Playtime Engineering launched the $199 Blipblox synthesizer about 5 years in the past. It didn’t come anyplace near toppling the plain king of the finances synth market, Korg’s Volcas. Then once more, that wasn’t the purpose. Blipblox isn’t a tiny, low-cost keyboard designed to contaminate synth dads with a nasty case of drugs acquisition syndrome. It’s a youngsters’s toy—a cumbersome piece of shiny plastic with the objective of educating the fundamentals of synthesis.
Now the corporate has simply wrapped up a profitable Kickstarter marketing campaign for its second instrument, the Blipblox myTracks. MyTracks principally tries to reply one query: What if an Ableton Push and a Leapfrog toddler laptop computer had a child? It’s a stand-alone sampler and groovebox that lets youngsters create their very own songs from begin to end. It tries to simplify issues as a lot as potential whereas nonetheless delivering a good quantity of enjoyable sound mangling.
Editor’s notice: The myTracks continues to be in preorder and can start transport later this yr. We have been granted early entry to a preproduction mannequin as the corporate finally ends up the machine for estimated supply in November.
A New Musical Toy
Let’s begin by clearing up what the myTracks will not be: It’s not a fully-fledged MPC. You possibly can’t chop up samples on it. The pads are usually not velocity delicate (or notably delicate in any respect, actually). It’s additionally not a synthesizer. Whereas it has melodic tracks, they’re simply single-shot samples that get pitched up and down by enjoying them again slower or sooner. It has a sure lo-fi vibe that may be charming on the correct sound, however this isn’t going to be the machine to your youngsters to study sound design or finger drumming on.
{Photograph}: Terrence O’Brien
As an alternative, what myTracks is supposed to show is the fundamentals of music manufacturing. It has 5 tracks, one in every of which is devoted to drums. Children (or youngsters at coronary heart) can merely hit Report, faucet out a beat, then transfer on to the following monitor to place down a bass line, and so forth, till they’ve a whole 5-track tune. It even has a built-in microphone to allow them to pattern their toys or their very own voice and use that as a part of the composition.
The arguably greater distinction between the BlipBlox synth and the myTracks, although, is the complexity. The place the colourful strains, buttons, and built-in sequences made the corporate’s kid-friendly synth approachable to even the youngest youngsters, myTracks is geared towards older youngsters. For one, they’ll want to have the ability to learn among the labels. The myTracks has an precise workflow for making music, whereas the BlipBlox synth was extra about button mashing.
Along with notice mode, there’s a clip mode, like what you’d discover inside recording software program like Ableton Stay. Right here, the pads set off loops that you just mix and recombine to create new variations on a theme. It’s a good way to introduce youngsters to the idea of arranging a tune.
{Photograph}: Terrence O’Brien
