Model:Cycles Review // The Pros and Cons

I knew I shouldn't have gone to that event so I went to the elektron event the other day at perfect circuit for the release party of this and I knew I shouldn't have gone because I knew I would be walking away with one of these and sure enough here we are three days later a little over 12 hours invested into this thing I kind of wanted to just you know share my initial impressions thoughts pros and cons whether this is for you or not and I guess kind of some different mindsets of how you can approach this and maybe find a way for it to fit into your studio setup and yeah without further ado let's just go ahead and dive into it going for clarity yeah I did buy this full price it wasn't given to me or anything like that bought it no discount whatsoever so it's fully mine and yeah all right so let's start with the good and we'll get to the bad later by for starters I definitely think Elektron nailed it when it came to utilizing the space on the model cycles you know my tracks are always here my step sequencer is always here I got my dedicated controls always here you know it's just having all this dedicated control ready to go as a major plus for me because I know exactly what knob is gonna do what at all times for example well I mean I guess these four knobs are macro knobs but essentially they kind of tried to do the same thing when it comes to each engine for example the contour knob for the most part is a filter II type sound and most of the time when I'm playing live I'm just gonna be filtering chords and that's exactly what this thing does in most of the cases it's kind of the controls the modulation amount whether it's on an envelope or not and these two being your modulators this being your carrier and this is just telling these two how much of this goes to that and in what way so the contour not no matter what engine you're on pretty much always there sweeps always their pitches always there they're all they're all dedicated there's no paging around and it might be a little bit of a watered down version of the way you would program another electron device but to me it's a big welcome change I like having the immediacy another way that they've really utilized space very smart is the step sequencer so when you select a track actually let me see if out this even has any audio cool so when you select a track let's go to a blank pattern we'll go to ten sure and you hit record this is now entering in steps in the step sequencer right but if I'm out of record this is playing that same sound grammatically right so and if I hit record and play I can just easily enter in those notes right away so being able to have the chromatic mode always on is super cool because unlike the big attack you have to do like a button combo as with most even the octave track it does have a lot more modes but at least there's one there by default instead of just track trigger so I love the selecting the track triggers the track and you can also use that to play it's very smart I enjoy that a lot and I hope that they continue this kind of mentality I guess but with that being said sure these are playing things chromatically but maybe there's a different way of doing this but as of right now i haven't found what the octave up or down button is so when you have again like a track selected these chords if I want to go lower than this I just have to actually tune the chord lower by an octave -12 if you hold down shift and turn it'll it'll go in semi tones as opposed to these weird like point 9.8 kind of things so now I can go lower and access those lower notes so that's kind of a bummer but it kind of brings me to my next point which is it's MIDI implementation which is a big plus I think the ability to just plug in a MIDI controller and you can have access to minus 24 up to plus 24 or down two octaves up two octaves on any given track that you have selected and just plug it in boom boom you're doing this thing you're playing it's awesome so it's not necessarily I think it's just the limitation of having the 16 steps being your chromatic keyboard and not being able to have an octave up and down button so if I'm down here playing some low bass notes and I want to play some high notes I would have to pitch it up but then my low bass notes are now pitched up does that make sense it kind of sucks but I guess that's kind of shadowing over that the pro of what I wanted to mention which is it's MIDI implementation and just the ability to plug in an external MIDI controller and play the engines themselves that's really cool and another thing is when you're recording in you actually have quantize or unwanted recording and what's cool about that actually is you have global quantize you have a specific track quantize and it's not just on or off it's actually a fine detailed amount from 0 to 127 so you can kind of fine tune and dial in how much exactly how much quantization you want on that track or globally so it's not just on or off it's locked on or not so you can kind of play something a little off and just barely put it on and still on MIDI implementation the MIDI out you can also utilize one of the tracks to just send MIDI data out to a synthesizer but I guess the downside there is it's only monophonic unlike all the other sequencers that electron have which are like a weird pseudo poly 4 note para phonics sequencer they're kind of funky where the chord cuts off that that's a video for a different time this is just mono one note at a time and speaking of the other electron devices I definitely think I mean for the lack of a better term this is like a watered down version of those but it's the perfect stepping stone into the electron workflow because you don't get all the craziness that you do on a lot of their other devices but you get a ton especially for the price point and it's really flexible and it keeps things interesting and it's a great kind of like you know you're not drinking from the fire hose it's just here's a little sip of what electron can do if you like this you're definitely gonna like the D T or the D ketone or maybe the octatrack that one's a little more heady and weird and crazy but this is definitely a good stepping stone I definitely think they nailed it for the price point and without the cannibalization of their other products another thing that I never really took advantage of on the