I was thinking about buying an electribe emx. But i am totally
new in the world of synths so i had a few questions .
Is it very difficult for a beginner to program the emx? Is it the usage of odd time signatures possible? What i understood was that the machine has only steps for the amount of 4 beats. (im a total beginner so maybe what i say is totally laughable ). So is it possible to have like a 5/4 measore or a 7/8?
Furthermore is this machine suitable for different genres of electronic music. The most youtube movies show a more house of techno approach but is it also possible to create say, some venetian snares tracks or maybe even Air songs? if someone has experience with this topics i'd really like to hear about them:). Thanks in advance!
yes you can easily do odd time signatures like 5/4 etc. no problem at all. It's as easy as it can be to use too, and I've heard just about any genere you can think of within the world of electronic music made on the electribes.
I think that if you want to do venetian snares, you will need a computer based setup with something like ableton live, a good wav file editor, some slicer plugins like livecut, liveslice, bbcut and dblue glitch. You will never get that smashed up broken feeling from an emx, it is just not designed for anything like that.
Air is a little more achievable, but the synths on the emx are quite limited (dont listen to the hordes of fanatics on this forum who will try tell you otherwise, they are just fanatics who have no ears). There is no easy way to play chords. It's very difficult to make gentle soft sounds. The effects are very much in-your-face and not at all subtle (I would say pretty much unuseable). The whole machine sounds trancy, cheap and nasty.
But as you are new to synths in general, this stuff might not matter so much. You will have so much fun making music, you wont worry how it sounds in comparison with professional gear. The emx is pretty nice in that regard, you pick it up, you play, you have fun, you can put together complete tracks and it's about as easy as can be, and it's lovely to have it all in one box.
Air achieve their sound through detailed production, and venetian snares through extreme sequencing, both of which you will NOT get out of an emx. What you DO get, is a very fun, inspirational machine, which is very quick and easy to play with, pretty good for live performances, excellent fun for just sitting around with your headphones on and making beats, jamming along. This is where the machine is unbeatable. But don't be an idiot and think it has the sonic qualities of professional synths that cost five times the price, or the computing and editing power of a computer.
Despite what the fanatics say, there is a reason that all the emx videos you see on youtube are trance and house. It is because the machine is ideally suited for creating trance and house. Read that many times. No matter what way you twist the knobs, it'll be making housey trancy sounds. You will have to work very hard indeed to push the machine beyond that. Words like 'subtle', 'detailed' and 'delicate' are not in its vocabulary, and as soon as you aim for any of these you will quickly realise the shortcomings of the machine.
While it IS possible to go a little beyond the cheesy trance, and while it is possible to do rough tracks that loosely resemble air and venetian snares, it will take a LOT of work to squeeze that stuff out of the emx. Ask yourself if you are serious about wanting to sound like those artists, or if you want a machine that'll make some tunes and keep you busy for a while. It's perfectly suited to beginners, and that is very good for you, but it'll sound kinda amateur too. Look at the amount of professional artists using the emx (none that I know of). Look at the amount of non house and techno/trance songs (very few).
The emx is a groovebox, for jamming and grooving and having fun with, and not for producing professional sounding tracks. If you don't mind sounding housey, or technoy or trancy then it's probably a pretty good investment for you. It'll teach you A LOT, and you'll have a lot of fun learning. But, if your goal is to make some venetian snares tracks, then you might be better of starting with ableton live, and a lot of loops and plugins and hard work.
MagpieIndustries wrote:Despite what the fanatics say, there is a reason that all the emx videos you see on youtube are trance and house. It is because the machine is ideally suited for creating trance and house. Read that many times. No matter what way you twist the knobs, it'll be making housey trancy sounds. You will have to work very hard indeed to push the machine beyond that.
