Elektron has announced their latest desktop instrument, Tonverk. It represents a new form factor for Elektron's devices overall, but it also presents many new capabilities not found on any of their other instruments. It is built on a new hardware platform, offering a slightly different workflow than their prior devices. But, don't worry—if you're familiar with Elektron gear, you'll be able to pick up Tonverk quickly; and likewise, if you've never used Elektron instruments before, Tonverk presents a unique value proposition sure to draw you in.

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So, what is it? In short, I like to think of Tonverk as having two distinct purposes: it's a polyphonic sampler capable of multisampling in some wild & interesting ways—and it's also a flexible signal processor, capable of routing, mixing, and processing internal and external audio in a variety of ways. Like all other Elektron boxes, it features a deep built-in sequencer and can be configured to serve a huge number of distinct purposes, adapting to any workflow.

I'm relatively new to the general Elektron ecosystem; my first deep Elektron experience was with the recently-released Digitone II, which finally convinced me to sit down and take the time to learn "the Elektron workflow." Tonverk has me excited to get back into things, offering a lot of unique possibilities that I suspect will bring a lot to their product lineup and to many musicians. In this article, I won't endeavor to go through every single detail of the new box; instead, I'll point out a few of the key concepts/features that I find especially exciting, sharing a few thoughts about how they might be used (or, in some cases, creatively misused). Let's dive in!

Elektron Tonverk High-Level Overview

Tonverk is a 16-track instrument, with groups of tracks dedicated to specific types of tasks. Tracks one through eight are instrument tracks, each of which can act as a sampler or as a control source for external MIDI devices. Tracks nine through twelve are Buses—facilitating a variety of mixing and effect processing workflows. Tracks thirteen through fifteen are Sends, which are useful for processing other tracks in typical dub-style effect send fashion. Track sixteen is the Mix track, where you can perform various changes to your global mix. Don't worry...we'll discuss the implications of some of these ideas in greater depth later in this article.

Tonverk features extensive audio I/O, including two 1/4" analog inputs and six assignable outputs (A–D on 1/4" mono connectors, E–F on a single 1/4" stereo "headphone"-style output). It offers dedicated 5-pin DIN MIDI input, output, and thru connections. Audio can be streamed to/from Tonverk and your computer/phone/tablet via USB-C; likewise, MIDI can be sent bidirectionally over USB. This means that Tonverk can integrate seamlessly with your laptop or other production workflow, for the purposes of file transfer, mixing, and more.

Naturally, Tonverk also has the same style sequencing found in other Elektron boxes, complete with parameter locks, conditional trigs, fills, and more. Different tracks can have different lengths (up to 256 steps) and rhythm subdivisions; there's an arpeggiator—there's a chord mode—there's a song mode. Suffice it to say that the Tonverk sequencing structure is quite similar to other Elektron instruments, with some special tricks that open up unique possibilities given Tonverk's unique audio engine. I won't discuss the sequencing workflow in depth in this article; if you like, check out our overview of general Elektron concepts to catch up on these ideas!

These basic details out of the way, let's zoom in and focus the remainder of the article on two big portions of Tonverk's workflow: its sound engine, and its mixing/processing workflow.

Tonverk is a Really Good Sampler

Tonverk's internal sound engine is based on sampling. Now, you probably realize that Elektron already has several other sampling-oriented instruments—Digitakt, Octatrack, and Model:Samples—so what makes Tonverk so special? Importantly, Tonverk's sampling engine is polyphonic, and it has the capacity to perform multisampling. Let's first discuss the general structure of an audio track.

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Each of Tonverk's eight audio tracks offers a source machine, which determines its overall sound production method. As of the date of release, three source machines are available: Single Player, Multi Player, and Subtracks. Single player is simplest to understand; it is a simple sample player that allows you to play back a sample with up to eight-voice polyphony. Naturally, you can use this for percussive sounds, one-shots, or loops, but it also lends itself to polyphonic/chordal playing. Simply load a sample of a sustained pitch and you can instantly play it polyphonically, much in the style of early '80s keyboard samplers. You can adjust the sample playback speed, and there are various options for loop setup, allowing you to loop a portion of a sample if a note is held for longer than the sample duration itself, and a variable crossfade control allows you to alter the perceived continuity of the looping behavior. Of course, Tonverk comes with a library of useful samples, but you can also use your own. Samples may be loaded onto Tonverk via USB (or loaded directly onto its SD card). Alternatively, you can sample sources from within Tonverk (resampling), or you can sample audio from the external inputs (both analog inputs or audio input via USB). Once you've recorded some audio into the recording buffer, you can trim/edit your sample and store a permanent sample into Tonverk's memory. There are a variety of options for automatically setting recording length and threshold.