other electron boxes which they have and this one has it as well is the ability that in the scale function area you can actually have each track on its own step length so I can oh and you can even divide the tempo of that step length so here let's put this to practice I'm gonna go let's go back I'll select our kick get a little more distortion cool I'll say kick sure I'll go down to maybe 110 all right cool so if I select our chord let's go [Music] sure so now we got chromatic right [Music] so say I wanted to add that right but that's two bars sure I can go to bars if I wanted but what I've been enjoying doing is setting our pattern settings to track mode length 16 steps just keeping it a bar but dividing the scale of it by half so effectively giving us two bars within this one bar view but it doesn't just effectively make one bar eight steps because I can record unquantifiable be back yes back back back so now if I press play it's moving a lot slower right [Music] so there's quantized on there right no there isn't [Music] dan I guess I just played it super on cool but you see what I'm saying like if this was fully locked on maybe I didn't play as much of a variation as I would have hoped but essentially what I'm trying to get at is you can have a lot more information packed on to a tracks sequencer then you would normally expect even when it comes down to 64 steps you divide that by two you have 128 and it's just you still have all the information it doesn't shorten up the resolution that's the word I'm looking for it doesn't shorten up the resolution of what the scale or the sequence is quantized to because it has really good unquantified okay I think that made sense oh and another fun thing that goes along with the kind of settings per track is the swing the swing is actually per track but of course if you hold down control all you can control all the swing of all the tracks and the swing is pretty good trust me I love Swing I pushed the pcs beyond beyond recognition when it comes to swing and I'm totally down with the swing on the model cycles okay so quick recap on the pros it was kind of just you know dedicated controls it's all immediate the sequencers really good you get a lot of the electrons sequencing power and capabilities and creativity at a really really relatively affordable price point you got the cool chromatic mode you got the conditional trig so you got swing per track a lot of settings per track cool sounds it's awesome but there are some cons for example the sounds they could be a little same Z this is definitely not an FM synthesizer that's not its original intention it's an FM drum machine which I think it nails that pretty well it reminds me a lot of the old rollin boxes that kind of just kept you in a sweet spot it's kind of why the 303 is so good because it's not a flexible synth in any way shape or form it's just the same sound over and over and over again but it does that sound really well same with the Juno 106 you could get some movement and some mileage out of it but it's still a Juno it doesn't really get too far out of the realm so with this and I guess the way s designed this from electron is you know trying to scale down the vastness and endlessness of FM synthesis and put it down into what four controls can you use for a specific sound and to their credit when you go and you select a kick no matter how far you use change the kick it's pretty much always gonna sound like a kick same with the snare snares always you know so the most part gonna sound like a snare so you do get different sounds out of it up to six different engines hopefully they add more but they can get a little old kind of quick and there's not that much modulation which is another con which is that there's only one LFO thank God it's per track but still there's only one LFO which kind of blows so there's not a lot of modulation that's going on within the model cycles sure the contour can act as the envelope amount and envelope decay of the modulation to the carrier which does some fun modulation I guess this is kind of a pro when it comes to the LFOs if you go and you look at the wave shapes you have envelope an envelope is just going to be a simple attack decay envelope based off of the trigger of that track and it can be sent to any of the destinations that you would normally expect and what's cool it's kind of clever actually is the multiplier and the LFO speed act as the envelopes decay time so a slower LFO speed means the decay is going to fall a little slower and changing up the way the modulation works so I end up using the envelope wave shape of the LFO way more than I do LFOs unless of course I'm trying to get some warbly effect on the pitch of some chords or something like that oh and another downer for me was the effects they are global effects they're not per track either and what the what I mean by this is here we'll go to another blank pattern cool so kick let's let's listen to some of the the presets Jesus there's one on here I like that's the one so oh you know it's really quick let's that's really back a bit speaking of the sounds kind of being the same maybe this is maybe I'm wrong I'm thinking this but when you go and look at the presets let's go to our claps there's seven preset claps let's go to our see why I'm guessing cymbals there's eleven effects thirty-four okay it's not too bad hi-hat 61 percussion sounds 32 rim shots 7 you know so it's Nerdrum 62 there's some presets but some of them are clearly like I don't know how many rim shots you can make if you can if they only put in a couple synth sounds though look at that there's 205 that's a good amount and that'll be yeah I'll check I'll chat about that in a second so let's go back to our kick drum we'll just find a cool we'll do this one and I'll say kick kick kick kick tempo will do 105 snare let's go function snare back let's do a clap cool golf clap sweet so clap will do here and there why do I not hear my clap oh cool right so say we wanted to send this to the reverb maybe a little bigger cool now let's add a hi-hat oh this is actually kind of cool so we'll go to the quantize weird quantize is off but it added quantize anyway oh there it is so hear how it was quantize for a second that was kind of funky caught a bug on camera but what's cool is if you have quantize on and you recorded in it just applies quantize to the MIDI notes but it