The reason all of the videos on Youtube are cheesy and trancey is because people are cheesy and lazy. You can always add external effects and processing to alter the tone beyond what can be done on the box itself. Your post reminds me of a typical online user submitted gear review "Yo, dis groovebox is wack. Maybe it be ok for sum kid in hiz bedroom bein a wannabe, but dis aint no profeshinal gear" A good craftsman never blames his tools.
supermel74 wrote:A good craftsman never blames his tools.
Very true. And a good craftsman also recognises the right tool for the job.
electribes are the right tool for any job. This has been brought up many times. You are only limited by your abilities, not by your electribes. And there's always more to them then you think.
I have heard of old school people still "slicing samples" by hand (by visually analyzing the sample's best parts) in sound forge and loading them into OLD school samplers, and rearranging them beyond belief. Still, they make better music then most people today.
So if you think the electribes are only good for trance... or the ribbon, and their "sound". Then yes you are lazy, and yes you're still new. Maybe you should try something other then basic 4x4 trance and it will sound better.
just to clarify, this is coming from me and I use a LARGE variety of tools. I use ableton 7 primarily, and have been making music for a long time. I've mastered NI Massive and other complex synths(please check definition of mastered before thinking about what I said).
Just because the electribe has little functions, does not mean it can't produce wicked sounds and high quality music. Not to mention one of THE best platforms for live PA.
I am limited by my electribe. In exactly the following ways:
It has no ADSR envelopes. It has no polyphony. It has no send level. It's compressor merely boosts the gain, clips the signal, and adds a click at the start. It's reverb is modulated hiss. It has no ADSR for the filter. The filter is unpredictable in the low end. The machine adds a click to the start of pretty much everything. Notes are truncated on the ends of patterns. There is no sine LFO. The drum parts are not run through the filter. The PCM sounds cant be changed. The PCM waveform samples sound like s**t from the 80's. The effects are brutal. There is no volume after the effects. The extra outs bypass the tube stage. The tubes are starve plating and backlit by yellow leds. You cannot adjust a parameter for an instrument without unmuting it. You have to stop playback to change the pattern length. The arpeggiator has one setting. You cant record all the knob changes. You can very clearly hear stepping on the filter. The mixing engine turns everything to mush. You can copy a sound from another pattern but not the associated motion sequence. The fx chain doesnt let me link 1 into 3. Accidently pressing solo unmutes everything. pressing solo leaves you no choice but to transpose to avoid unmuting everything. the accent is part is a ripoff which only modulates the volume. the song mode editor doesnt let you forward or rewind without screwing the motion sequences, and misses so many features as to be almost unuseable. This is certainly not a complete list.
and I havn't really started with the general sound quality.
Ruso, by saying the electribe is the tool for every job, and that it can do everything brilliantly, is just making you sound like a fool, and people will respect your opinion less and less. Every machine has its good points and bad points, and in the long run it'll be most helpful for the original guy in the thread to know what is good and what is bad about different machines. Saying you've mastered Massive (and telling me to check your definitions) is very childish. You can't master musical instruments like that, there is always more to learn. Maybe you feel the need to convince me of your musical abilities by telling me how you are a Master of Massive, but your music says all that needs to be said about it.
There is a good reason the electribe is cheap. It's cos its a cheap instrument, and anyone with some ears and a little experience can tell this. It doesn't make the machine any worse, but it's kinda tiring to keep hearing how f*ck*ng flawlessly brilliant it is
Wow A lot to read. very helpful points on both sides.
Heavy discussion:P
I guess i agreed with the point that the machine is not for everything. I have to admit that i didnt expect it different. But then again is it still worth the money for someone who just starts out with synths? its almost impossible for this price that the machine can do the same things as the ones wich costs over the 2000 Dollar/Euro. No polyphony for example...
But does it suck or is it still bang for buck. I understood out of maggpies story that it is actually a sh*tty piece of .. But then again i dont want to be the pro artists. I just want to make some music resembling the genres en maybe jam along with my band.
