I know the question wasn’t for me, but I’ll take it anyway since I’m a big fan of it, as well.
The pattern, scene and project system is great. Like an Elektron sequencer, you can have tracks with different speeds and lengths. But the Circuit does one better because each track’s patterns are independent. So they can each be cued and even chained on their own. You do direct jumping between patterns on a per track basis, as well. It’s very cool.
You can also take little snapshots of your arrangements and save them as scenes and then use those to launch all of the patterns in that scene at once. And scenes themselves can be chained together. 8 patterns per track goes a long way with this system.
Like circuitghost was alluding to the only downside here is that you don’t have the option to just use the scenes to cue up each track’s patterns. So they won’t just run in parallel. This is something that I’d love to see added as an option in a new firmware. I would also love to be able to do direct jumping between scenes. Both of those seem like things you should be able to do.
On the pattern level you can also do a version of parameter locking. You even get trig preview. This is a little clunkier than parameter locking on an Elektron sequencer, especially since there’s no screen to see exact values. But it’s kind of a wash in my book just because traditional motion sequencing is a lot more straightforward on the Circuit. If I want to record myself moving the filter around on my Digitakt, I can do it. But if I want to get rid of it I’m going to be deleting a bunch of yellow trigs.
My one big gripe with the sequencer is that there aren’t enough microsteps. It works out to 24 ppqn. I wish that Novation could at least double that and or let us have swing per track like on the Models.
But finally, the projects are cool too but not quite as cool as they could be. You can directly jump from one project to another. You can also cue one project after another. The only problem with this is that, at least on the Rhythm, you can hear the transition. If they could tighten that up then it could be used for all sorts of things. I’d also like the option to have the projects just retain their original tempo instead of having them match when you move between them. And it feels like you should be able to chain them.
Another thing that’s really great about using the sequencer is the interface. On the Rhythm, you’ll have two rows up top that represent steps in the sequencer and the bottom two rows are either your samples, sample slices, or notes on a keyboard. It’s just a great system. And if Elektron ever makes a Digitakt mk2, I hope they take this. It makes it a lot easier to program melodies or lock samples to steps.
Novation makes the best sequencers.
