I like them but as I have hardly touched my OG POs since buying them, I will pass for now.
@KrisM same here : I still have fun once in a while and the new ones seem to be better on the functionality side. Yet I barely use the POs and they don’t seem to be able to do something else than chiptune… Time to fight the GAS !
I have to say I use the PO-12 a LOT. And I use it in preference to my OP-1, the Drummer in Logic Pro X and our actual fleshware drummer. (In that order - lol)
CB
I also only use the po12. Linking it to my euro is fun. Sq1; monotribe; minilogue; po12 is fun. I enjoy just taking along with me for a day and make music randomly as all the pos were intended. The 14+16 get no use. I should sell them. The 12 can bang out a beat so quickly I’ll always have a use for it. Permanent part of my setups. And also just a fun bit of kit.
All that said I skipped this new round of PO’s I’ll wait for the dust to settle and see what people say. If the arcade and robot are locked to scales again I’ll prolly get the office. Hopefully it’s ability to pitch notes is chromatic or a long range linear. All this remains to be seen. I look forward to everyone discussing the new PO’s and videos. The last ones are always readily available at guitar center so shouldn’t be hard to acquire any new ones in the future. Maybe I should just go buy another po12 lol.
@masterofstuff - your thoughts and reasoning are EXACTLY the same as mine. Right down to avoiding anything which isn’t chromatic and thinking about buying a spare PO-12 “just in case”.
CB
According to this post from Elektronauts forums, the Arcade is “sort of” locked to a diatonic something. While it’s not as flexible as being able to use any scale you can dream of (eg. Messaien’s modes ;)), then use harmonies built off that scale (trying to create a harmony around Messaien mode 4 was an interesting exercise ;)). I think this is enough for me to work with.
it can be transposed to 16 preset keys
dm
em
esus
e
f
g
c/g
e/g sharp
am
c/a
dm/a
d/a
a
b/a
c
d
dm
em
esus
e
f
g
c/g
e/g sharp
am
c/a
dm/a
d/a
a
b/a
c
d
Diatonic=locked to a scale.
I know what diatonic means.
I also know enough music theory to know that “e/g sharp” is not in the key of C Ionian (C major).
Easy now; fuzzy little man peach. Others might not know what diatonic means. was not an attack on your theory knowledge. mine is shit personally. But yes I recognize some none white keys in that selection of notes and chords I.e. not a scale at all. I wish you could assign any chromatic note to each of the sixteen keys. I wanna really JanJamth my pocket calculator. Like live play.
Does transposing to a different key/chord change the notes your able to input, or just the backing chord?
Easy now; fuzzy little man peach. Others might not know what diatonic means. was not an attack on your theory knowledge. mine is shit personally. But yes I recognize some none white keys in that selection of notes and chords I.e. not a scale at all. I wish you could assign any chromatic note to each of the sixteen keys. I wanna really JanJamth my pocket calculator. Like live play.
I wasn’t snapping at you at all. I guess I should have put a smiley or something.
That’s why I said “sort of locked in”, because the choices are limited in some way, but not in as boring a way as I’d feared. They put in an odd chord in there that is not in the diatonic scale. I"m surprised they put in so many slash chord, which to me is a good thing.
@TimeRaveler the chord change always affects both the playable notes and the backing drone.
Keep in mind that on the Arcade the notes have to be dialed-in with the A knob - you can’t play them live on the 16 steps like you would on the Sub / Factory / Robot. That’s a major difference.
I'm not sure the word 'diatonic' is particularly useful to use in the context of notes or chords on the PO devices.
Scales: a scale is 'diatonic' if the semitone intervals are regularly spaced out amongst the tone intervals - as in the standard major and minor scales
Chords: as for notes, describing chords as diatonic or otherwise is only meaningful in the context of a specific key. A chord could be diatonic in one key bot not diatonic in another.
So it's not correct (IMO) to say all the notes in the PO are diatonic, or most of the chords on the PO are diatonic.
Now in terms of what's actually going on with the PO's:
- It appears that the Arcade has a small but useful collection of chords
- Some of the Arcade's chords include, by necessity, sharps/flats
So the questions in my mind are:
- What frequency resolution (continuum, tone, semitone, quarter tone etc) can be used to vary the chords -ie. vary by the same amount each of 3 notes with 2 static intervals between them?
- Can single notes be selected? Are they selected by name? Can they be varied across a frequency continuum? Or at least by semi-tone? If so, then we just have a UI issue rather than one of functionality.
Just a few thoughts. And please allow me to de-select "fellow forum-member feather-ruffling" mode by paying you these smileys...
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
CB
Good explanation, CB. 
After playing around with the Robot, I’d say it’s a great little synth for $60. There’s a lot of complexity available between the separate drum and rhythm tracks, the pattern chaining, and the real-time effects. You’ll notice I didn’t mention the lead though…I find it really awkward to play live melodies on it, and wish they had just made the melody sequenced instead. You can get some great sounds from the synth, but pressing those little buttons feels very stiff. So mostly I’ll just use the Robot for beats. I do wish the drum sounds were a little bass-ier.
I initially thought you could transpose patterns (the same way you can transpose chords on the Arcade) because of what I saw in Cuckoo’s video, but on a second viewing he actually had just done some video editing. You have to manually transpose each note if you copy a pattern, which makes it less usable in a live context. It does make me more interested in the Arcade though.
great post @cloudburst !
Got all three in today. I reached in blind and pulled the Robot out first. Pretty fun so far. I agree with someone above about wishing the kicks had a bit more Umph so to speak. Going to begin recording samples in a few days after getting to know them a bit better and work gives me some time.
How are the drums sounding on the Office???
With regard to getting a bit more oomph from the kicks, does it help to select the kick sound, make sure you’re not in ‘write mode’, and whilst auditioning the kick sound, dial both knobs fully clockwise?
CB
so far i’ve mostly played with the arcade. the soloing/chord funcitonality is boss