The Virus is great , not only due to its multitimbral nature, and its just a solid workhorse !
(Ironically, Ive lusted after a Summit for a few years now )
but all depends on your needs⌠basically a Hapax will go with whatever you have.
Hapax does play nicely with Elektron tooâŚ
well at least I use it a lot with my Octatrack, but whenever you start running multiple sequencers, you have to decide on how each of their roles and how they will work together⌠e.g. what do you sequence where.
(for me) the OT is not too hard, as mainly I use if for live recording/mangling⌠so doesnât overlap much.
so im sure Syntakt will be fun too⌠the Hapax / Elektron sequencers are a bit different, so fun to explore that side.
I want to keep all my sequencing in one place now, it becomes to much work having too many sequencers running at same time⌠so plan to simply use syntakt by itself this time or have hapax sequence it
Actually just thinking might be good to hold onto the mpc for a sound source to sequence from the hapax as it has a lot of great drum kits and sampled instrumentsâŚ
The virus ti2 might be a nice replacement for the peak though⌠itâs a great synth but only 8 voices not enough for the hapax
I donât know that thereâs a lot to say about it is the thing. The knobs are trash. Replace those as soon as you can (maybe get your order to Thonk in now so theyâre waiting for you in June?)
It was pretty buggy to start (tracks just stopped sending MIDI, tracks that started playing twice as fast, save screen dialogs not showing up, all unreproducible for me) but I havenât had anything weird happen since 1.4.
But other than that, it kind of does what it says on the tin: Press a pad. Sequence a note. Build a sequence. Arrange a song.
I will say that right now, for me, it feels like the whole is not more than the sum of the parts. All the modes work great. Live is what you think, chord mode is awesome, step mode feels immediate (but easy to lose your way in), automation is quick, patterns are intuitive, FX are useful, but niche, Algo is criminally underutilized⌠Itâs just it hasnât come together as a cohesive hole for me yet. I havenât had my âah ha!â moment with it.
Thatâs either because I havenât spent enough time with it, or because it wasnât designed with a sharp focus like, say, the Pyramid. Maybe itâs âjustâ utilitarian, brining together a bunch of useful sequencing tools but without any unifying âvisionâ of what sequencing âshouldâ be? I kind of expect âvisionâ from Squarp, but itâd be fine if the Hapax didnât have it. Itâs still just darn useful.
what more should a sequencer do than sequence, which it sounds like Hapax is working well at doing?
(iâm not being snarky â as much as I have come to appreciate and enjoy how powerful Pyramid is as a MIDI note arranger and controller, the main thing that it doesnât really do well is actually sequence the constituent Patterns and Tracks in an intuitive or elegant way. so to the extent that Hapax builds on what Pyramid does best but also improves as an actual song-creating tool, Iâm not looking for much more out of it)
Honestly, yes, thereâs not a ton to complain about.
I find that it does what I want it to do with a minimum of effort. I sort of feel like itâs letting me sequence and play my synths very directly if that makes sense. I donât feel like I have to learn itâs âphilosophyâ or rely on âhappy accidentsâ. It just gets out of the way mostly. I particularly love how easy it is to. make small adjustments, delete stray notes, fix or shift timings slightly, try out alternate paths, etc, without leaving a flow.
I am also curious to know more about how you feel the pyramid is âmore than the sumâ in a way hapax was not. I was a pyramid lover before I switched to hapax.
Itâs a lovely piece of kit and I totally agree with the other usersâ experiences above - itâs simply dead easy to sequence stuff and adjust those sequences, both on a pattern and track level.
Iâve never found mine to be buggy, and I feel there still lots of room for potential additional functionality.
Iâm using mine as a glorified MIDI looper with MPE recording for my LinnstrumentâŚand extra controls and LFOs for my hardwareâŚand modulated MIDI FX boxâŚand automation recorder. Itâs been fun running a sequence on my Norand Mono and then occasionally overlaying notes on the Hapax to add more complexity. I have a template where I set up some of the controls to handle âshiftâ functions on my UDO Super 6ânow I can tweak HPF and LPF at the same time. Iâve set up interfering Euclindian sequences, then modulated them.
I think itâs absolutely worth the price. There isnât a wow factor, but it is very very easy to use musically, at least for me. And I am glad I have it. Think of it as a utility that gets a lot of things out of the way.
I put away my Eurorack to really concentrate on it and learn it. I am missing some things from my Vector Sequencer but I expect I will eventually use both, and also use Euro to modulate the Hapax. The Vector is much more complicated to use for sure. But it can do some magical things.
Why do we even bother with Elektron boxes when an MC-50 would sequence just fine? Because they have a very specific take on sequencing that feels different enough to be rewarding.
The Pyramid, to me, feels built around polymeters. Pretty much every tool it offers is designed to support or enhance this primary conceit. Patterns need to zoom because you donât know how long a bar will be. Notes need to scale because there are no assumptions around the ratio of a beat. Euclidean rhythms are just a way of automatically laying out a fill when you donât know the time signature ahead of time. The way it manages âsequencesâ as saved sets of mute states for tracks is one of the few ways to build a song when track can play and loop at different times and speeds with respect to each other, etc.
