Elektron Model:Cycles Review - FM Groovebox - SonicLAB Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- Model:Cycles is a six voice FM Groovebox which uses the concept of machines, like many Elektron instruments, with the focus on FM synthesis. The sequencer follows the Elektron concept of parameter locking - which they have pioneered and made extremely usable - with each step (up to 64) being an independent state or snapshot.
Edd Butterworth takes a look for us.
#soniclab #elektron #modelcycles
Frozen Reverbs Racks for Live: bit.ly/freezema...
Subscribe to Sonicstate on TH-cam for new content!
bit.ly/SonicYTSub
Watch Sonicstate's Exclusive Series:
Sonic LAB: bit.ly/SonicLab
Meet The Makers: bit.ly/SonicMakers
Sonicstate Performances: bit.ly/SonicPer...
Sonic TALK Podcast: bit.ly/SonicTalk
NAMM 2020: bit.ly/NAMM20
Website: www.sonicstate.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com...
Facebook: / wwwsonicstate
Instagram: / sonicstateuk
Podcast/iTunes: goo.gl/4uOFA5
It's a pretty rad little machine. Though I owned the obviously comparative Digitone, I took a chance on the M:C anyways and have enjoyed it even more than I thought I would. It has its own vibe and character and there's definitely something to be said for an Elektron with so much immediacy. It's a worthy addition to the Elektron line.
I love that the volume knob has a distortion effect on very high settings. Acts as a nice mix glue - much like a very colouring bus compressor.
The reverb I personally find quite lacking. It really needs some modulation to sound better. One way to get around that is to use the LFO for some very slight vibrato on the sounds that go to the reverb. Then it sounds way more lush and less metallic.
Love the way that box sounds with the de tuning and harmonizing. Elektron always brings out something solid you can’t go wrong with their sequencer!!!! I wouldn’t call it a center piece but it’s capable of making a full track by itself or being a nice part of your production ensemble!!!
Great review/Demo!!! I got my M:C about a month ago and have been playing with it non-stop. FYI you can alter the LFO destination and modulation by holding the LFO button and turing the parameter knob. You can even do this while a sequence is running. Great way to mangle a track and then hit "Reload PTN" to go back to normal. Thanks for telling me you can parameter lock the LFO destination and modulation depth! I had no idea!!! Also thanks for including the velocity pads including how you can tie the velocity to a parameter modulation. I can't tell you how many tutorials i've seen of the M:C that did not include this and it's the selling point for me!
This is in reference to around the 11:45 mark where you say the knob "reverts to the original control" it does not do this if you hold the LFO button
Wow that jam at the outro is wicked!!!
I never bought the Model:Cycles, though it is obviously a nice little machine. I went for the Model:Samples as it's more what I wanted, and it is truly fabulous. I've got the old Akai S3000 as a sampler which I used for years, but obviously they're as clumsy as hell nowadays for manipulating anything (I tend to use it as a DAC for my hifi now).
SO the Model:Samples I bought just to offer something simple to bang stuff together in for ideas. I was wrong, it's much better than that. It's truly wonderful. It's a damned breeze to use, and the sound quality is stellar, which belies it's price.
The onyl quibble I have about this, which applies to a lot of Elektron stuff is that they have hidden menus and it can be weird to try and navigate menus, at times feeling unintuitive.
Which is a shame, because in many other aspects, it's really intuitive.
Best review of it I’ve seen to date. Explains very succinctly the limitations
I just bought mine today, instant love. My favorite elektron box for immediacy, super intuitive
Shame on me for thinking ‘ohh it’s not Nick’. Great review thanks 😀
No shame in that. No offense to this guy, but by comparison to a Nick Batt review, this is like watching paint dry. ;) Cheers!
This guy knows his stuff but, it's not Nick...
Great review, thanks a lot! Would love to see a follow up with a small making-of!
I'm a guitarist and bought this as my first synth thing. Originally just wanted a drum machine, but I get absolutely lost in this little box.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
@@grandtheftautocj It's pretty fun.
@@Sunflowrrunner Sounds like you're getting converted! ;O)
It'd be fun to route this fun box through a guitar fx pedal
The sounds on show were much nicer than on other demos.
Easily the best all around demo!
Does it work straight out of the box? Or do you have to run it through a PC?
