Polyend Play: My favorite groovebox gets a Piano Roll update :)

[@dallas-cole]

I personally asked for this to their support team.

[@dallas-cole]

I specifically asked them to be able to use fills to play with MIDI channels, and also that it could be really good to add some melodic pattern ideas. The piano roll was an unexpected but very welcomed feature! BTW, I am getting a tilting bug when trying to change the CC ids on a MIDI channel, for example changing the CC Filter Frequency to any other id will tilt the machine in a way I have to force-reset it. I appreciate if you guys can also confirm this.

[@erzet2154]

Polyend team is aware of the cc mapping issues and the fix is almost there.

[@andycordy5190]

You were an obvious choice for Polyend. Your way with samples is both imaginative and instinctive and I can hardly believe the beauty of that mandolin pluck in transposition. I've seen so many videos about the Play and about the update but you have taken a personal view which is somehow more enlightening than any of them. It is entirely positive because I can imagine that a man who has made great music with a 1950's tape recorder and a Japanese toy is not going to gripe about loading times and memory limitations. Thank you for taking it on. Most informative.

[@JohanVandekerckhove]

Looks a lot like the Deluge now. Which is a good thing. It is very intuitive as well.

[@stanvillainy]

If it were battery powered it'd seriously would make it a deluge killer for me tbh. Love this thing, only reason I keep my deluge around these days is for when I'm away from home.

[@XtianApi]

I agree. Don't think it's a deluge killer, but that screen is very nice

[@ifholdscry]

Brilliant video! I couldn't get my head around the piano roll UX, and this totally cleared it up for me. Thanks!

[@crtzmo]

Yeah! Polyend is doing great things. I just bought Tracker (my first piece of musical gear ever), and while totally in over my head, really enjoying learning. Mandolin instrument sounds fantastic, looking forward to experimenting. Thanks David!

[@Snohchild]

the editing style is soooo fricken cool! always love seeing your videos!

[@NoirEtBlancVie]

Super excited for this update! The Play is the only colored square Groovebox I’ve ever truly enjoyed. Thank you for showing how to do it ☺️

[@deastman2]

Awesome update! I haven’t really touched my Play in a long time, but this will definitely rekindle my interest.

[@dreammix9430]

That thing is SOOO COOOOL!! I can just inagine what it can do with it to open up my creativity

[@Soma..]

Just wanted to say i found you’re channel randomly and love everything you have posted! Definitely inspires me to pick up a synth but however I’m pretty timid to begin/ have no idea of were to begin or even pick up because all of it is amazing! Hopefully i break out of that shell. Continue this amazing content!

[@svenkund234]

Polyend Play was the first electronic music gear I got. I would say it is great for beginners, because of its great simple UI. But still has a lot of depth to explore and grow with. But keep in mind it only plays samples and changes them, so if you want to create your own sounds you might need a synth with it.

[@svenkund234]

@amifiii265 yes you can tune a sample to all notes (and on the piano roll with the new update). And you have a lot of different kinds to mangle the sound of the sample (reverb, start/stop, Attack, Decay, ...). Good thing is it comes with a great number of samples, but you still want to add your own with a computer (it can not sample audio directly).

[@Primeiar]

Great video! You might like the Optigan, its a pretty interesting instrument from the early 70's that uses optical discs to play samples along with just being an organ. (And has seen a small resurgence with some of the samples being used in a few modern video game OST's and some bands ect.)

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

I've seen a bunch of websites about the optigan, but I've never seen one in person. Some day, hopefuly

[@FunnyPhisto]

I always loved my Volca Sample, it’s what started the music making bug. You can just sit down with it and it will always inspire you to do something you haven’t thought about. It’s fun but also very very limited. This looks like everything I loved about the Sample. It’s simple yet so much deeper and more complex while maintaining the fun accessibility and immediacy which is really hard to achieve. I said to myself a while ago that I will solely use Ableton and iOS to make music but this device gets me interested in hardware again. Thank you for this video.

[@soniczest1]

Love the creativity as always!

[@jondellar]

Ooh nice. That's going on my list for sure. Thank you for the vid 🎉

[@sebastienbarre]

Thanks, what a great video, and it was fun to try to reproduce it.

