The exciting bit comes when you take that early Human League beat you’ve come up with and transfer it to the PO-32 tonic. I’m not kidding, this software is worth every cent of the $99, if you want something a little extreme with your beats.Īnyway, I’m getting a little carried away. Within minutes, I had a menacing late-70s Human League beat going under a too-sweet piece of music I was working on – the perfect counter. They’re very similar to the style of the ones on the hardware and you can easily change sounds within them, tweak and distort, filter and pitch, really mess with each beat to get some extreme sounds. On a simple level, have it running in the background with tunes you are working on and step through the preset patterns. Once you have it up and running, you’ll hear what a great piece of software it is. You can also trial it for three weeks free of charge, although the link with the PO-32 tonic doesn’t work until it’s fully registered. Don’t worry, though – even after 13 years, this is one cool piece of software and it sounds better than ever. You’ll need to download and buy a copy of Mictrotonic from the Sonic Charge website if you don’t already own it. However, now’s the time to add some tonic to this particularly beaty gin… A dash of tonic? You can also add one of 16 very good effects to the mix, simply by holding the FX button and selecting as patterns play.Īs a drum machine in its own right PO-32 tonic is fabulous and just like the other six in the 10 and 20 range, in terms of the ease in which you get there and its amazing flexibility. Pre-programmed patterns can be chosen via the 16 keys and you can easily add to them by choosing one of the 16 sounds, twisting its character and then recording over the patterns in a 16-step, switch on, switch off way. The sounds can be adjusted with the two rotaries, either for pitch or another parameter (often drive or filter). PO-32 tonic features 16 main buttons, with 16 sounds or patterns to select. So we’ve come up with this, a version of Microtonic in hardware.” The developer Magnus Lidström famously developed Malström for Propellerhead and has several other titles under the Sonic Charge brand, including the bonkers Synplant.Īt the NAMM Show in January 2017, Lidström told us: “Teenage Engineering and I were talking about doing something together for some time and when they were talking about doing another Pocket Operator, they asked me. Microtonic (actually spelt µTONIC, but we’ll go with the easy option on our keyboards) is a piece of incredibly well-regarded software, released some 13 years ago – I used it for pretty much all my beats back in the day. How, though, can they be even cooler with their next release? By getting completely out there… When soft went hard Teenage Engineering is very cool (check out their T-shirts and sneakers!) and they make me feel very old. Often, you also get multiple instruments, so you can produce complete tunes from each unit. They cover all grounds: drum machine, synth, bassline, vocoder and more. Released in two batches of three, it comprises the 10s (the rhythm, sub and factory) and 20s (arcade, office and robot). Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series has certainly impressed us over the last three years.
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