Play All Day’s debut outing takes a novel approaching to hands‑on hardware control.
The PlayFader stands out against a backdrop of serious synths and black and silver modular, and that alternative vibe is most certainly deliberate. It draws you in and invites you to play. With buttons arranged like an assortment of Chewits and a pair of big DJ‑style faders, it feels like you know exactly what to do. But while it may look like a DJ effects box, it is actually many other things. The PlayFader is a two‑channel MIDI and CV sequencer, controller and button‑laden fun box adventure. It’s unexpectedly deep, well thought‑out, inspirational and, at times, frustrating. You can come up with a fabulous groove in moments, fiddle it about, forget your button combos and accidentally overwrite yourself all with a huge smile on your face. It’s a lot of fun.
It was designed by Play All Day founder Andrew ‘Hadj’ Hadjiantoni, who left a corporate career at Apple to run Ambient Sound & Music retreats in Mallorca and design fascinating controllers. For the PlayFader, he partnered with Jason Hotchkiss of 64 Pixels to provide the coding.
Physicality
The unit itself is a decent Game Boy‑sized device encased in recycled plastic, which can be easily swapped out for a more subdued colour. The top cover that protects the controls also fits on the bottom to raise it up a bit and provide a chunkier and grippier form. The Bourns faders have a pleasing amount of resistance over their 60mm throw, but there’s quite a bit of wobble.
On the top end, you will find a row of mini‑jack connections. If you turn the PlayFader over and remove the cover that’s now covering the bottom, you’ll find the corresponding labels. You have two lots of CVs/gates for Play A and Play B, and MIDI or sync in and out, which can be set with a couple of recessed switches. The power socket is on the same row, and in the box you’ll find a braided myVolts Ripcord cable that can plug into any USB socket and supply power to the PlayFader.
Plug it in, and the centre space between the faders lights up with a lovely green segment LED display. The display runs at right angles to the flow of the PlayFader, making you feel you should turn the device into landscape and use the faders as crossfaders. But that’s not how this is supposed to work. This slight disorientation is somehow part of the charm of what we’ll discover is quite a quirky device, and you’ll be surprised at how little it matters.
The PlayFader’s rear‑panel connections include 3.5mm ports for MIDI/sync and two sets of CV and gate outputs. At the farthest right is an input for a 9V power supply.
So What Does It Do?
Either side of the two‑channel controller can sequence or control things, quantised or unquantised. This can be CV and gate or translated into MIDI notes and CC numbers. You can have both the analogue outputs and MIDI working simultaneously.
So, grab the fader to select the note or control the voltage level and hit the white Play A or Play B button to squirt that into your gear. The idea is that you have a running loop into which you capture notes and modulation on the fly. In a couple of taps you’ve got a looping bass line and a melody, or a bass line and modulated filter, or looping modulation running to whatever you want. You can add to it, overwrite it, clear it, rework it or throw on some ‘Fun’ effects.
As a sequencer the fader acts rather like a trombone. You are sliding through all the notes to find the one you want. With a scale enabled, the display will show note letters...
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