TEKNO Review

Plugin Boutique hooked me up with a copy of Baby Audio’s Tekno drum synthesizer. Tekno is a 24 part drum synth with unique engines for each drum voice. The UI is minimal and colorful with a nice hexagonal layout for each drum sound. I was hoping there would be a built in drum sequencer to make this a full drum machine, but with so many sequencers out there, we have plenty of options to sequence Tekno

The drum voices cover kicks, snares, hats, claps, toms, percussion, cymbals, and my favorite of the bunch, a. “tonal” engine. Each drum voice has unique controls tailored to their particular drum sounds. I really like the kicks, they are solid and pleasant, useful for a variety of genres and styles. The snares are decent enough, and can fit in the mix quite well. The hats are pretty basic and snappy, not the best for more acoustic sounds. The clap is very nice, similar to the one in Battalion. All the percussion is fairly electronic sounding and robotic. I’m not huge on the ride or crash, but the toms are very solid and will likely be something I utilize in the future.

Finally, the “tonal” engine is by far my favorite, I’d like to see this as its own synth. I was wanting to say this should be its own plugin, but I wonder now if their “Atoms’ synth is just this? I see a “force” control that exists in both, this lets you spread the partials to create a wide variety of percussive materials. I’ll have to get my hands on Atoms if this is the case.

Each drum voice has a few extra controls hidden in some gear menus, these are tucked to the side in a scrollable window. I find this window to break the flow of the UI quite a bit, it’s not bad, but they just kinda feel tucked away rather than a cohesive part of the main UI. This is especially the case when there’s a long list of controls hidden in this side menu.

Finally you can randomize each or all drum sounds, and best of all, you can drag and drop any drum sound straight into your daw as a sample. Being able to pull drum sounds out of Tekno as you’re building a kit and experimenting is a great way to just create a simple drum library. Personally, I’d rather build a collection of drums from Tekno, using it like a “painters easel” but for drum sounds, and “paint” these sounds into another drum sequencer such as Battalion or DrumComputer for sequencing and further processing. I tested both and they let you drag straight from Tekno into their samplers, but I can’t speak for other drum machine plugins.

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TEKNO: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/139-Drum-Synth/15545-Tekno?a_aid=61c378ab215d5