Live jam with the Polyend Tracker Mini

video upload by Jay Hosking

"A live synthesizer jam performed entirely on hardware.

I'm going to just say it: the Polyend Tracker Mini (or maybe Tracker+) is currently the best all-in-one groovebox going. Eight stereo sample tracks, eight voices of internal synths across three timbres, up to eight MIDI tracks, great onboard effects, battery powered, very portable, USB multitrack audio recording, and fantastic performance effects. This thing rules.

To celebrate the 2.0 software release, which brings the Mini and + to parity, minus the differences in hardware, I put together this piece. I'm very, very happy with the results. The Tracker is an extremely inspiring platform for me.

There are shortcomings to the Tracker platform, namely bugs and promised features that haven't been implemented yet; seriously, Polyend, you gotta get those performance effects for the Play+ synths if you're going to promise them to users, let alone the Tracker+ and Tracker Mini! But the bugs, while annoying if you don't know about them, are manageable once you do know about them, and I tend not to buy devices like the Mini for its potential firmware updates. When I bought the Mini, it was a stereo sampler, and now it's a stereo sampler with eight voices of internal synth polyphony, so Polyend is offering amazing updates. I just try not to think of what a thing is missing.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Recorded to multitrack audio via USB (what a feature!), with a little treatment to the synths (as noted in the video), and with EQ/compression/limiting on the master.

https://jayhosking.bandcamp.com"