The Multi Player source machine is similar to the Single Player, but allows for the use of multisampled instruments: that is, instruments in which "note velocity" can be used in order to select between an appropriate set of samples for more convincing dynamic playing. Think of it this way: in the Single Player machine, every note and every velocity level uses the same sample as its source material. You could use velocity to modulate various aspects of the sound's processing, but at its core, every sound will use the same base sample. With a multisampled instrument, however, you can achieve more dynamic behavior. On a piano, for instance, striking a key with greater velocity results in a louder, brighter, and more intense timbre—quite different from the sound of pressing a key softly. Multisampling allows us to approximate this behavior (or similar behaviors) by saving several different samples organized according to velocity.

Likewise, a basic/traditional sampler uses the same sample for all pitches, and simply varies the playback speed in order to play back different notes. This results in the sampled sound being longer at lower pitches and shorter at higher pitches—plus, using the same sample for every note sounds somewhat artificial/unnatural. As with the organization of velocity layers, multisampling allows you to save different samples for different pitches (or, perhaps more commonly, different ranges of pitches). So, for instance, you might choose to use a different sample for every octave; in this case, when you play a new note, the audio engine chooses the nearest available sample organized by pitch, and speed shifts it appropriately. In more sophisticated multisampling instruments, you have the option to organize samples both by velocity layer and by pitch, turning sample playback into a considerably more dynamic and lively experience.

This is the case with Tonverk's Multi Player source machine. Tonverk ships with many useful multisampled instruments that you can use right out of the box, but additionally, it features a rather clever Auto Sampling routine that makes it quite easy to build your own multisampled instruments in conjunction with any typical MIDI-capable electronic instrument. The idea is this: you connect Tonverk's MIDI output to the MIDI input of the instrument you'd like to sample. You connect that device's audio outputs to Tonverk's audio inputs. You tell Tonverk a sample duration; you then tell it how many velocity levels you'd like it to sample; you tell it a specific range of pitches you'd like to sample; and you tell it the pitch spacing (in semitones) you'd like it to use within that range. It then creates a multisampled instrument by playing each note at each velocity level, one by one, and organizing the resulting samples for you in the background. Naturally, if you're working with longer samples or if you're working with a large number of pitches or velocity layers, this process can take several minutes (and a lot of storage space)—so you'll need to find the right tradeoff for expediency, storage space, and sonic detail. Ultimately, though, this process is dead easy. When I first heard Tonverk was going to be based in part on multisampling, I dreaded the idea of organizing the necessary files, but ultimately, Elektron has devised a workflow that is simple and just makes sense.

Naturally, there are a lot of uses for such a feature. You could take your favorite monophonic synth sound and play it polyphonically. You could sample a MIDI-capable drum machine for easy playback. You could plug in your Nord electric piano and get some gnarly/awesome Wurlitzer-esque sounds in a sleek little black box. You could even get weird and "hijack" the multisampling process by, say, connecting your modular synth and using each note onset to randomize aspects of the incoming sound—turning Tonverk into a weird, multidimensional grab-back of random sampled tones. It's a pretty wild proposition, and I'm sure that over time, the multisampling option will reveal plenty of fertile creative territory.

Of course, using Tonverk with an external MIDI controller makes it easy to take advantage of the Multi Player's capacity for velocity-sensitive control. However, notably, the sequencer also has some interesting features along these lines, including the ability to use Transform functions to incrementally increase, decrease, or randomize velocity settings across a sequence.

The final Source Machine is called Subtracks—which allows you to load eight mono or stereo samples to individual voices on a single track, and to sequence them with their own individual "subsequences." So you could, for instance, load an eight-instrument "drum kit" on a single track—leaving seven tracks available for polyphonic sample playback. Parameter settings for most aspects of the individual subtracks are independent, allowing you to craft the tone of each sample individually; however, some settings are shared among subtracks (namely parameters related to FX and FX LFOs). Parameters such as these may be sequenced on the "supertrack" common to all members of the Subtrack. That might sound confusing, but the point is this: you don't need to use eight full tracks for sequenced playback of several monophonic sound sources, as in a drum kit—in many cases, using the Subtracks source machine can lead to a much more efficient use of the Tonverk's resources.

After the source machine, each track includes two filters—a multimode filter, and a base-width filter. From there, the sound passes through an "amplifier" with its own dedicated envelope generator. From there, you have access to two insert effects per track, selectable from a list of several wild and interesting audio effects. One personal favorite is the Degrader effect, which allows for overdrive, sample rate reduction, bit depth reduction, as well as random stutters and audio dropouts. It's a quick and excellent-sounding way to add some (gnarly) life to an otherwise simple sequence. Chrono Pitch is also incredible: it's a granular pitch shifter with feedback, perfect for pitch-shifted delays and other sonic oddities. Familiar effects return, of course, including the excellent Comb filters from prior devices; other effects appear for the first time in the Elektron universe, such as the Frequency Warper, a wild stereo frequency shifter great for all manner of bizarre spectral debauchery. Beyond this, each track also has dedicated send levels to each of the Send FX tracks, where additional processing can be applied if desired. Additionally, each audio track can be routed to any of a number of destinations: to a Bus, directly to the main output, or even directly to any of the hardware outputs.

