Medusa Synth Sound Design (Ep.6): Making Drums (Including Polyend Tracker)
Tutorials
What's up
What’s up
Demover: Finding a Unique Voice Through Hardware
Martin Szijjártó, also known by his artist name Demover, is a familiar name in the Tracker world. He created his very first EP, titled Let’s Find Out, entirely on the Polyend Tracker. He’s passionately into experimental electronic music, and Glitch, Experimental, and IDM influence his sound — often with a touch of video game vibes sprinkled in. Download the tracker project file for his song XYZ to explore the techniques he mentions for yourself.
You recently created Cryptic, a palette of synth presets for the Play+, Tracker+, or Synth. Can you tell us a bit about this preset pack?Â
It was a lot of fun putting Cryptic together — cooking it up with the Tracker and its synth engines was honestly delicious! I didn’t want it to be too monotone, so I tried to create something that feels playful and experimental at the same time. The main goal was to encourage users to dive into the macros and feel comfortable playing around — to really get lost in the lead, bass, pad sounds, drums, and SFX.
You are a prolific Tracker user. Can you recall a specific “aha!” moment with the Tracker?
Ohhh yes! For me, discovering the Instrument Randomization / Fill feature in the Tracker was a big one. I realized that if I filled a track with randomized percussive samples, it would unlock a whole new dimension for me — and it totally did.
I still use it to this day — honestly, I almost never work without it anymore.
Could you tell us about the genres that inspire you and how Polyend’s devices lend to crafting tracks in these genres?
My genre choices totally depend on my mood. I often fall asleep to horror game soundtracks — mostly ambient — which really helps me relax. But I’m also hugely inspired by IDM, Big Beat, Ambient, DnB, Vaporwave, and electronic music from the ‘80s and ‘90s all the way to now. I had heard of trackers before, but I never used an Amiga, C64, or even Renoise. And these days, I barely touch a DAW — I pretty much work exclusively with hardware.
My first real encounter with trackers was the Polyend Tracker, and it’s perfect for all the genres I just mentioned. It lets me sketch out ideas, finish tracks, and export them straight from the device. It’s genius!
With the Synth, I’m also able to shape really interesting concepts, textures, and atmospheres. It’s a super comfortable tool both for experimentation and live performance.
How do you approach translating your studio creations into a live setting? What role does the Performance Mode play in how you build and execute your live sets?
I think it works really well — you can customize it beautifully on the Tracker!
My first outdoor live recording happened last January, out in nature, and the Performance Mode gave me such a nice happy accident that it still puts a smile on my face today.
Your IDM jam has incredible, evolving texture. Did that come from the Granular or Wavetable synth engine? Could you walk us through some techniques on how you got these textures?
The base of that track actually came from Wavetable — but I sampled it from an older track of mine and then imported it.
I added a lot of glitch samples, randomized them within a single track, transposed them, and used roll FX to make it even more dynamic — I really wanted to avoid the feel of a repetitive loop.
Also, I layered in some video game-style sounds from the Synth engine toward the end — I think they fit really well in the overall vibe.
The video was shot in a friend’s environment — we found this sunflower field that was past its prime, kind of eerie and beautiful at the same time.
The bird mask into the visual as a surreal element — people can interpret it however they like. :)
