I’ve had some time to put the syntakt through its paces yesterday, mainly creating patches and testing midi routing options with my linnstrument (round-robin for polyphony, row per channel to play finger drums, etc), messing with the FX track, routing my guitar through the FX, stuff like that, but not doing anything aimed at creating finished music. Works like a charm!
Just for reference, so you can see what kind of music I aim at making with the syntakt:
Basically a mixture of 70s tangerine dream, 80s king crimson and some modern stuff like animal collective sprinkled on top.
The reason I’m posting the following little review in this thread is that the syntakt perfectly fit what I was looking for, in that it is a small self-contained unit that can do very many things well, is straightforward, yet can be very complex if you want it to: In a summary, and that’s along the lines of what I have also read here from other users, it is the closest thing elektron did to a “best-of” machine thus far.
So far I’ve owned the DT, OT, AH (all sold), and the DN (put it on sale yesterday, the four track limit got in my way more often than not) and always had trouble, or it just wasn’t fun anymore, when trying to make multiple devices work together. The syntakt covers such a large amount of ground, offers enough tracks for both drums, bass, melodies and FX, has flexible recording options via overbridge that I guess it will become my one and only home studio tool to create music with. Am I in the honeymoon phase and blinded by a shiny new toy? Sure, but still, I think if you ever want to reduce your setup to one elektron box only, the syntakt is my top recommendation, hands down.
Remember, I use it with the linnstrument as a midi controller and this opens up the syntakt considerably. But I feel like I need very little else to achieve the kind of music I want to make (the m8 for portable fun and sampling).
Elektron really nailed the slogan on the packaging: adore now, explore forever! FUNC+yes, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing
0.0x amount of detune, the tune param maxed out and some LFO movement on Bit and sample rate reduction and your in Autechre land… this machine is gonna be fun to explore… would love a compressor though to really draw out the sounds…
This would have happened a lot quicker if I could’ve restrained myself from going down about a billion sound design rabbit holes. I used all 12 tracks just because I can.
Probably should’ve hit it with some limiting but I really need to get back to work on my next long mix. And toward that end I will be digging deep into the kicks this thing can do later today. I think it’s a shoe-in to replace the LXR-02 in my live rig but it’s going to come down to kick drums. Although the Syntakt runs circles around it in the sound design and sequencing departments, the LXR slays the kicks and I can’t trade a real necessity like that for fancy bells and whistles if the bells and whistles don’t come along with serious meat and potatoes.
This whole little episode has been real fun for me. I mentioned it somewhere else but the last time I had a new piece of tech in hand on launch day it was 9/9/99 and I was running around in Blue Stinger on my shiny new Dreamcast. It’s been a blast to participate in a little zeitgeisty thing like this :0)
all the stuff i’ve heard so far using the chord machine sounds pretty much like the model cycles. is it more versatile, or is it basically the same vibe? it feels like it would have limited utility if it’s roughly the same as the cycles.
I doubt this is very helpful but having never had or touched a Cycles, I find this chord machine to be fucking radical. Now hopefully somebody that knows things will come by and give you a decent answer.
Only some slight glue compressor on the mix, and minor limiting.
