This performance groovebox is a powerful and complex beast. Let’s explore some of its top capabilities
Most electronic musicians are likely to find Polyend’s latest groovebox, Play, significantly more intuitive than the Polish brand’s last instrument – the esoteric, retro-inspired Tracker. Whereas Tracker is based around a numerical sequencer that runs from top to bottom, Play’s sequencer moves from left to right, arranged – at least on a basic level – into eight 16-step tracks. Because of this, any user with a little prior drum machine knowledge can get up and running quickly. That said, those trying to apply standard sequencer fundamentals to Play’s workflow will quickly realise that this isn’t quite as simple a machine as it first appears.
As explained later, Play’s sequencer lets each step be assigned its own sounds and parameters. You can treat Play’s eight sequencer tracks like a classic groovebox, where each houses just one type of sound – kick, snare, clap, etc. There are certainly benefits to this approach; using the function buttons to the right of the interface, each track can be easily edited as a single set of sounds and the 16 variation slots can house fills, breaks and alternative versions of your pattern.
However, there are equally strong arguments for mixing and matching sounds across sequencer lanes. For one thing, this allows for grooves featuring considerably more than just eight samples. What’s more, Play’s excellent Perform mode lets users easily treat selected tracks with quick punch-in effects. By having, say, an assortment of your percussive hits bundled onto a single track, Play lets you easily apply performance effects to just those grouped sounds. Each track can have its own length and beat division too, making for a quick way to build polyrhythms and evolving patterns.
As you can see, there’s a lot you can do with Play’s sequencer, and Polyend have thrown in tools to make it easy to get creative. Play is an incredibly handy external sequencer too. By hitting the Audio/ MIDI button we can exploit many of these features to create elaborate patterns for the internal sampled sounds and your favourite MIDI gear simultaneously. It’s a lot to take in! Let’s explore some quick tips to get up to speed…
9 ways to get more from Play
1 Sequencing with Play isn’t quite the same as using a standard track-focused groovebox. With a classic groovebox such as, for example, a 909, each sequencer track relates to a specific sound – kick, snare, clap, etc – and making any parameter changes, such as altering the tuning or decay, alters the sound across all steps of that track.
With Play, samples, triggers and parameter settings are applied individually to each step across the 8x16 sequencer grid. This means that multiple different sounds can be placed on any horizontal ‘track’ – acombination of kicks, b
