I like the sounds I can get from this but it's annoying it only seems to be mapped to a few keys. I want to play it with my whole keyboard, how can I do this?
Stephen, if there are some samples side-by-side only and you press +2 octave, there is a mickey mouse effekt. Same to -2 octaves as an old low and slow voice.
Thanks yeah I know that but that makes sense for things like Violins and Cellos that need to only have a limited range for realism but not Playbox - the problem is that bit doesn't just have a limited range it's also only mapped to a few white keys - I really don't see the point of this if it can generate great sounds but I can't actually play them?
Tiny little range, no black keys, why?
So is anyone actually using this? It seems to have some rave reviews as 'groundbreaking' but apart from being fun to play with for a while (although I find after a while it all sounds a bit samey) it would be nice to be able to actually play it too. I really can't see how it is meant to be used musically.
I don't think it was meant to be played like a normal instrument. Its purpose is to create your own custom chords that you can then trigger with any of the 8 keyswitches.
Check this thread:
Specifically: Nadine's reply.
Yes. This is how it was thought. Itās not properly an āinstrumentā, more of a āchords builderā with a lot of variations (chords themselves, samples that compose the chords,ā¦)
āI think if you want to play the chords on a different octave, you have to change them in the chords tab, but once you do it, only those 8 keys are playable. It is completely a different paradigm than normal instruments.
Maybe this video can help you understand better what it is all about:
Thanks - so at least they do recognise that is a valid use case but I don't see why they left it out in the first place. It looks like the developers were more coming at it from a design perspective rather than thinking how musicians would want to use it, otherwise I can't explain why they would not have thought 'this is a bad idea' to not enable a melodic mode from the start
Yeah I watched a few videos to try and get it but it seems most of these like to make music out of building blocks - I prefer to use my keyboard and make my own chords and progressions, I just want to have access to the sounds it creates because it can make some nice sounds but I hate using construction kits.
I can agree with you. But we know NIā¦what they think is the right thing, canāt be questioned too muchā¦
Probably this product is not for you therefore
Well it's fun to play with even if I can't actually make music with it :)
Got it as part of Komplete anyway - it was not something I would have chosen to buy
Might try the sample import thing though as the included sample set sounds a bit repetitive after a while
I actually still have Kai's Power Tools on my old Win 7 laptop - they are equally fun visually but also much more useful to me
It sounds like a fun instrument. Do you have any video to suggest me to watch to understand it? I could be interested (even because I just decided after a Jeremy_NI answer that I will probably never buy anything from NI anymore, included the update for my K13UCE, so I wonāt have Playbox, which was practically the only thing I was interested to)
I just searched YouTube basically - none particularly stood out
Thank you anyway šš¼