doesn't actually report them onto the grid quantize so you can still take quantize off after you've recorded it and have what you originally played so I thought that was kind of a cool plus but back to the point at hand which is say we want to send us hi-hat to the reverb also oh but I don't want the reverb to be as crazy on the hi-hat you see there there goes the reverb of the snare with it so these are global both the reverb and the decay and these are just sins so the the effects happen after the sound has been generated and when you're on each track and you're applying these two parameters you're just basically saying how much of track 3 am i sending to the delay aka delay send or reverb sent you're not shaping up the reverb for just that track you're just sending it to the reverb that has these big global settings and I guess that kinda brings me onto another con which is I wish I just had more controls over the effects you just have reverb size and reverb tone I wish I had like a pre delay maybe a shimmer or a stereo width same with the delay you only got delay time and delay feedback there's no ping-pong and the delay time is always locked to the tempo sure you can do 57 out of 64 or something weird but I don't know it just doesn't doesn't go as fast as I want it to or as slow as I wanted to and to their defense I mean most of the group boxes at this price point act in the very same way you have one a fact or two effects and one LFO and they just kind of act globally for the entire thing you know the typical just throw an overdrive on there and just crank it kind of thing but I mean that doesn't mean it it doesn't suck and I'm speaking of things that doesn't suck I guess the pads are okay they're not you know analog rhythm marked one bad but they're also not MPC good maybe I'm still just getting used to them but they're velocity-sensitive and once you kind of get used to him I don't know if they need like a break-in period or something they're pretty good but a couple times I would play something I'd be like this sounds nothing like what I play it other times I wouldn't even realized I was using velocity-sensitive pads because they sounded exactly like the way I played it in so I've had good and bad experiences with the pads all right and this next one's kind of a con and sort of a pro at the same time and it's super firstworldproblems but it's that the audio over USB is just a stereo mix left and right two channels of what the master output is I get it it's 300 bucks what do you expect the fact that he even has audio over USB major plus it's the future especially at this price point again that's super cool I just wish you had a bit more control over the sound like at least four tracks or something like that and yeah oh well but my last kind of con I guess it can also be a pro which is why I saved it for the end is that the mutes are global so what this means is if I go and I select this pattern please don't be embarrassing okay cool I'm down with this track [Music] so we got this track right say I'm used to kick and all those and I just leave the bass line and the chords and if I switch to another pattern all those are still muted right so those mutes are Global they're not per pattern this can be a pro and a con depending on how you like to produce music when I'm playing live this is a major Pro because I always have my kick clap or snare clothes to add open hat synthy stuff usually cynthy poly stuff here and bass stuff here so I know if I mute all this and I switch over to this track I know all my kicks and stuff are still gonna be muted so that's that's awesome that's great totally down with that but in a studio that can be kind of annoying because the way I also like to produce music especially when I'm trying to lay out a song is I'll just go and I'll copy this whole pattern and I'll paste it across a bunch of different patterns and then I'll be like okay cool for the beginning of the song will have no kick will have no clap the next part will do no clap no kick no hats but bring in the synth parts the next part will bring in everything but I can't do that up I can't do that on this device because the mutes are just they don't live within the pattern they just are they're on or off but at the same time when I'm gonna be arranging on this I'm probably just gonna record you know left and right the six tracks just one by one into Ableton Live and just do my arranging in there so again pro and con mutes are global kind of a con at times kind of a pro at times okay so now with those out of the way I kind of wanted to transition over into basically different mindsets and perspectives of how to view the model cycles and this can vary depending on whether you're a pro or beginner or wherever you are right whatever you might need this to be as well as things I wish this would have had and maybe they can come in updates I know that stuff can be difficult but um before we do that I do want to give a quick shout out to today's video sponsored Skillshare in case you're not familiar Skillshare is an online platform they have a ton of classes on creativity fine our web design you name it they probably have it I do a lot of the music classes I know young gurus got mixing and mastering on there which is really cool as well as the one I've really been taking advantage of which is mark to Heidi's classes on learning the piano I know I mentioned this last time but being able to just walk up to a keyboard and this could be the most novice thing to say walking up to a piano looking at the keys and actually understanding what is going on and then wondering hmm I want to play a moody chord and you play a moody chord and I want to play a happy chord oh I'm playing a happy chord that to me I know it sounds so like beginner but that's exactly where I'm at with learning the piano but now being able to actually take ideas that I have inside my head and apply them and make music from them has been the best gift I could have given myself and yeah since Skillshare is sponsoring this video the first 500 of my subscribers to use the link down in the description below will get two months of the skill share of Premium Membership for free okay so you know what I would have wished I saw on the model cycles is you know how these are chromatic right I wish there was a way to switch up the pads to be 16 levels of velocity yeah I know that that's