And then there were some unrelated dumb things, like the accelerometer. And some unrelated brilliant things like midi FX. But a lot of its features feel dedicated to this one concept.
The Hapax concept is, I suppose, the grid? But every other feature makes that harder to use instead of easier. Switching between live and step is disorienting. Zoom is a great way to lose all sense of where you are in your song. Scrolling feels inconsistent when using scales. Things like selecting areas of the grid or copy and paste feel inconsistent between different modes (will select work? Do i hold copy then press the pad or hold the pad and then press copy?)
Then there are the unrelated things. Like having two projects. Thatâs a pretty big deal. The put two processors in the Hapax, presumably to support this. Why? What ways am I supposed to be using this? Is it a performance thing? If so, how does it work with anything else? Looping in step mode feels pretty performance oriented. And launching clips. But neither of these take particular advantage of having two simultaneous projects open side-by-side.
Fx are cool. Algorithms are cool. Chance, roll, and âmathâ are cool. But theyâre all unrelated things in different parts of the UI for doing kind of the same stuff?
The Hapax feels like a kitchen sink of cool sequencing ideas collected over the last decade and thrown together in a box. Again, I donât want to come across as being down on it. I use it daily. Having all the cool ideas of the last decade in one box at my fingertips is pretty cool.
But what would be cooler is all those ideas united by a thread that tied them together and gave them some commonality. Like polymeters to the Pyramid or tracker-in-a-groove-box to Elektron. Maybe thatâs not possible with something as ambitious as the Hapax. But I still hope itâs there and Iâm just missing it or it will become more refined and evident after updates.
âWhy do we even bother with Elektron boxes when an MC-50 would sequence just fine? Because they have a very specific take on sequencing that feels different enough to be rewarding.â
Ironically, the only sequencer I ever had before Pyramid was an MC-50 and, but for the floppy drive, would probably still be using that now instead. Have a Digitone Keys and canât be bothered at all to try and learn the Elektron sequencer. No song mode for starters and then thatâs just another set of patterns I would have to create, manage, backup, and sync with Pyramidâs Sequence chain on a given project. Nah.
But it seemed obvious to me from the first minute of the Hapax intro video what the value proposition of dual-project architecture was, at least in the live setting. Seamless transition between two tracks without having to keep the gear going (like switching between Pyramid and Digitone or Blackboxâs internal sequencer) while I loaded the next project and trying to figure out how to keep it all in sync. That feature alone is worth the upgrade from Pyramid to Hapax for me.
I love mine, itâs like a cirklon for dummies (I have a cirklon which is now sitting unused and staring angrily at me) ⌠after a long day at work I just want something that you can create songs and Melody really quickly, and the chord, algo and arp modes are perfect for that. Once it gets instrument definitions it will be perfect. Oh, and more lanes on the drum mode. - 8 isnât enough for most of my drum machines.
A good sequencer should be boring. This means itâs not getting in your way. All the âflavoursâ or âfeelsâ of particular sequencers just mean they have some constraint or quirk in their workflow that forces you to think their way. Which to some is a good thing, others not so much.
Hmm, I donât completely agree here. If Sequencers should be boring, bring nothing else to the table then perform your creativity, why limit yourself with a hardware device?
We want hardware, because it inspires us. Because learning it springs new ideas. Working around restrictions forces you to think and be creative. I agree with you, that I like devices that fit my workflow more than others, and that some constrains donât inspire but hinder me, but boring equipment, well, bores me really really fastâŚ
Yeah, its all subjective. I canât get on with DAWâs because theyâre too feature packed and mouse clicking piano rolls bores me real quick. Hapax letâs me get the tune out of my head and automated very quickly with no fuss or distractions. In my case a boring, frictionless and reasonably transparent workflow is better than the hardware imposing itâs own quirks on workflow.
It has some weird quirks at the moment, but Squarp is fast with updating and improving the firmware. They are also very open and responsive to feedback. I am confident that when it gets more mature, it will be awesome. It has the potential, but it is not perfect yet.
The Hapax looks fantastic to me. Sort of exactly what I was hoping for from a hardware, performance-orientated midi sequencer. I see no way to get my hands on one anytime soon (seems to be out of stock), so obviously I canât judge the actual handling of it yet, but from its UI, specs and functionality it looks like the perfect midi sequencer for my use case (live jamming & performance).
EDIT: Told my lovely wife about how excited I am about this device, so she low-key went ahead and ordered one for me last night.
Super excited about this, it does exactly what I want a sequencer for live performance to do. Looking forward to receiving it hopefully sometime in June.
You could set one note to play 50% of the time, and then give the other a âMATHâ of â/PREâ which will only play if the previous condition didnât happen.
Fur the purposes of determining what was âpreviousâ, the Hapax works from top-to-bottom. So even if you have two notes on the same step, the higher note is considered âpreviousâ to the lower one.
So you could put a G4 on a step, give it the 50% and put an F4 on the same step, and give it the â/PREâ and that should do what you want. If you want an F5 instead, just give it the 50% and the G4 the â/PREâ.