[@johniadanza4510]

Thumbed, subbed from before andcenjoyed this vid now too just need one now

[@Dynamic_Flyer]

Really good demo of the PP. very useful! Thanks

[@ultrajayme]

this is exactly what i needed to see. I make a lot of guitar forward music. lots of shoegaze flavor and i'm seeking out a drum machine/sampler box and i think this one checks all the boxes.

[@LouieTaylorMusic]

Awesome video David! I love your clear and fun tutorial style!!!

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

Thanks so much!

[@drindy5166]

DAVID! Absolutely love your vids brother! This one I have been truly waiting for as I have seen this hardware a few times in peoples set ups but had no idea what it was or what it was called. Finally the guessing game is over! Ps. Super happy they reached out to you, as you are the right person to experiment and showcase the gear and it's potential. Can't wait to get my hands on this and incorperate it into my set up. Cheers and much love 👊🧡👍

[@TDRKB]

Hi David, you make this look so easy. I love your approach to sampling. I love this video like all of them Thanks for sharing! Great tune!

[@4CloudySky]

I love your videos, very soothing, entertaining and informative. Keep up the work ❤😊

[@singinwhatimdoin]

This thing seems really useable, and even though I wouldn’t call it inexpensive, it’s less than I was expecting. Love the mando samples.

[@RaskolnikovR]

cool video and thanks for the samples

[@EkimElectro]

Nicely presented vid, and I want a Pollyend Play now please.

[@feintcircles]

I purchased the Play earlier this year and I've never looked back. It is the centerpiece of my setup now and easily replaced 3 other pieces of gear. The one thing I wish it had was the ability to sample onboard. It's straight forward enough to put samples on the SD card, but it'd be great to record with a mic or Line-In. The Play certainly has its quirks but I can't recommend it enough, if it fits into your setup.

[@maxdon2001]

Great video!

[@ParkerRoams]

might have to pick one of these up... always wanted to make music and have some experience with high school band & ok piano skills. LOVE edm and really anything electronic, and have always wanted to get in to making music but theres just sooooo much it's hard to figure out where to start. But this machine looks like it might work for me.

[@svenkund234]

It was my first electronic music gear too and I am very happy with that choice. Like he said in the video: simple to learn but great depth to explore.

[@GrvMUSIC4U]

The editing is 🔥🔥🔥

[@glamball]

Wish it will can bounce multiple tracks (chords) into one track in the near future.

[@soltec6704]

THIS is the problem youtube reviewers and especially with SPONSORED videos. Vloggers are always onto the next review, but they never really test the limits of what the device is capable of. Once a person really starts to work with this device in a serious fashion they will discover serious limitations and ultimately does not live up to the hype. In the case of Polyend Play once you start to build the size of a project, the SAVE operation takes incredibly long. A project with several rows of patterns takes FOREVER to save and open. I have a project with 100 patterns which takes over 45 minutes to save!! I can recreate this issue and so can you David! Try it - go into pattern mode and start copying patterns from one pad to the others. Hold down one pad till it blinks and while holding press another pad to copy it. You will start to notice a increase in waiting for the copy to finish - up to a minute wait when you get up to 36 patterns. Even if you give up the live performance possibilities - forget it with those wait times - even in a production setting this is extremely unacceptable.

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

Yikes! I will definitely have to try that out. My biggest project has 20 patterns and the save time is not bad.

[@soltec6704]

I also have tracks with many variations. After some more digging, copying a pattern creates an entirely new instance of the track and it's variations with no relative link to the original. Could be good to offer both like an option during copy, "link to original?"

[@ElectronisoundsAudio]

Really well done! Subbed! 😁👊

[@virgilsstudio]

Very cool!!!

[@namelespersonxhuman9370]

Очень люблю твои видео. Спасибо

[@SanTeaVee]

This is so cool! Have you ever considered making a video on the Mellotron?

[@Green_Bean_Machine]

7:20 track can be up to 64 steps. *IM SETTING THIS TRACK TO 64*

[@bostich1]

Nice!!!

[@joshc9201]

I would be interested in your view on how something like the Synthstrom Deluge compares to this. I know that they are very different beasts but the piano roll system looks almost identical to deluge.

