oddly enough (to me anyway) i’ve been working primarily with the quantussy. i haven’t felt the urge to try any external audio. quantussy is incredibly rich (and confusing and maddening and beautiful) as a sound source.
when i realized things like how to change the green banana’s state with a dummy/modulated banana or that you can, of course, stack oscillator bananas into the coco inputs, it became apparent that i’d likely just be working with the quantussy for a while. actually in a few of the sessions i’ve had so far, recording phrases/loops with the cocos has felt like an afterthought because i’m so absorbed in the quantussy. that’s not to diminish the looping functions though- they’re just as idiosyncratic and rich.
i guess i would say that it’s not tough to use at all, but whether you think it’s tough to learn is more slippery. personally, i like working with partial knowledge and i like instruments (and films and music, etc.) that feel like they resist full explication and recognize value in a sort of foundational opacity. if you’re a person who wants to be able to fully and reliably map out the functions of their instruments, i could see cq being vexing (but hopefully in a fun way).
i’ve moved through eurorack and an elektron/waldorf/closed system studio in the last few years and these blasser instruments are the first things i’ve gotten that feel philosophically and functionally right to me and my priorities as a musician and listener. they’re esoteric and spiky but also naive and playful, and it’s a remarkable balance.