You can plugin your headphones with a 1/4 inch Jack and jam straight away
I thought that more settings and tonal possibilities were better, but ... not for me. More instant approah and a simple workflow allow me to focus on the most important thing - having fun with the music. That's why I love my Monologue, POKO! and TD-3. That's why I replaced my Novation Mono Station with this little electron guy. Makeing music is not all about features.
if i may bit of advice on the voice track. it is bit on a less exciting side. it would benefit from proper compressor and eq. its very hard for me to follow when is like this. otherwise nice review
This. Your voice is very subdued and hard to focus on.
Really nice review!!
I own one of these beautiful machines and I'm curious, as I really love your jam, how do you make the sounds retrig on their own at 8:23? It doesn't seem like a chance parameter, really sounds like you had a 128 step progression here... Any tips on that? Thanks very much!
it was retrigs, the patterns on each of the tracks are at different lengths so that could be whats confusin ya ;-) to be honest this patch was a bit of a happy accident. My initial idea was to see if I could make gamelan sounding percussion on the cycles and it wasn't far off I guess... the only thing is that obviously I didn't have the tuning scales that they use in gamelan. So I had to hook the device up to a tuner and manually tune notes as close as I could get to the gamelan scale...
@@eddbutterworth5377thanks for the reply! I was actually surprised because the trigs didn't happen before in the jam!!
Nice work with those sounds! But I don't understand why you had to tune the sounds of you can play it chromatically on the keyboard... I'll do some research!
@Edd Butterworth well it's a success! Inspired me to do my latest jam on TH-cam, and your last jam on the video is something else really, I'll definitely try to get closer to this for my next one. Thanks for taking the time to answer me!
Can you control other synths and daws with its sequencer via MIDI (I mean sending MIDI notes not only MIDI clock) like with Electribe 2 and Novation Circuit? Thanks
Yes
That's exactly what he does in the video so... Yes. :)
Nice sounding groove box! Thanks for the demo
I'd love to have this. Sounds great!
Thanks for the midi out check box tip...I was about to start ripping my hair out! Great review btw
Top demo man! I love this thing... Regarding the bit @ 10:45, you can hold the LFO button then twiddle the parameter you want it to control... Bingo 👍
I shoulda probably have known that... 😬😁
Nice overview. Can you set the step length to odd time signatures (7/8 etc.) or is it only multiples of 16? I'm trying to figure this out before I buy it.
Yes
Just ordered today. This is handy. Cheers
Yes that was an extremely good review. Thank you.
Good review - I think - but the voice is mixed very low it’s hard to hear at times.
I heard every word and I'm watching on my phone. It might be your setup?
So many wonderful and cheap drum machine in this world 👍
tops review and tunes!
Great demo Ed! The Model Cycles makes some very cool sounds.
great review!
Hello Butterworth! Liked the review with nice examples. ( It may not be well known, but Electribe EMX has similar "chord" synthesis features as well as ROMpler voices. The E2 has a fair amount of FM synthesis elements among others. ) I keep thinking this FM engine could have run with the sample engine on the similar hardware instead of either / or.
A hybrid sample/FM machine would be ace but with the emphasis on hands-on controls it would either be much larger or would have loads of shift functions.
@@Claidheambmor since they have the same knobs, each voice could be a set as a Sample or an FM. They did it with Deluge!
Does it monitor my increasing blood pressure too?
This comment cracked me up, thanks!!
Love the sound but damn is it ugly
It looks like old hospital kit. Love it
Well you’re meant to listen to it not fuck it 🤣
Early 80's Amstrad -esque, in fact !! 🤣👍
It really is tho, good thing we don’t purchase based on looks. Hopefully styleflip will make some skins for it
better than roland aira series, that things are really ugly
Great demo. Explained clearly
Fuck, you are so quick on your moves that I cant be shure is it a bird or is it an airplaine?
Btw, the class compliant usb is totally broken, especially when using on iOS.they have known this since modal:sample, there are posts on forums, tickets open with electron, but they don’t care and make zero effort to fix. So if you want or need the advertised usb audio, you’re SOL.
Worked instantaneously on my Android phone.
Thanks for the warning. I use my iPad a lot and was considering some hardware to interface with apeMatix or BeatMaker
Anybody know if the recent firmware updates on the Digi*s actually works with iOS?