Any more experiences? (whether good/wrong)
MagpieIndustries, nearly every "flaw" you noted about the EMX's capabilities is true with every machine. Why didn't you just add "It needs to be plugged in" to your list? It's monophonic, yeah, most instruments are in fact, it's not a piano or a guitar. Please name one single piece of hardware that does everything that you criticized the EMX for not being able to do. You can't do it because it doesn't exist. Every machine has limitations. As far as the soundengine, it's not a Virus TI, but it's not $2000 either.
Slainejs wrote:Wow A lot to read. very helpful points on both sides.
Heavy discussion:P
I guess i agreed with the point that the machine is not for everything. I have to admit that i didnt expect it different. But then again is it still worth the money for someone who just starts out with synths? its almost impossible for this price that the machine can do the same things as the ones wich costs over the 2000 Dollar/Euro. No polyphony for example...
But does it suck or is it still bang for buck. I understood out of maggpies story that it is actually a sh*tty piece of .. But then again i dont want to be the pro artists. I just want to make some music resembling the genres en maybe jam along with my band.
Any more experiences? (whether good/wrong)
In my opinion the EMX is perfect for anyone starting out on synths. It's a great machine to get you started on sequencing, you'll learn loads with it, its a fun machine. After a while if you don't like the sound engine or its not suiting your needs buy something else, atleast with the EMX you'll learn the basics of creating music.
supermel74 wrote:MagpieIndustries, nearly every "flaw" you noted about the EMX's capabilities is true with every machine. Why didn't you just add "It needs to be plugged in" to your list? It's monophonic, yeah, most instruments are in fact, it's not a piano or a guitar. Please name one single piece of hardware that does everything that you criticized the EMX for not being able to do. You can't do it because it doesn't exist. Every machine has limitations.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I like my electribes. I got them instead of a machinedrum, and instead of a laptop with ableton. I dunno why people get upset when I say they are not perfect.
Last edited by MagpieIndustries on Wed May 07, 2008 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Burn the DJ wrote:In my opinion the EMX is perfect for anyone starting out on synths. It's a great machine to get you started on sequencing, you'll learn loads with it, its a fun machine. After a while if you don't like the sound engine or its not suiting your needs buy something else, atleast with the EMX you'll learn the basics of creating music.
MagpieIndustries wrote:Despite what the fanatics say, there is a reason that all the emx videos you see on youtube are trance and house. It is because the machine is ideally suited for creating trance and house. Read that many times. No matter what way you twist the knobs, it'll be making housey trancy sounds. You will have to work very hard indeed to push the machine beyond that.
The reason all of the videos on Youtube are cheesy and trancey is because people are cheesy and lazy. You can always add external effects and processing to alter the tone beyond what can be done on the box itself. Your post reminds me of a typical online user submitted gear review "Yo, dis groovebox is wack. Maybe it be ok for sum kid in hiz bedroom bein a wannabe, but dis aint no profeshinal gear" A good craftsman never blames his tools.
It's a fun machine.
This may sound a little nieve but essentially there's nothing wrong with pushing all the buttons, turning all the knobs and recording what sounds good. Reading and understanding the manual is important but it's so easy to over-analyze the EMX. I call it paralysis by analysis. lol Seriously, after you have the basic idea of how the instrument works just kick back with a bud and f*ck around with it. When you stumble across some cool s**t, record it. Truth is, alot of my best music are merely a collection of happy accidents! Pro gear? Maybe not. A hellva lot of fun? You betcha! It gets the chicks shaking that ass!!! www.cyberdudeproductions.com
"Secret to Electribes: push all the buttons, turn all the knobs, record what sounds good!"
I would think of the Electribes first as live performance instruments first and as recording gear second ... also, to reach the full potential of the concept, you really need the sampler end as well ...
personally, I think the Electribes sound quite good ... certainly, music worth listening to can be made on any piece of equipment as long as it's approached with knowledge, creativity and some skill ...
I used them this past weekend at a party I DJed with exactly this setup minus the keyboards ... Seemed to go over well ...
). So is it possible to have like a 5/4 measore or a 7/8?
A lot to read. very helpful points on both sides.
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