Novation Circuit Rhythm and Circuit Tracks

absolutely. Rytm mk1 was a qualified finger breaker

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I really hope that other targets than amplitude can be mapped to velocity in the future, sample start point and filter cutoff would be great ways of adding expression/variation in the Circuit Rhythm.

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That would be great. Velocity modulation is the thing I miss most about the Model: Samples.

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In the last ten years, Ive had a few focusrite audio interfaces, a few novation midi controllers, and a bass station 2.

The sticky knobs has happened on all of them.
For reference, I live in NSW australia.

The rubberised coating also melts on every other bit of kit I have with it eg, moog, elektron.

You say its been temperature tested, has it been humidity tested?

Not sure about skin ph, or skin oil, I took to washing my hands before every session. Didnt make any difference.

I’m currently looking to replace all the knobs on the offending gear due to this very real problem. And like others, I avoid buying gear that has that awful rubber coating on it, anywhere.

Hard plastic knob caps for life.

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korg pad control, nuff said

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Throw in an lfo and free running loops while we’re at it. I really miss to be able to just launch something and let it run on its own outside the sequencer.

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Hello all, first post on this thread! I have a question regarding the Circuit Tracks and was hoping you can help me with my problem:

I use my CT as the brain of my home setup, sequencing:

  • A Korg Prologue
  • A Sp-404 MkII for guitar and vocal samples

As I don’t use this set up for live jams but mostly to produce basic songs/sketchs (Intro/verse/chorus etc), I was hoping to add a controller for the CT to speed up the arrangement process. I was wondering if I could use the CT’s USB to transmit midi to a controller?

Regarding the controller, does anyone use one with the CT (or the Circuit Rhythm), and if so which one?

Had a bit of a deeper dive for 2 hours last night, actually pretty impressed with the workflow and creative possibilities - it encourages a different workflow if you embrace the limitations and forget about what reservations you might have about 8 mono tracks, thanks to the pretty efficient and elegant way of assigning samples to a step. IMHO a bit ahead of others in this regard.

I did not fully get the hang of every aspect yet, but whilst it was charging I skim read the manual to get the overall jist of it. Also whilst charging I made a pack, all pretty painless and intuitive, drag drop, set up a set of grid fx - which was easy enough, although I think that some improvement could be easily made with the variety and implementation of these, I’ll come back to that later.

First thoughts:

A lot of the muscle memory from the OG Circuit I had briefly when they first came out stuck pretty well, I kind of forgot how well a lot of that works.

The reverb and delay are ok.

The parameter ranges and sound of those is mostly pretty good, the distortion could use a bit of refinement though, a bit coarse and I’d prefer a bit more variation, maybe a bipolar dual affair like the master filter, tube drive CCW distortion CW or something.

The pitch handling is a bit better than I expected, I’m guessing it uses windowed interpolation or something to minimise aliasing artefacts.

Sample memory seems a bit meagre for 128 samples, even with just drum hits and mostly staccato synth sounds I almost filled it with about 20 slots left over I had about 26 seconds left. But that said it isn’t a dealbreaker for me, I’ve worked with much less in the past as most over 40 have :laughing:

Sequencer is really nice, the integration with the samples is very efficient. Meh probability is ok, but iterations is for me much more useful but this isn’t implemented - there is even space in the UI for it - @calc :wink:

Like this

8 unused pads in bottom row of probability section, hold a step by default the first of these 8 unused pads is lit white indicating a normal step, whilst holding the step light up as many as 8 pads (counter of 8) keeping the step held these can be toggled between white (plays) or red (does not play) this would allow all variations of x/x iterations so want every 3rd step not played - set 3 pads lit and turn last one red. Or want only the second and seventh out of 8 to play - set 8 pads lit and turn 1,3,4,5,6,8 red. Intuitive, and powerful for adding variation.

One thing which I assumed would work but did not was holding shift whilst turning a macro knob like say HPF release shift and it returns to the default setting. Shift is for finer resolution, maybe holding track and turning knob could do the above in future?

Plocks would be better if they were only active for the step set, I’d like to see an option for this. Maybe shift (or track) hold step turn knob and it is only for that step, without shift is the current behaviour?

Also in any mode hold shift and press track button to mute would be handy.

I think if the track numbers flashed to indicate pattern activity would be nice.

But overall a very nice little instrument, I intend to dig a bit deeper in the coming days, I have probably forgot to mention a few other things, but as a user of a lot of samplers/sequencers this has a valuable place in my setup because it brings its own things to the table, really really useful. I can see it being good on its own or used with the rest of my gear.

Edited.

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Sorry I don’t get the question … the CT has 8 to any Midi CC assignable knobs to act as a controller itself …

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I live in Florida, and I have a few Focusrite and a Bass station 2. I can say I haven’t had any issues. One possible cause I’ve seen on other gear is external substances. Moisturizers, coffee, drinks, etc. My partner’s mouse and car steering wheel completely broke down and she uses moisturizers on her hands like a fiend. There are acids in many moisturizers that might breakdown plastics.

Nice thoughts on the iteration controls. I would love to see that as well.

My biggest personal wish would be:
Editing of grid fx. Make 8 parameters accessible via knobs. Whatever fx was toggled last takes over the controls. Being able to build a selection of grid fx in components is great, but often when sound shaping and pattern building you’ll want to shape the effect a little to fit with what you are composing.

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Well im my case there’s zero chance of it being moisturiser. Or any other type of goo you put on your skin.

Yeah grid fx could be much better too:

Since they can be edited from components it would be nice to have options such as sends for each track so that for example the selected grid fx could act on say track 2-8 only, or just track 3&4 etc. Also the beat repeat and other time based fx should have option to sync and quantize to sequencer, it would also be nice to have per effect latching/hold options so that for example you can press a pad and it comes in for say 4 steps then goes off.

I think that a few other types such as pitch shift, flanger, comb filter, auto pan, sweep up/down of pitch/decay/filter etc, random step reorder, and maybe some other drive/tonal options would be nice too.

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Yes you’re right, it wasn’t clear in my OP. I’m looking for a midi controller with faders (à la Launch Control XL) to have access to the mixer page (volume, pan, mute etc) of the circuit WHILE I’m building a sequence. And because my midi ins and outs are all taken, I was wondering if I could use the USB port to connect a MIDI controller.

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I recorded a few loops from my piano yesterday into the Circuit Rhythm, resampled some of them through the mandatory Chase Bliss gear and wrote a brief but somewhat funky track based on this. Drums are from the Syntakt, though again sampled, chopped, torn into pieces and just generally abused -

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You could use the Circuit Tracks. I completely forgot that all Grid FX are accessible via midi. Sooo…plans.

When re/sampling it would be great if the sample length/duration could be set automatically, something like this maybe?

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Another little something, with the Chase Bliss CXM on the master. Very brief, just a minute long, but trying to create as wide a stereo image as possible. Seems there’s headroom enough to make quite a lush mix in the Rhythm alone -

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At the risk of mainly talking to myself here, here’s another one, somewhat more experimental - :nerd_face:

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I think this is the first time I’ve seen Ricky in his day job. He’s a lot stiffer! (But it was informative, so thanks!).