Is that something you’ve experienced personally? I haven’t had any issues using my iPad to sequence and control parameters on my cycles, nor with recording the cycles into my iPad via usb.
@@wullybud yes. As well as others. Look at the bug report forum on Elektrons site. I provided them with video showing the issue as well as enough root cause analysis that now, many months later they should have fixed it. Other reported the issue with pc as well. It appears to have to do with using midi over USB at same time as audio. Some people argued it was fine for them, but after time (like 15 minutes) the audio would cut out. If people that have recently bought units are for sure, 100% not having an issue, I wonder if they made a hardware change and screwed early customers. Considering Elektron's recent track record I'd not put it past them.
lovely machine but working with endless encoders is a nightmare. It gives me shivers every time I see the fella in the video turning the knobs around like seven times to simply go from C to E :/
Wish you had explained the ratchet feature and how to achieve this... It appears as a given in your tracks without a reference to it
It’s definitely possible I think it’s through the retrigger option, like func retrigger on a recorded note for ratchet
Yep you just hold down the retrigger button while tapping a main pad. Or you can turn it on via parameter locking on any trig.
Interesting. Maybe a bit too similar to 20 year old grooveboxes for me. Not bad but 🤷🏻♂️
ER-1 on steroids, right?
Can’t think of any 20 year old grooveboxes based upon fm synthesis coupled to an Elektron style sequencer!
Left Mono and yet it sounds like an electribe, especially the er-1. Doesn’t interest me at all.
Boo! - the sequencer alone makes it far more interesting than an ER-1, although nothing against that - it was a really fun little box when it was released.
Each to their own 😀
dat lfo bassline :D nice one!
Still have no idea how it works...
Magic
It sounds good but I like more parameters!
It is very good though
Riuichi Sakomoto-esque
Where's that bold old man?
Lol this came out in February. Gotta love sonic state being 6 months late with their review
Right on! Thank you!
the beginning of dsd-synthesis, or what ? sounds a bit annoying
Can’t deal with these rubber buttons. They just break too easily. My model:samples had to be replaced three times in a one year!
The M:S had one big rubber pad that was updated in future hardware production, so I think they fixed that problem
i've been using mine a year and have no issues.... what are you doing to yours?
Refuse to buy gear with screens that size
Mumble rap?
The narration is too far back in the mix for quite a bit of this. The music needs to get some level reduction when you talk.
Just get the box and bash it’s bloody buttons
@@trevchumby Yeah. That works too.
"Edd?" Who the flip is this Edd? Where's Gaz? I got one of these during lockdown but am already thinking of trading it in/on. There's too much unnecessary and fiddly menu diving (e.g. retrig and LFO settings and patch/project management). The menu-diving for patches and projects is especially odd considering there's a perfectly serviceable system for pattern management (using the track pads and step triggers). It sounds pretty decent (if you're into Grime and minimal electro) but the inconsistent ui pisses me off. Also, will Elektron ever bring out the much-touted "power handle" battery pack for this thing?
You are hard to understand/hear!
Young guys these days have too many options. Better to simplify and focus
Exactly what they said in 1908 when the Ford T was released. LOL :-)
@@MrArpSolina I've got 1000 vst effects and 10 hardware synths. Best music I made was with minimal options. Just trying to help
nathan bell I have to agree. No one really masters anything because we’re always trying to upgrade. It’s like software updating every time I finally have it down.
Lol yep it's a pretty great time to be into synthesizers. I agree with you though...I only have two bits of hardware--an Octatrack and a Prophet Rev2. I have quite a bit of software but dont care so much about mastering that stuff. Mostly use presets and tweak as I need for a production.
Focused on what exactly?
Got to go to Loopop for a decent review ,to much magical waving of hands over the buttons obscuring actions .Wheres Nick
hard to hear voice ....not a good sign.
Absolute apalling design. It might be the ugliest drum mchine ever created. But thanks for the nice demo!
I understand why you would think so but I actually like how it looks. It’s a very utilitarian no frills aesthetic that speaks to its immediacy.
crap machine
Nah
I wholeheartedly disagree. I think it’s brilliant in its simplicity and the funnest Elektron box I’ve ever used. Its limitations make me strive to create new sounds every time I use it.
Simply wrong.
Good band name
Crap comment