our velocity sensitive but it would be nice to have like a 16 levels version of the velocity maybe even decay just to kind of add a little bit more you know predictability and predictable dynamics and predictable variation to your track so you can just play you know if you have a open hat this one is now closed and it gradually gets more and more open because the decay is opening up this is how a lot of the NPC's work most of them and same with the velocity so it's just an easy way to kind of play some cool rhythms but with the same sound and it just kind of gives the illusion of are actually I don't know if it's an illusion because you're not seeing it does that still apply of ear illusion yeah it gives the ear illusion that there's more stuff going on when there really isn't that much so wish there was another way of having this be something else besides just chromatic this other one I mentioned it earlier just a little bit more come roll over the effects I mean reverb size reverb tone and their global delay time delay feedback that's the most basic of effects and I know a lot of group boxes at this price point act that way but we could push it we can push the envelope a little bit right oh and this last one is probably way harder to implement than I'm hoping I hope it's way easier and I know it's probably never going to happen but do you have headphones out and then left and right out I wish because you have an independent headphone level or you have a control over what's the percentage of the master volume going out of the headphone output I wish that you can set this up to be effectively for mono output so it'd be headphone heart left is one headphone heart right is to master left is three master right is four and you can just go into each track and pan it and it would give you four outputs that way it'll maybe you know save you a few minutes when recording your track I don't know electron feel free to take that one I won't send you an invoice for that idea it could be cool I'd really appreciate it but you know that's probably not going to happen alright so the golden question is this for you or not that again just is such a broad question and it really depends on you and the way you like to produce music and what your ultimate intention is because in the short time that I've been using this I've been having a crap ton of fun and for 300 bucks I immediately was sold on an FM drum machine because I thought about it I have the N bass 11 that I'm borrowing from a friend right now I was thinking about getting one but it's 300 bucks and it just does kicks no MIDI sequencer or anything like that or no additional sounds sure it's an all analog made by show MOX and it sounds absolutely massive but at the same price point you can get this which has audio over USB and then that got me thinking well what I paid 300 bucks for a cool FM chord generator with audio over USB probably oh and it comes with a sequencer cool oh and it comes with five other tracks even better or using this for just basis I used to I had at dx7 for one patch and I know sounds so dumb because it was I could have just sampled it which I did by the way I have it on all my own pcs and my ticky tack sampled that same base patch but on here you can do that and with have you seen that dx7 they're so heavy and massive this is so small and again Audio over USB that I think is really really cool so to me being able to just have an FM drum generator and FM bass generator afm chord generator and tones and whatnot with the audio over USB for 300 bucks I thought that was a steal I was like for for sure I will do this I'll just use dude those lead lights on here maybe I'll do the main chord progression on here but that's just kind of my mentality that I can just plop this into my studio and use it the way it is and that was my initial intention for getting this thing but quickly after using it I realized it's so much more than just that so if you're just starting off and need a simple thing to mess around with I don't think you could really beat this because again the audio over USB you don't a lot of people don't realize when they go into buying synthesizers drum machines it requires a lot more than what is actually in the box for example you don't have audio cables you're gonna need audio cables you're gonna need an audio interface you're gonna need to figure out how to use that this is like turn it on plug the USB end download the thing on the website and you're good to go you don't even need an interface to begin with so this is a great jumping-off starting point and even if you're a traveling musician to be able to have all this flexibility on the road and then take it home and finish up the track they're pretty dope or me who has a ton of stuff I don't really have an FM II type do I know linear but not really I used to have the TX 802 but that's up for sale I don't really have a FM e type of thing oh I have a dinky tone oh crap yeah I don't use the diggy tone that much because it's just there's so much going on in there at times and again to speak to this thing's benefit because it's so stripped down and chosen down into these specific sounds I enjoy it more than the dig II don't know hate there's just the way I feel but yeah so I don't know I think it's a good buy I really like it sure has a couple cons maybe it could be fixed with firmware we know how electron is with that so yeah I don't know thanks for hanging I hope you found this video helpful I've been having to turn a fun on this so that's exactly what I'm gonna do now if you want to support the channel feel free to check out some merch or you know like and subscribe super cool but you know you hanging out here is more than enough and yeah feel free to kick it I'm gonna just start jamming you already know the drill should to love share the knowledge knowledge is power peace blink pattern blink pattern kick kick [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ricky Tinez

Views: 219,218

Keywords: ricky tinez, enrique martinez, elektron model cycles, model:cycles, model cycles elektron, model cycles review, model cycles jam, elektron model samples jam, pros and cons, elektron, elektron sequencer, which elektron to get, elektron jam, dawless jam, elektron model cycles tutorial, model:cycles elektron

Id: j4wZLebtuCE

Length: 33min 26sec (2006 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020