Dave Smith/Roger Linn Tempest

i think 'a synth trying to do drum sounds' has hit the nail on the head with this as its still the old evolver/Pro8/mopho/tetra synth engine which are flexible enough to do some percussion sounds in a flashy new box where the machinedrum and DRM are more deadicated percussion syths designed for a specific purpose from the ground up

To be fair, for many years all of the demos for the elektron machine drum sounded extremely cheesy to me... It wasn't until recently that I listened to their demos and said "ok, that actually sounds like what it can do", so it could just be a case of people not having enough time with it to know it's strengths and characteristic sounds yet.

Are there any clues to DSI's rationale for releasing this thing without the ability to load samples? The emphasis might be on the synth architecture, but including hundreds of built-in drum samples clearly demonstrates that samples are not anathema.

I'm guessing that the first batch of these things will probably sell out, so it's a bit of a moot point. I just find all this "maybe is software v2.0" bullshit to be tiresome. Two pioneering engineers like Dave Smith and Roger Linn should have no problem rolling out a product with a complete feature set. Hopefully if Roger is working on a more sampling- and sequencing-oriented machine it won't be years before it sees the light of day.

ya I don't see why they didn't make a sample-as-waveform oscillator. I guess it violates the analog-only ethos they were going for.... which is silly.

  On 10/1/2011 at 11:59 AM, slightlydrybeans said:

ya I don't see why they didn't make a sample-as-waveform oscillator. I guess it violates the analog-only ethos they were going for.... which is silly.

Say what? There are two digital oscillators per voice. My point was that there are hundreds of samples already built-in, and that they "may" add the ability to load user samples down the road. But oh well, I'm not going to be getting one of these things any time soon.

don't get this thing if you want to sample.

i just spent about 4 hours straight playing with the Tempest and holy fucking shit, this thing blows away most other drum modules i've played with, the machinedrum withstanding. Luckily they both have a very different workflow and sound style.

So far the thing that blew my mind the most about the tempest (that i didnt really consider before) was that the pads are MPC like velocity sensitive and right out of the box you can start doing rolls and live drum pattern input on it with extreme articulation detail on the analog drum sounds. For example when you have it on roll mode you can use one of the simmons-like tom drum sounds almost like a melody by pushing harder or software on the pad. IT opens up a whole new door of expressiveness for me that i havent been able to achieve nearly as nicely by midi controlling CCs to analog gear

any chance of a clean audio recording with no effects..?

  On 10/12/2011 at 10:28 PM, Awepittance said:

don't get this thing if you want to sample.

 

i just spent about 4 hours straight playing with the Tempest and holy fucking shit, this thing blows away most other drum modules i've played with, the machinedrum withstanding. Luckily they both have a very different workflow and sound style.

 

So far the thing that blew my mind the most about the tempest (that i didnt really consider before) was that the pads are MPC like velocity sensitive and right out of the box you can start doing rolls and live drum pattern input on it with extreme articulation detail on the analog drum sounds. For example when you have it on roll mode you can use one of the simmons-like tom drum sounds almost like a melody by pushing harder or software on the pad. IT opens up a whole new door of expressiveness for me that i havent been able to achieve nearly as nicely by midi controlling CCs to analog gear

I can kinda do this minus pretty lights with my MPC1000 controlling the MD then use the MD for parameter change patterns separatly.

anyhowz have you bought one? any chance of some decent demos from thee who know what decent is?

  On 10/12/2011 at 11:45 PM, soundwave said:

 

anyhowz have you bought one?

yes

  On 10/12/2011 at 11:45 PM, soundwave said:

 

any chance of some decent demos from thee who know what decent is?

i thought my friend Carson Days demo was very decent, and his demo on the web and in person is what convinced me to get one. But yeah if you're aren't convinced, oh well.

  On 10/12/2011 at 10:28 PM, Awepittance said:

IT opens up a whole new door of expressiveness for me that i havent been able to achieve nearly as nicely by midi controlling CCs to analog gear

don't you have a pad controller? i'd assume you'd get the same expressive results as long as whatever you were controlling was velocity/aftertouch sensitive.

  On 10/13/2011 at 7:15 AM, digit said:

  On 10/12/2011 at 10:28 PM, Awepittance said:

IT opens up a whole new door of expressiveness for me that i havent been able to achieve nearly as nicely by midi controlling CCs to analog gear

 

don't you have a pad controller? i'd assume you'd get the same expressive results as long as whatever you were controlling was velocity/aftertouch sensitive.

the tempest has the same synth engine as the rest of the DS synths with a four part mod matrix with envelope parameters being amongst the destinations which isn't too common on analogue synths

I really want to like it but its still too expensive for what it is imho, if they were under a £1K maybe but you could get an MPC1000, SPS-1 and a DRM new for the same price

  On 10/13/2011 at 7:15 AM, digit said:

  On 10/12/2011 at 10:28 PM, Awepittance said:

IT opens up a whole new door of expressiveness for me that i havent been able to achieve nearly as nicely by midi controlling CCs to analog gear

 

don't you have a pad controller? i'd assume you'd get the same expressive results as long as whatever you were controlling was velocity/aftertouch sensitive.

i do have one, but its not the same to have something out of the box where every single sound has such drastic velocity articulations. I've used my pad controlled on my machinedrum and the results were not nearly this spectacular unless i did a lot of configuring first.

i could understand the hesitation and the skeptic of why this device is so expensive, etc. This will all change once you sit down with one and touch it. I think it's probably the most expressive out of the box piece of analog synth gear I've ever laid my hands on personally.

Please make a demo vid... If any one could convince me of its potential, it's you. No vid has impressed me yet... Not even devines.

Doesn't even need to be a vid... Just a jam track

ok, my debut with it will probably be at this coming RecordLabelRecords .08 night at Zool. I am doing a duet of strictly Polyevolver + Tempest . Both of these together = beautiful improv beast

did you see the Carson Day video? He really shows off how expressive and live the thing is, you may not like his choice of sounds but the technique is pretty impressive.

  On 2/1/2012 at 3:47 AM, analogue wings said:

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2011/12/23/sonic-lab-review-tempest-analog-drum-machine/

so can you tweak parameters in step mode like parameter locks in an elektron?