[@jantuitman]

I have a Deluge. The piano roll system on the Deluge is more a zoomable thing of undetermined length, whereas the Polyend version is 4 pages of 16 steps (probably I assume with a configurable step speed per track, or at least for the whole project). But in the Deluge there is no fixed grid, if you zoom in more, you can express smaller differences in note starting time than if you zoom out more. Also, the Deluge shows note lengths on the grid too, and not just starting points, and you can also edit note lengths directly on the grid by pressing the note with 2 fingers.

[@NoissyChaos]

the soundtrack reminds me so much of a game called "Loop Hero"

[@kmturley1]

Nice...Four Tet vibes!

[@SleepingLionsProductions]

As a musician, the ability to use gear to randomize shit for inspiration is incredibly invaluable. While you can make everything yourself, having the computer make something you never even thought of is really great.

[@SashaL_music]

Yay

[@djcanlas5323]

Great Video, I wish you post the full length music of Hatsune Miku synthesizer you did in that video its very great

[@arkuai]

I need to start making music

[@MathHammer]

The Play is still sort of limiting, even ignoring the fact that it can't sample (record) incoming audio or itself and has no real sample-editing capabilities. We saw one limit in this video, where each of the eight tracks is monophonic and multiple tracks are required to play a chord using a monophonic sample. In some other products, a work-around would be to create chord samples by sampling multiple tracks into one then put the chord samples onto a single track and repurpose the monophonic tracks. However, that is not possible with the Play. There are also some products where a single track can play one sample polyphonically. MIDI tracks on the Play are polyphonic and can play chords, though. If feels to me like the Play started as a Seq V2 then experienced feature creep into what it is now.

[@blossom_rx]

Good video man, keep it up! One question: When it NOW got a piano roll (I realize, the video is a bit older already), how have you been able to make music with it before that update? How could you for example write a melody then?

[@XtianApi]

Feels very much like the deluge

[@jordan_gentry]

I think in the next update Polyend should allow flattening the poly tracks into one, like layers. Or somehow if there was a way to have polytracks but be able to ‘explode’ them, but hardware limitations might not allow it like audio over usb

[@setphaser]

Debating trading in my square pyramid and getting the polyend or the ableton push….

[@manuelgonzales6483]

🎉🥇🏆

[@___aZa___]

everytime i see a video of yours i get the urge to buy Music Hardware. but i have no clue how to make music :D

[@erc.erc.erc.]

This looks incredibly cool. I’m guessing it can act as a midi controller? I’m looking for a sequencer to pair with my microfreak (the built in sequencer doesn’t work with my brain)

[@bricelory9534]

yes! it has 8 tracks for MIDI information, I believe, and those can include chords in individual tracks. It should pair with the Microfreak pretty easily.

[@feintcircles]

The Play works great with my Microfreak!

[@MistyMusicStudio]

Looks sick! So hard to decide between one of these or the tracker mini 🤔

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

I know, right? I've never used the Tracker Mini but it also looks amazing

[@kaitlyn__L]

Personally I think the tracker is more powerful if you want to make custom-length sequences which chain into each other in arbitrary orders. Also if you want to mangle your samples on the device, set custom start and end points for every step, wavetable type scrolling, and so on. It’s built around whole tracks and meticulously listing everything out. The Play by contrast is really based around beats, and an Elektron-ish kind of way of using chance and randomisation to stretch a 16-64step loop into minutes of evolutions on the same concept. It’s more live and hands on, and encourages slight alterations and permutations of a core idea, as a result of its knobs instead of menus with value boxes. And you get 8 tracks per sequence on both, both seem about as easy to lay down simple drum beats and fills very quickly. Both can sequence external MIDI. There’s certainly overlap in basic features and design principles, and I think most would only need one or the other rather than both. So I’d say it boils down to whether you prefer doing things in the moment on knobs or setting everything up perfectly and letting it go. Tracker has some live performance tools but they’re a bit more basic.

[@MistyMusicStudio]

@@kaitlyn__L That is super helpful, thank you! 😁 I have a Syntakt and we’re in love so I’ll go tracker mini with this knowledge lol. The music gameboy calls to meeee

[@herberdth]

The sample is there for decent-sampler, not for Play? Would love it for Play too. Edit: Oh so unzip the decentsampler file, found a samples folder deep inside. Nice!

