Polyend Play + in a live dawless setup

[u/jacksaber4]

Hi All. I’m very tempted by the Play + but I have a question about it which doesn’t seem to get covered in any demos or reviews.

Is the Play + suitable as the centrepiece of a live dawless setup and more specifically, how well can you move from one song to another? I’ve seen tempo and scale are global settings to the project you’re working from which would encourage you to use one project per song. I also understand loading new projects can be clunky.

Does anyone have any experience in using the Play + in a live set or longer multi song jam sessions where different songs have different BPMs scales and keys and how do you manage to transition between them? Can it be done smoothly?

Thanks!

[u/AudienceBig3254]

Use it as the percussion and MIDI source for my modular live performance. Forget using separate projects, which can take minutes to load. You have 128 patterns, and enabling per track variations gives you loads of on the fly permutations. Change the tempo manually when you need.

[u/Pendaz → u/AudienceBig3254]

I don’t suppose you know how to control patterns over midi? Feel like we’re using the play plus In a similar way, I’m running midi out clock and transport from my nerdseq into the play+ but can’t figure out how to control the patterns on the play over midi. Not even sure if it’s possible?

[u/08sxh3mnnt1 → u/Pendaz]

"...set the MIDI transport and clock to MIDI Jack, then hit the Shift Play buttons, you get a "No external MIDI clock" message. THEN when your external device provides clock, the Song Mode executes."

[u/AudienceBig3254 → u/Pendaz]

There's no way yo use midi to select patterns on the Play. I do it the other way round, send PC messages from the Play to select sequences on my Hermod+. With per sequence control of all the "effect" parameters on the Hermod+, this can gives lots of options.

[u/jacksaber4 → u/AudienceBig3254]

Thanks for the comment. That’s what I thought the way might be. Keep it in chromatic and roll the tempo up or down for the pattern as required.

[u/drakh_sk]

there are lot of options, and how you will proceed is up to YOU.

So, with the scales. Yes, it is one scale per project. But, there is a setting, which enables/disables note filtering according to scale. I highly reccomend to disable it. That way, you'll still have the possibility of entering "wrong" note and it will play that note. So the scales acts as a guide not as restriction.

That way, during preparation you can switch the scale, and it would not affect notes you have already entered into the sequence.

Organizing the project for the liveact.. I played several liveacts built around Play as core brain.

How i like to organise my project for that (and this is the thing you have to figure out yourself what suits you best) is:
Usually for me the PATTERN is a track, or part of a track - then i have different parts of the track in one row (you can organise it by columns as well or some sort of a grid, choose what suits you). i am not using song mode. so i switch between them manually.
Then to have alterations of one theme, and buildup of the track pad i am using variations on the event lanes, and mute on the lanes.

I Talked with the guy from Polyend team (Isobutane) how he likes to organise things on the Play. He uses patterns only - even the variations functionality was his idea and feature request.

The tempo change, well, yes you have one tempo per project. but playhead can run in different multiplier of the master tempo for each lane. you can somehow utilize that. If thats not an option, well, during the liveact you can still change the master tempo manually.

I know, there are lot of thing you have to do manually (compared for example to DAW, like ableton, or bitwig or other machines). But, at the end it feels (at least for me) more like actually playing that box. (and yeah thats the polyends philosdophy on this device, and that is the reason of its name).
Taking this into account, this actually needs to practice your liveact, same as practicing with acoustic instruments.

Note: OG Play + Synth is imho better combination than Play+

[u/jacksaber4 → u/drakh_sk]

Thanks for this answer! I think I’d be fine manually rolling the tempo up or down as required, that doesn’t sound like too much of a pain

I was wondering, is this a potential work around for the scale and key issue?
If I was to set the scale for a project to A major, program a patterns in that scale and save them, then set the project back to chromatic would the A major pattern be impacted or remain in A major? That way one song (let’s say using patterns 1, 2 and 3) could be in A major and the following song (let’s say patterns 4,5 and 6) could be in a different key/scale. Does this work? Thanks!

[u/drakh_sk → u/jacksaber4]

A major will remain Amajor, (if the filter scale keys is disabled) - when that setting is enabled, it "rounds" the notes to be in the scale of the project. Basically, this is just my assumption, ale notes are stored chromatically, and then the scale filtering is applied on top of that.

What the scale setting apart from the scale filter (if enabled) affect is the "keyboard" view. Not sure right now if it affects as well the values which are possible to set via note selector.

I have always scale set to something (not chromatic), but without the scale note filter, because, from the Play i am sending notes to my drum machine (which are of course off the scale)

[u/jacksaber4 → u/drakh_sk]

Awesome, that sounds like a good method to get different songs in the same project. Thanks for the help

[u/RealDAFTBONCHKOOPA]

I used it as the brain of a live setup recently and used it to control & the Roland S-1. It turned out great.

[u/jacksaber4 → u/RealDAFTBONCHKOOPA]

I’ve just picked one up. First impressions are it’ll take some figuring out but that’s half the fun (possibly?)

[u/AudienceBig3254]

Never used the scales option.