Manual quick start

Tonverk is a sampler and sequencer with 16 tracks. Tracks 1–8 play audio and hold the machines, 9–12 are buses, 13–15 are send effects, and track 16 is the mix. Sampling is stereo and polyphonic. An audio track can be split into subtracks, so one track can carry a whole drum kit or a multisampled instrument instead of a single sound. Routing is the other headline: tracks feed buses, buses feed the sends, and audio can leave the machine and be sampled straight back in. It is also the first instrument on a new Elektron hardware platform, so its feature list is still growing from one OS release to the next.

“A labyrinth full of routes, a pathfinder full of revelations.”— Elektron, official manual §2

Tonverk runs on USB power. The supplied adapter goes into a wall socket, and its USB cable goes into one of Tonverk's USB ports. Set the unit on something solid, leave room behind it for cables, and switch everything off before you connect anything. Sound leaves through OUT A/B into a mixer or amplifier, or through the HEADPHONES jack. External audio comes back in on IN A/B, or over USB. MIDI follows one rule: the sending device's MIDI OUT goes to the receiving device's MIDI IN. A USB cable to a computer does the same job and can carry audio in as well. The POWER switch is on the rear panel. Start the rest of your setup first, then Tonverk.

Presets are the quickest way to get sound out of the box. [PRESET] opens the LOAD PRESET menu, [UP]/[DOWN] or the LEVEL/DATA encoder moves the highlight, and [YES] loads the one you picked. A preset always lands on the active track, so choose the track first: hold [TRK] and press one of [TRIG 1–8]. Loading replaces whatever that track was playing, so save anything you want to keep before you go browsing. Factory presets are also a good place to start editing. Load one you like, change a single parameter, and listen for what moved.

Patterns live in banks. Press [PTN], pick the bank from the [KEYBOARD] keys — [KEYBOARD C1] is bank A — then press [TRIG 1] for pattern A01. [PLAY] starts it and [STOP] ends it. Switching patterns during playback is queued rather than instant. Press [PTN] and [TRIG 2] while A01 runs, and A02 takes over once A01 reaches its last step. Keep going with [PTN] and [TRIG 3], and you are performing a set by hand. Selecting and playing patterns changes nothing on disk, so work through the factory banks and find out what the machine sounds like.

The [KEYBOARD] keys play the active audio track chromatically. Select the track with [TRK] + [TRIG 1–8], then play: every key retriggers the same preset at a different pitch. [+]/[-] transposes the virtual keyboard by an octave, and pressing both at once returns it to zero. Transposition matters more with samples than with synthesized voices. Pitch a kick two octaves up and it becomes a click, which is worth knowing and occasionally worth using. [FUNC] + [KEYBOARD A#1] opens the SCALE menu, which keeps your playing in key, and the [CHORD] key opens a setup where one key plays a whole chord.

Start a pattern, then press [MUTE]. The [TRIG] and [SUBTRACKS] keys now toggle tracks: green means the track is sounding, unlit means it is muted. Which track was active before you entered makes no difference, since all of them are available at once. Hold [FUNC] while you press several keys and nothing happens until you let go, at which point every armed track flips at the same instant. That is how you get a clean drop instead of a ragged one. [MUTE] + [UP] switches to GLOBAL MUTE, where the mutes apply to every pattern and are saved with the project.

[TEMPO] opens the tempo menu. DATA ENTRY knob A or LEVEL/DATA sets the BPM; press the knob in while turning to move eight BPM at a time; knob B or [UP]/[DOWN] handles the decimal. [NO] closes the menu. To tap a tempo, hold [FUNC] and tap [TEMPO] in time. Tonverk averages the taps from the fourth one on and keeps updating as long as you tap. From the main screen, holding [LEFT] or [RIGHT] bends the tempo 10% for as long as you hold it, which is how you line up with a turntable by hand. If MIDI appears above the BPM, an external clock owns the tempo and the knobs will not move it. Knob D is SWING, from 50% straight up to 80%. The metronome sits on knobs E–H of the same menu: METRO on or off, SIG. for the time signature, PREROLL for count-in bars before LIVE RECORDING, GAIN for click volume. [FUNC] + [KEYBOARD F#1] toggles the click without opening anything.

A track's sound is spread across six page groups. The [PARAMETER PAGE] keys open them: TRIG, SRC, FLTR, AMP, FX, MOD. Each group holds several pages, and the eight DATA ENTRY knobs A–H edit whatever the screen is showing. Do this with a pattern playing and an audio track selected: [TRK] + [TRIG 1–8]. Tracks 9–16 are buses, sends, and the mix, where edits are harder to hear. Press [FLTR] and turn knob E — that is FREQ, the filter cutoff, and the quickest way to hear the machine respond. Two shortcuts are worth learning now. In GRID RECORDING, hold a step's [TRIG] key while turning a knob: the value is stored on that step alone. Elektron calls that a parameter lock, and most Elektron patterns are built on them. The other one is the way back — hold any [PARAMETER PAGE] key and press [PLAY] to reset the page to defaults, or [YES] to randomize it — so exploring costs you nothing.