[@TheRoarer]

Is the tune from the video up anywhere? I'm absolutely loving it.

[@joshharvey7081]

I wish the fifth bar was on the left, it's odd to see it not go to the last bar before restarting.

[@Elijah-fc3ex]

Is it possible to make full songs and sequence in it? or is it more of a beat maker?

[@lanceholland]

How is this different than a deluge?

[@MatthewScheffel]

I see you've looked at the KeyStep Pro; I'd like to ask a question in KSP terms: in the KSP every pattern has its own step size. It can be 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, or triplet. I'd like to use "lanes" in Polyend Play as patterns analogues, kinda. Can different lanes have different step sizes like in the KSP? e: I'm using lane to refer to a horizontal row of trigs (lit/unlit squares)

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

yes!! the lanes can be different lengths and different step lengths so you can have one that is quarter notes and one that is eighth notes, for example

[@MatthewScheffel]

@@DavidHilowitzMusic ⛽

[@sam33256]

ahh this is really beautiful. any chance you could show how you made that synth sound on the polyend play in the beginning? :)

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

It's actually just a one-note sample from the Minifreak: www.dropbox.com/t/Mm2miqFbfPktML5E

[@sam33256]

@@DavidHilowitzMusic ahh thank you so much! gonna play with it on my play :-)

[@jukkauh]

How do you do triplets? How do you do arbitrary length or arbitrarily positioned notes? How do you do simultaneous loop lengths that aren't multiples of 16? How about piano roll sequences that aren't loops, but are fired off at different times in the song via an arranger? And in 2023 you still can only play 16 notes? This update leaves an awful lot to be desired. I have a lot of issues with the Deluge, but this is a rather poor imitation of it.

[@herberdth]

Set track length to 24, Track speed to 3/2. Move/Micromove. You can select any track-length from 1-64 by turning the Track Length knob. Sequences could be Variations which you trigger in the Perform mode, don't know any external midi triggers for that. Not limited to 16 you can play 1-64 notes per track, with 16 variations per track "lane".

[@greghunter448]

Can the play be used with ableton drum racks?

[@chrismills2012]

how do you download the update for that device?

[@TPLS2]

I love tech like this but it is sad to see so many awesome synths are out of the range price wise for a lot of people.

[@antkn33]

Can you export the finished product either midi or audio tracks?

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

You can export audio-both the master and the individual stems. Not sure about MIDI?

[@dlozanothornton]

Where did you get that mandolin? I have a weird feeling it used to be mine.

[@collinoverbaugh5870]

this thing is just a really big Pocket Operator

[@mcmoozack]

:)

[@FGSRFunLol]

Super basic question, but can you link multiple patterns into a longer song?

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

Yes! It does pattern chaining.

[@itchyjazz]

is this update released already? i just downloaded the latest one 1.3, and the piano roll isn't there yet. =(

[@itchyjazz]

oh, it's 1.4. ok, i'll be waiting.

Don’t wait. It’s available already.

[@andreash3906]

I need to stop watching gear videos, and stop buying new stuff. Help! 😅

[@DJ_Kelpie]

Yes my friend. Welcome to the life of having GAS. Otherwise known as, Gear Aquisition Syndrome. It's a lifelong struggle

[@anonymous_friend]

Aside from its ability to sample, how would the Play compare to the Squarp Hapax?

[@herberdth]

the play cannot sample. You have to do that elsewhere and put it on the sd-card. Maybe the Play+ let's you add samples via USB in some mode, maybe it still needs you to pull out the sd-card every single time you want to add something.

[@raphaelpazoumian]

i can do this with ableton in 2 min

[@OG_Mereles]

AI generated music with extra steps.

[@bonerici]

I can't understand why this is better than Ableton and the novation launch pad it's cheaper and seems more flexible. I love your videos on sampling but not sure why you might use play over novation. Oh yeah thumbs up on the video for the algo

[@JeremyForTheWin]

for one, this doesn't require a computer

[@feintcircles]

​@@JeremyForTheWinThat's the biggest draw for me. I wanted a DAWless setup and the Play was perfect for me.