Each track also has huge modulation potential—with two per-voice LFOs, a modulation envelope, and two FX-specific LFOs for automating aspects of the track's insert effects. The per-voice LFOs and modulation envelope are assignable to nearly any parameter of the voice structure, making for a huge range of possibilities. But in lieu of discussing LFOs and envelopes in depth, I'd like to move on to a brief discussion of one of Tonverk's more unique characteristics: its mixing/processing workflow.

Tonverk is a Mixer + Multi-FX Processor

As we've discussed, each of Tonverk's audio tracks has two insert FX slots, each of which offers independent selection from a variety of effects. But that's just the beginning; Tonverk also features a rather modular mixing workflow that can accommodate many different signal routing and processing scenarios. Central to this functionality are the Bus tracks and Send tracks.

By default, individual audio tracks on Tonverk are routed directly to the Mix track (track 16), summed, and passed through track 16's insert effects before hitting the device's final outputs. However, this doesn't have to be the case. One could instead, for instance, route several tracks' outputs through buses, and route the buses' outputs to the mix track. This has several potential advantages. One utility-oriented thought: if you need to control the loudness of several tracks simultaneously while keeping their proportional balance the same, it's much simpler to just route them to a single bus and control its level as opposed to the levels of the individual tracks.

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On a more creative tip, for instance, by routing even a single track to a Bus track prior to the mix, you gain an additional two Insert FX on the Bus. So, if you find yourself in a situation where you need three or four effects applied to a single sound source, using that track's insert FX and a bus's insert FX could do the trick. Along similar lines, if there are multiple audio tracks that need some shared form of processing (perhaps compression? overdrive?), you could forego applying this processing to each individual track in favor of sending each track to the same bus and applying the insert FX there instead. It's perhaps also worth noting that some effects aren't available as inserts on individual tracks (presumably to mitigate the potential for an overwhelming load on the device's CPU). So, some effects only appear on buses and the Mix; at the point of release, these effects include the Supervoid Reverb and Warble effects. So, if you want those specific effects, you won't find them in the individual tracks' insert slots.

Like individual audio tracks, the Buses can send audio to the three Send tracks for additional processing. Of course, the Send tracks are especially useful for situations in which several sound sources need to be sent to a particular effect with loudness independent from their direct track volume—or situations in which the "send level" or "FX amount" applied to each sound needs to change over time. Each send track only features one FX slot, and a somewhat more limited selection of effects (allowing only Compressor, Daisy Delay, Panoramic Chorus, Rumsklang Reverb, Saturator Delay, and Supervoid Reverb as of the date of release). Of course, these effects make much more sense as send effects vs. several of the per-track or per-bus insert effects, so this isn't really a downside—just a useful focusing of features. Notably, each Send FX track can only load a single effect.

Finally, the Mix track features a single FX slot, capable of loading a wide variety of effects that apply to your global mix. You'll probably want to try tossing Degrader on there—it's almost guaranteed to make everything sound cooler (but hey, maybe that's just me).

One perhaps non-obvious feature that I find quite interesting and useful: the external audio inputs can each be directed to buses. This means that you have two external inputs that can be routed straight through some really excellent and mind-bending effects, turning Tonverk into a multi-effect processor for any sound source. You could grab a preamp and toss a microphone through; you could mangle your semi-modular or desktop synths; you could set up some gnarly external feedback paths through its own effect processors (but watch your ears!); you could use it as a way of bringing in audio from a couple of bandmates and creating a cohesive mix between their instruments and Tonverk's internal sound generation. Though you've only got two analog inputs to use in this way, that opens up a lot of potential, and puts Tonverk's relatively-modular mixing workflow to good use.

Getting To(ne) Verk

Of course, this is all just the tip of the iceberg. Combine these possibilities with the instrument's remarkable sequencing infrastructure, its extensive and forward-thinking connectivity, and its compact form factor, and you've got an amazing piece of equipment on your hands. You can apply parameter locks to the buses, sends, and main mix—you can performatively re-route audio to several destinations—the possibilities are staggering and inspiring.

I was skeptical at first to see that Elektron was introducing what seemed like just another sampler, but I'm pleasantly surprised by Tonverk's capabilities, and have no doubt that it will forge its own niche and bring many new players to the Elektron ecosystem.

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