Review: Blipblox myTracks

Playtime Engineering launched the $199 Blipblox synthesizer about five years ago. It didn’t come anywhere close to toppling the undeniable king of the budget synth market, Korg’s Volcas. Then again, that wasn’t the point. Blipblox isn’t a tiny, cheap keyboard designed to infect synth dads with a bad case of gear acquisition syndrome. It’s a children’s toy—a bulky piece of shiny plastic with the goal of teaching the basics of synthesis.

Now the company has just wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign for its second instrument, the Blipblox myTracks. MyTracks basically tries to answer one question: What if an Ableton Push and a Leapfrog toddler laptop had a baby? It’s a stand-alone sampler and groovebox that lets kids create their own songs from start to finish. It tries to simplify things as much as possible while still delivering a decent amount of fun sound mangling.

Editor’s note: The myTracks is still in preorder and will begin shipping later this year. We were granted early access to a preproduction model as the company finishes up the device for estimated delivery in November.

A New Musical Toy

Let’s start by clearing up what the myTracks is not: It’s not a fully-fledged MPC. You can’t chop up samples on it. The pads are not velocity sensitive (or particularly sensitive at all, really). It’s also not a synthesizer. While it has melodic tracks, they’re just single-shot samples that get pitched up and down by playing them back slower or faster. It has a certain lo-fi vibe that can be charming on the right sound, but this is not going to be the device for your kids to learn sound design or finger drumming on.

Instead, what myTracks is meant to teach is the basics of music production. It has five tracks, one of which is dedicated to drums. Kids (or kids at heart) can simply hit Record, tap out a beat, then move on to the next track to put down a bass line, and so on, until they have a complete 5-track song. It even has a built-in microphone so they can sample their toys or their own voice and use that as part of the composition.

The arguably bigger difference between the BlipBlox synth and the myTracks, though, is the complexity. Where the colorful lines, buttons, and built-in sequences made the company’s kid-friendly synth approachable to even the youngest children, myTracks is geared toward older kids. For one, they’ll need to be able to read some of the labels. The myTracks has an actual workflow for making music, whereas the BlipBlox synth was more about button mashing.

In addition to note mode, there’s a clip mode, like what you’d find inside recording software like Ableton Live. Here, the pads trigger loops that you combine and recombine to create new variations on a theme. It’s a great way to introduce kids to the concept of arranging a song.

The most fun element of myTracks is the effects. There are two effects slots, with five options that you can load: low-pass filter, high-pass filter, band-pass filter, delay, and pitch bend. And each track can be fed to either one, both, or neither, delivering a surprising amount of flexibility for a children's toy. There aren’t deep customization options for the effects, but it’s extremely satisfying to control what you can by pushing and pulling the large purple levers. It’s a toy that works even when young ones aren’t playing music. My kids are just as likely to pretend they’re piloting a spaceship with myTracks as they are to make a song.

My kids are also huge fans of the random and freak buttons. The former combines instruments, clips, and effects at random to create entire new sets for inspiration. The latter causes the machine to play random notes across all the tracks to create utter chaos.

Not Quite There

The myTracks is undeniably fun, but it can also be somewhat frustrating. Between the three different pad modes, the ability to save sets of patterns, clip and sample recording, multiple effects, and routing options, there are a lot of variables to contend with. Remembering what combination of button presses does what and deciphering what different color lights mean will take kids time. Heck, even I had a little bit of trouble.

As your kids grow up, they’ll have an easier time getting the most of myTracks, and it will also grow with them to an extent. In addition to being able to sample from the built-in microphone, myTracks has a 5-pin MIDI out port for controlling external gear. You could actually sequence the original Blipblox synth with a myTracks if you wanted. There’s also a USB-C port to send and receive MIDI from a computer and recording software. MyTracks isn’t going to be the ideal controller for Ableton Live, but it will technically work.

The $349 ($299 early-bird pricing through Kickstarter) MyTracks is far more ambitious than the original Blipblox synth. This is both a strength and a weakness. Its increased complexity makes it a little less approachable to the youngest of children. But it’s also what will help it continue to appeal to them as they get older. If, like me, you have kids who are constantly trying to play with your expensive collection of music gear, the Blipblox myTracks is an excellent way for them to scratch that itch without risking damage to your precious studio.