.
If I’m doing MPE, I’m usually going to a Micromonsta2, EssenceFM, or the SWAM modeling apps on an iPad.
But honestly I’m not a practiced enough performer that expressivity is always a good thing. Most of the time I’m using it as a plain old MIDI keyboard, just to explore ideas, all pitch bending and polyafter aside. It’s really very good at this.
I still need to wrap my head around the note layout, TBH. I have never played a guitar and have only ever used piano keyboards, but without much music theory. I mean, I get the key layout, but haven’t studied scales, chords, musical notation in probably 30 years, and back then, only did so for about a year. I am hoping that if I can find a way to learn the layout of the Linnstrument, I will be able to expand my understanding of the kinds of music I want to make (I am finding the layout options on the Hydrasynth really helpful for this, including the vast array of scale options), but my understanding is that this is not something the Linnstrument can do very easily (not without the use of a Max software “hack” that someone created that I do not know how to use).
For this, rather than using fourths I layout the grid in octaves, such that the square above is +1 octave and the one below is -1 octave. Very intuitive, though less quick and more awkward for doing, like, single-handed chords. But great for just messing around and exploring melodies.
