For me, the first couple groove boxes I used, borrowed from friends, were the Quasimidi 309 “Rave-o-lution!” and Yamaha RM1X. I loved the sounds of what my friends were doing with them.
Both were cost prohibitive for me at the time. Which is funny considering I was spending about $200/mo on import vinyl. I opted for a DR-770 initially, and it was a fun beat box but couldn’t do much else. I was bummed that I couldn’t get it to sound anywhere near as cool as what my friend was doing with a simple Roland R8.
Once I was ready to drop some cash on a “groove box”, I went all out and opted for an MPC2000XL Studio Plus. 8 outs into my mixer and small fx rack, plus a nice big chunky 100MB SCSI ZIP Drive for my samples. It served me well for many years. I was able to do whole tracks on it. And I feel that is what the “groovebox” paradigm promises.
I sampled everything. If I saw a friend had a dusty old synth that they hadn’t touched for a year, I’d borrow it for a month and sample the most interesting sounds I could make with it. Or I’d just come over with my MPC for a jam session and leave with a few fresh samples to use at my studio, later that evening, like a techno banger from 909+JP8000 samples.
I eventually sold it to go with a laptop instead, somewhat of a regret of mine. I’ll sometimes eye used MPC2000XL for nostalgic purposes. Doing live shows with the MPC + Mixer rack were fine for gigs I had to drive to, but for international travel, the latest fast (Pentium3!) were getting there and much more portable. So it was mostly a live performance decision to move toward the laptop.
Later on, I was able to mimic the studio workflow/capabilities I had with the MPC+Mixer+FX rack setup I used to have, with Live v4.0 and the MPD-32. The DAW workflow plus cumulative experience in studio and live sound was giving me a higher fidelity production quality in my DAW only tracks, and it opened me up for more collaborations with other artists.
And then eventually that Live+MPD32 setup turned into an Analog Rytm which has proven to be my favorite Elektron for all-in-one compositions. And I could still incorporate it with my DAW.
So there is a definite workflow lineage I had been chasing since my initial success with the MPC. And in that chase I’ve come to realize a few things:
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For getting the “all in one” vibe out of a box, sample playback is key. You can sample anything. It opens up the world of sounds. Resampling, if available, will allow you to go even further, but you can still work without it.
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It’s all about FX. Rytm/MD/OT all have solid enough FX to get an entire track done without accompaniment. And unlike a single analog drum machine (909/Drumatix/Tanzbar), the added FX and especially compression goes a long way.
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Limitations are fine. It’s more productive to focus on what they force you to do than what they disallow you from doing.
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Keeping it all on one sequencer still preserves the “all-in-one” mentality during creation. So adding a Nord Drum or Roland TM-2 .wav drum module, sequenced by A4’s 4 CV outs, added drums and even sample playback to a synth with a serious track count limitation for “complete tracks”. A4+TM-2 allowed me to do solid tracks without anything else. It removed some limitations, but not all.