Tag: electronic music

Roland Aira P-6 Sampler Review: Great Sound, Complicated Interface

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In addition to crunching your samples into digital oblivion, you can process them with a ton of different effects like reverb, delay, a multi-mode filter, and most importantly, a vinyl simulator for that true 404 flavor. The six sample pads across the front aren’t velocity-sensitive, but they’re large and responsive enough to do some basic finger drumming.

Unfortunately, chopping a sample spreads it across the smaller keyboard on the bottom, rather than the larger sample pads. Those keys are tiny, mushy, and unpleasant to play. Still, if you want something small for tossing together lo-fi or boom-bap beats on the go, the P-6 isn’t a bad choice.

A Tiny Tool Kit

When building a beat, you’ve got quite a lot of tools at your disposal. You can place steps manually using the step sequencer, or play them in live to keep things off the grid. You’ve got 64 steps to work with, plus probability, sub-steps, micro-timing, and motion recording to add complexity and variety.

Then, once your loop is ready, you can use a handful of effects to create on-the-fly builds, breakdowns, and fills. Most notably there are Scatter, Step Loop, and the DJFX Looper borrowed from the SP-404.

Scatter is divisive, to say the least. It adds stutter and glitch effects based on preprogrammed patterns. It can sound OK when used sparingly and with the right settings, but it is anything but subtle and can turn more complex and melodic beats into unlistenable chaos.

Step Loop simply loops the steps you hold down on the sequencer. It’s a more flexible and interesting take on the sort of beat repeat effects you can find on other devices like the Teenage Engineering PO-133. It’s great for creating live fills and variations while jamming. It’s truly one of my favorite performance features on any piece of music gear, and I’d love to see it on more stuff.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

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November 24, 2024
Burning Man Is Over, but Regional Burns Keep the Party Going Year-Round

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These regionals give out grants for art, though the creations are not as monumental or abundant as at the Big Burn. People do wear fantastic costumes, but more for their own fun, not to get a pic for the ‘gram.

For shelter, people tent camp, stay in yurts, or bring RVs. “It’s a gifting, interactive amusement park for adults,” Levy says of these regionals. “If you want to meet cool people and have interactive experiences and dance, it’s perfect. Because it doesn’t have the challenges.”

Pacific Northwest Burns

Latimer, who lives in the Seattle area, favors SOAK, held over Memorial Day weekend outside Portland in the Tygh Valley for about 2,500 people, and Critical NW outside of Seattle in July for about 1,300 people. The weather for both is usually gorgeous.

This past year, Latimer brought her “typical retired boomer” dad to SOAK to help build the effigy structure for burning. “He was blown away to see that many people of all ages and all walks of life are drawn to burns, which goes against the typical, young, rich, attractive stereotype that’s prevalent on social media.”

At both, it’s easy to walk around and see all the art and meet up with local burners that are active in Seattle and Portland. “You can easily plan multi-camp shenanigans and events ahead of time, which makes it all the more fun,” Latimer says.

On the site for Critical NW, she says, “you literally get to frolic around the forest with your fellow weirdos and not have to deal with cleaning up massive amounts of playa dust once you’re home.”

Element 11

June in Utah

Even though it’s small—about 2,000 attendees—this event has an excellent reputation among burners. “The vibe deserves a standing ovation,” says Candice Snow.

Element 11 is held on Stargazer Ranch, private land that was bought for this purpose by a group of burners, so there are year-round structures, instead of everything being dismantled and burned at the end. “The landscape of Stargazer very closely resembles the conditions of Black Rock City,” Snow says. In fact, there is only one effigy burn, because of the arid, brushy conditions.

Attendees also report that curious current and former Mormons find their way to the festival. “I noticed quite a few are ex-LDS,” says Rowdy. “They tend to let loose their inhibitions.”

“Watching their transformation over the week is kind of magic,” Snow agrees.

There’s less prep to do for the five days of Element 11, though you do need to bring shelter, food, and plenty of hydration. While a bike can add to your experience, you don’t need one to get around.

Fuego Austral

February in Argentina

“I would definitely recommend Fuego Austral to someone who is burnt out from Burning Man,” says Daniel Hugo Miceli, who is based between Buenos Aires and Berlin. “FA is the best of Latin America mixed with a burn—the people are super warm, friendly, and there is plenty of maté, asados [grilled meats], and an overall welcoming atmosphere that starts to feel a bit like a family.”

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September 17, 2024
Elektron Digitakt II Review: The Most Versatile Sampler and Sequencer

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The original Digitakt sampler and sequencer, despite being seven years old, remains an incredibly capable device beloved by many in the music world. So how does the latest model, which looks nearly identical, hold up to the fan favorite?

Under the hood, the Digitakt II is a significant upgrade in almost every way. Unfortunately, it also comes with a significant price increase to $999, from $799. With used Digitakts going for as little as $400, the choice between the two isn’t as clear cut as you’d expect.

I spent a few weeks putting the latest Digitakt through its paces and comparing it to the older model, and ultimately realized the new version is probably not worth the upgrade for my (and many others’) purposes. That said, if you’re a power user who always wants to try the latest and greatest, it’s a fantastic piece of gear.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

Endless Possibilities

Physically, the differences between the first Elektron Digitakt and the new Digitakt II are extremely subtle. The monochrome screen is white instead of yellow. The instrument specific labels under the keys are gone, there are a couple of new buttons, and some labels have changed. Otherwise the two are nearly indistinguishable.

I cannot possibly cover every feature of the original Digitakt. In fact, I’m going to have to gloss over even some of the changes to the newest model. It is an incredibly rich machine that would take tens of thousands of words to comprehensively explain. Instead I’ll be focusing on the most important features and changes.

If there were two major strikes against the original Digitakt it was that it only handled mono samples, and storage was pretty paltry, even by 2017 standards. Personally, I didn’t find the 64 MB of RAM (equaling 14 minutes of mono samples) per project terribly restrictive, but the 1 GB of drive storage did lead to a lot more time wasted actively managing samples. By increasing the RAM to 400 MB (72 minutes of mono or 36 minutes of stereo samples) and the drive to 20 GB on the new model, the storage issue is largely solved.

While having support for stereo samples is nice, I actually find the increased storage to be the main new feature I love. Part of that is down to how I primarily use the Digitakt II, which is as a drum machine. Stereo is just less of a necessity when you’re primarily working with percussion.

The Digitakt II is more than capable of handling melodic parts, and it even comes preloaded with single cycle waveforms so you can play it like a synth. But because the 16 sequencer tracks are monophonic, playing chords requires either using multiple tracks and sequencing the notes individually, or just sampling chords. And even though there are five different “Machines” (Elektron’s term for how a sample is handled, e.g. one-shot, stretch, repitch, etc.) your results will vary greatly depending on the source material.

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September 6, 2024