yeah I think any synth that’s used as basically your only sound source will get eventually get tiring. doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of sounds to find before you get there though. or that you need to sell it on. maybe give it less of a prominent role in your sound/setup and compliment it with something else, like @sabana said.
one thing I like to do with the Perfourmer is approach it one specific way for a track, and then pretty much never do that again. or at least not for a while. you do the same thing for every track and again, it gets tiring. one cool thing I did last year was two similar mono melodies bouncing off of each other, each of a differing sequence length. think one of them was using pendulum mode in the Cirklon, I forget… anyway, then I ran each through a tape-warbly type pedal (I think Shallow Water and Thermae) and hard panned them opposite directions. awesome effect and had fun building a track around it. but now I can’t do it again!
The same thing happened recently with me and I sold my PerFourmer. For so long I was just enjoying its velvety timbres without stretching its abilities and I ended up getting complacent. You know, I kind of wonder if Stimming and Tim Shoebridge got in our heads. Are people suddenly getting bored with their PerFourmers? I’d like to think it has nothing to do with outside influences for me. I wasn’t bored per se. It’s a synth that deserves to be a featured player in one’s setup, and I couldn’t find the right combination to make it that. My best times with it were just dicking around with it and a drum machine, never really making anything significant.
But I totally regret selling it. I miss it. I miss arpeggiating all four of its tracks with the Octratrack. I miss putting it in polyphonic mode and dialing in 4 disparate patches and seeing what happens. I miss its mellifluous velvety basses run through an OTO BAM.
Now they’re not available anywhere. I ended up buying a Mono Lancet '15 from Thomann. Got it today and they didn’t give me a US power adapter, so I can’t even plug it in. Now i’m depressed.
I have watched both videos and I actually liked the Stimming one. Tim Shoebridge, on the other hand? Let’s not go there.
The outside influence that might have something to do with it (for me) is how people in general seem to be using the Perfourmer on their videos, which I’ve watched quite a bit both before and after purchasing it myself. There’s actually one Youtuber who I’ve stopped watching entirely (even his non-Perfourmer videos) cos I was just getting sick of that certain Perfourmer sound… The one that could be described as silky or simple.
This sounds very familiar. When the Perfourmer is doing its thing, in that moment, I don’t really think if that stuff will sound good the next day or if I’ll ever be able to turn it into a proper track. It just sounds velvety and in that moment that’s more than enough.
This is a very good principle, as hard as it might be on any given synth. Would love to hear that “Perfourmer through tape-warbly type pedals” track you did, if it’s online somewhere!
I have rarely if ever really made a track with the Perfourmer but with the individual detuning and panning it has been a very powerful tool to me for pad overdubs and the most interesting moments I’ve had with it have been the ones I’ve found a sweet sound and have played it with a keyboard. The ability to also have the oscs on different octaves is nice in this situation.
I also have noticed the same thing about the Perfourmer, especially when sequenced it sounds the best with subtle modulation, little to no resonance and sadly often when left alone to do its thing. It’s very fun to tweak though.
Trying to raise money for the Syntrx I almost sold mine but eventually decided once again to keep it. I love it too much to sell it. It might be a bit too nice sounding to be super exciting for a long time but it does some things so beautifully it touches my heart.
I have paused making music, was a bit bored of perfourmer too. But, it actually stand in his original box and I will never sell it. I know someday I will enjoy turning it up again.
I think perfourmer is an unique piece, so well made it can live for long time. Keeping it even in a box and you in the future will be grateful.
thanks. I revisited it a little bit ago and… it doesn’t hold up as well as I would’ve liked haha. not the Perfourmer part, that’s great. it’s the rest I’m not happy with. if I get time to cut out a snippet I am happy with from it, I’ll post it. anyway, the benefit of nine-ish months of hindsight has me glad I never posted it!
All good! Nine months is tough, I get it! Would certainly love to hear a snippet of the Perfourmer part if you get some time.
I think my takeaway from the posts in the past two days is that I won’t be selling it until I’m 110% sure I can’t turn any of my Perfourmer stuff into actual songs. As beautiful as it sounds, it needs to go if I’m not being productive with it.
I feel the same. Gorgeous instrument, if they were widely and readily available I would’ve had an easier time selling it. I don’t regret it, but I do wish they were in stock more often.
Been busy with other things so I haven’t had quality time with the Perfourmer since my last post but I have been re-watching some Youtube videos on it and re-listened to the stuff I’ve made with it. Still think I haven’t come up with anything worthwhile with the P4mer (but will try to change that).
The more obvious takeaway is, however, that there’s absolutely no one on Youtube as good on the Perfourmer as Mika Forsling. (Although I think that was pretty much established already.) A key thing, probably, is how he’s got the Juno-60, Prophet 6, Matriarch - and every other synth worth having, to support the Perfourmer. Plus I absolutely love the way he builds tracks (except maybe his recent ventures into eurorack land) - a rare thing on Youtube, and probably the reason to why he doesn’t upload that often.
I agree about Mika. Im getting one next year and have a few ideas what ill ve doing. One thing ive noticed is the importance of Melody. Mika has come up with some great progressions. And very catchy tunes. I think of the Perfourmer as closer to a trad musical instrument than other synths. Yup a bit of music theory goes a long way and its not just for random beeps and boops.
Love Mika too, the way he creates his melodies always with very interesting rhythmic variations is absolutely brilliant! I actually ripped all of his youtube videos to audio so I could listen to them everywhere.
why? apart from round robin the crave does a lot more.
both synths have a single vco, single shared envelope between vca and filter, single lfo per chan. Any FM or cross modulation between vco’s can be done with the semi modular nature of the crave rather than some switch on the perfourma.
if a single voice on your perfourma does more than a crave then I’d love to hear it.
The round robin is a huge part of the Perfourmer magic as is the sound, and from what I’ve heard the Crate really doesn’t sound special at all.
You’d need a mixer after the pile of Crates in order to not lose 2 extra inputs from your sound card. There are inserts for effects on the Vermona, and it has an ADSR instead of the ADS on the Crate. Also more LFO shapes.
The other play modes on the Perfourmer would be tricky to achieve with a midi keyboard and Crates.
Also the Perfourmer has sine, triangle, square and saw waves as the Crate only has saw and square.
I could go on. The main issue to me is the sound.
I must also add that I don’t think its reasonable to think of the Perfourmer in terms of four mono synths bcs the interaction goes way deeper than that. It’s an instrument.
thread title is called " perfourma alternatives" , I give an alternative, which costs less than half. You “lol’d” like it was a daft alternative because it only 90% matched a perfourma and didn’t 100% match.
link multiple craves together with some cables and they’d do a hell of a lot more than a perfourma.
I don’t mean to be rude, sorry if the delivery was blunt. I lol’d lovingly but I can see how things don’t always come across that way online.
My point is that there are no real alternatives if you want that sound and functionality.
I think that the Crate being able to do more is debatable as it falls short on the wave forms to begin with.
Maybe modular would be an option but it’s not for everyone either and the immediacy would suffer a lot, as it would with four Crates.
I had the mk1 in the past.
Today I finally installed PolyMind v2 , a free max4live device for Ableton. Just tested it with a blofeld in multimode for now, but I already know that I´ll never buy a per4mer again. That RoundRobin mode of the Per4mer was my favourite thing and to be honest I was never a fan of the basic synth/filter sound.
So the PolyMind is my personal alternative for the P4M, much more flexible and I can sen the midi channels to different synths/devices
