The Novation Mono Circuit is an odd thing. On the one hand it's a decent-enough cut-down Bass Station II, really lacking a second envelope but the modulation sequencer is an interesting alternative mod source. It has lots of flavours of distortion and these are added lovingly to many of the factory patches. I'll replace all those as I go. The problem with doing so is you need to start from a new pattern which doesn't have parameter recordings or step-captures (whatever the parlance - I've only skimmed the manual, which is a bit crap I'm afraid and has a few errors and contradictions I've noticed already).
You can store a patch for each pattern - but it's a pointer to a location that may, later, bear no relation to its sound at the point when you made the pattern. There is no way to see which patches have been used in patterns across the various sessions, so I can foresee overwriting stuff another session uses.
Management of sound development is therefore a challenge - but with some fun aspects. For example, if I make all the envelope times very long in one pattern, they will remain long in the next pattern UNLESS I explicitly write shorter envelope times into that next pattern. With no visibility of such parameter overrides, the sound you play back in each pattern with depends not only on the original selection but on which patterns have already played.
Having each part of the overall pattern loop and chain independently is great too. Old hat for sequencers like the P3 of course but light years beyond what Elektron sequencers can do - the Circuit also supports different directions. Just wish I could specify how many times each pattern should repeat.
Many of the things I would like to be able to write into a pattern, I can't (e.g. triggering) and some things are session wide when they'd be better pattern-wide, but hey, can't have everything (you'd have nowhere to put it). Manual claims you can't automate switches but I seem to have done it with oscillator octaves and more. Oops - no, I accidentally recorded some 'patch flips'. Another downer - seems too easy to 'fill' the modulation range of any parameter and you're forever backing off existing values so your new modulation makes any impact. I think the resolution may be inadequate for the job to hand. Oh well.
The most Stupidity Points earned so far are from the default state of 'save disabled'. The getting started manual supposedly points this out (I didn't even notice that manual until I'd downloaded the full manual and I still can't see where now I've found it). The full manual points this out, then smugly informs you that to be enable save requires a power-on button combi. WTF! A few cryptic coloured page to reality translations required but getting there. It does irritate that you can't write button presses (e.g. for octaves on the oscillators or filter types or LFO waveforms) into a pattern. Seems totally crap compared to Elektron stuff - I'd have moaned about it had I reviewed this.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dOZPtBNDr/
Did I mention that P3 Playlists still beat the 4x4 matrix of chained patterns? Yes, I'm repeating myself. Anyway, with a playlist I can loop the individual patterns in any order and have repeats and transposes, all from an easy interface. Still, using chains in different ways has its own charm.
Lastly, colour isn't as well-used as I'd expected. Things you'd want visible really aren't (like the contents of steps, whether patterns include parameter data etc.).
Oh and there are some oddities in terms of setting the root and scale - if you set the root after recording it transposes, which is rather annoying. Transpose should be a separate decision. You're setting the root, which will affect the notes you tap in. I do agree changing the scale should act on recorded notes though and that's the only respect where the root should count. Makes for much more interesting key modulations IMHO.
Off to get my Synthi back tomorrow :)
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