Novation Circuit Tracks: Groovebox Sequencer With Synth Tracks, MIDI Tracks And Drum Tracks Electronic Music Making

Product Information

There’s no display, which is mostly a blessing during general operation, although it makes accessing some settings a memory test.

The reorganisation frees up half the pads within the drum sequencing views, and these are used to display a palette of 16 sounds. Track Limit: The Circuit is limited to two synth engines and four drum tracks, with no flexibility in this sense. Each note or gate can be assigned a percentage chance of playing on each loop, producing random variations. I would love to see multiple pads for playing each track here, allowing different samples to be triggered on different tracks for finger-drumming.

The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Circuit Tracks is a Mark II Circuit in all but name, expanding on many of the original’s features and pushing aside some of the limitations. You get Oscillator, Oscillator Mod, Amp Envelope, Filter Envelope, Filter Frequency, Resonance, Modulation, and FX knobs, which usually control just what they say in the synth patches, although not always – it’s down to the patch designed how they’re used. Maybe a Rhythm+tracks combination could be a satisfying combo, still pretty portable… Which makes us regret the fact two devices were released instead of 1 ! An upshot of these additional MIDI and Drum tracks is that in the Pattern launch view you now see eight columns of four clips, instead of four columns of eight.

Circuit Tracks in an all-in-one studio with two synth tracks, two MIDI tracks and four drum tracks: everything you need to create and perform music. The bottom 16 pads select and play back different samples (which can be paged up and down), and the top 16 serve as a step sequencer. As you’d expect, it comes with a bunch of prebuilt samples that mostly cater to electronica of various flavors (especially the drums), but you can tweak them to your whims and customize the drum engine samples to your taste (so you can have cymbals, orchestra drums, etc.Now Novation has released Circuit Tracks, which despite the new name – which is intended to differentiate it from the underrated Circuit Mono Station and forthcoming Circuit Rhythm – is a straight sequel to that original groovebox.