Everybody loves a groovebox, don't they? These all-in-one samplers and sequencers deliver all the functionality of a DAW while allowing you to escape the confines of your Mac or PC and take your beat-making IRL.
If you want to up your game in the beat-building department, switching up your workflow could be exactly what you need - and there's no better time to dive in than Black Friday, as Sweetwater have slashed up to $300 off the prices of grooveboxes from Native Instruments, Elektron and Akai.
Sweetwater have discounted three of the best standalone beat-making tools on the market this Black Friday: the Native Instruments Maschine Plus, Akai MPC Live II and Elektron Syntakt. Each of these machines has their strong points, but if you're looking to abandon your mouse and keyboard for something with a few more knobs, pads and buttons, they're all more than capable of inspiring a new approach to beat-making and music production.
Which of these options you choose depends on the route that you're looking to take into hardware-based music-making. The Maschine Plus stands out as the most user-friendly option, coming bundled with over 8GB of content and an expertly curated selection of 14 of Native Instruments software instruments and effects.
The Maschine Plus is the best option for those who like the idea of playing their beats and patterns in live, too, as the instrument's pads are large, brightly lit and perfect for finger-drumming.
Akai's MPC is a real all-rounder, and gives you the closest experience to working in a traditional DAW, thanks to the seriously powerful MPC 2.0 software. It's entirely standalone, ultra-portable and battery-powered, so it could easily act as the hub of a live performance set-up, or become your new on-the-go music-making tool.
The Elektron Syntakt is something of an outlier here, as it lacks the sampling capabilities offered by the Maschine Plus and MPC Live II. However, unlike those machines, the Syntakt is a powerful FM synthesizer at its core, utilizing both analogue and digital sound generation to produce a dizzying array of sounds both percussive and melodic.
The Syntakt's more than capable of building complex beats and structuring entire tracks, too, thanks to the recently introduced Song Mode functionality, that bolsters its 64-step sequencer with the ability to chain multiple patterns together into fully-fledged songs.
