Thanks for detailed run down. Where are tempos associated?
Master, I believe. To switch tempo, you load a new song.
Thnx, Yeah I know about the import tax.
Thatās pretty fast shippingtime, didnāt expect that. I will have to wait till the next batch.
Theyāre aiming to have a general stock in place within a month or so, to eradicate this whole batch and waiting time game. Seems the Deluges sell out as soon as a new batch arrives, which is a short term luxury but long term bad business.
Thatās the best explanation I have read about Deluge workflow! Biggest limitation of this approach is that currently there isnāt a way to copy tracks from one āsongā to another. Otherwise itās really easy to make a full track (or a whole performance!) just by combining different songs together.
Mine arrived a day before the estimated delivery date Iād been emailed, so maybe mine came a bit quicker than norm, but youāre certainly not looking at a long time between it being shipped and it reaching you.
Can this thing transpose sequences in realtime?
Yep. Both the sequence itself, as well as the actual tuning of the sample or oscillator.
Thanksšyes, that would be something.
Oh man! I was already decided to go with A4, but now itās back to the drawing table!
To be sure, though, can it transpose all tracks simultaneously? Is it done one semitone at a time, or can you transpose all tracks from any key directly to any key in the heat of the night?
All tracks - probably not, though let me try and get back to you on that one. I think that changing the scale affects the entire song in real time, but not sure.
Transposing is done one semi at a time, and is not the feature youāre looking for. Scales might be, tho. Iāll check and get back to you.
Ok, so I donāt think the Deluge can do what you want it to do, though itās a deep instrument so donāt take my word for it
I tried to find a transpose mode while zoomed out on the top level, but found no such thing. I could only transpose on the fly, one track per each. Changing the scales only worked per track as well.
This makes sense since each track is so much its own entity, with settings and all, that you probably donāt want all your tracks to warp around, while youāre messing with just the one.
However, when zoomed out on the top level where all tracks are visible at the same time, it would make sense to be able to do these overall modifications to influence all tracks. But if there is, Iām unable to find it.
Theresāa general feature within the Deluge, where you can assign all sounds within a track to be influenced at the same time with your tweaks. Both your edits in the grid, as well as your parameter changes. Itās called Affect All (I believe), and is especially useful on the kit tracks since you can then do classic overall filter sweeps, drops or highs over all your samples within that kit.
So the idea is there, and if the Deluge can do these overall changes to all tracks at once, Iād imagine you would find it somewhere along that path. But if itās there, I didnāt see it.
Which, again, is not to say it canāt be done - just that I couldnāt do it
You might wanna check this out, though. Itās certainly interesting for live performances:
Yeah, I already checked it.
I think I checked them all by now
But thanks mate! You are a real hero. Your descriptions of the workflow are making my decisions really difficult.
Man this thing has a lot of amazing features.
Thanks for saying, thatās very kind of you. The Deluge is certainly something new and I had my doubts before I pulled the trigger, just because there werenāt all that many people around talking about it. Which is a shame, cause itās worth talking about.
But again, you should always read my stuff with the fairy dust filter turned on. Iāve been known to praise and raise and then dismiss after a few weeks, so look at the facts and just the facts
So after some more time with the Deluge, there are two things on the consideration side that Iād like to share. One is highly subjective, while the other might be more generally relevant.
First, you need to know that Iām from the beginning, a classically trained piano player. I know Iāve said so many times on this forum, but in case youāve missed it, Iām saying it again cause itās relevant to my first, mentioned super subjective point.
While Iāve never considered groove boxes all that much fun to play, compared to a keyboard, there are still nuances. By far the most enjoyable playing experience Iāve had with a groove box is the Tempest. That thing just sets your fingers on fire. The current gen Electribe is a solid second. The Analog Rytm is a distant something for me in this regard, the Analog Four doesnāt even count, but the Octatrack is surprisingly (for me) enjoyable to just play.
Anyway. In this regard, the Deluge is no fun to play. Even by groove box standards, itās closer to a more schematic and programmatic approach to creating music, and less about just banging away on the keys and see what happens. Itās the opposite of the Tempest, when it comes to fingering the box and play it. It has nice real-time features for working with the sounds and the patterns to get cool things going live, but just playing it just isnāt all that much fun.
I want to underline again where Iām coming from. Even when I had the neighbours call the cops because of my Tempest adventures, I still always yearned for proper, white keys. Even the best of my groove box moments are just an idea of how much I enjoy playing an instrument like the Sub37, a Prophet or a fine, acoustic piano. But for all the things the Deluge can do, even in a live context, itās more a daw in a creative format and less of a groove box, for grooving.
Second, and this might be more relevant here - sampling remains at its heart a rudimentary affair, at least if you use it as a sampler - not a sample playback instrument.
The developer has already added great features like resampling, streaming from the SD card and such things - but if youāre like me, and you like to sample your own loops from external sources, and you donāt think trimming them by ear is all that much fun, the Deluge is not a solid option.
It has no automation for start and stop recording. No audio threshold like the Digitakt, no trigs like the Octatrack ,no oscillator in sampling like the Electribe. For a perfectly timed loop, youāre left in OP-1 territory. Sample, trim by ear, and go from there. Not a huge problem, unless youāre like me and have all kinds of loops and sequences going from all kinds of directions, and you wanna sample them into the Deluge and just get to work. I did this all the time with the Octa and the Digitakt, but I find myself shying away from it with the Deluge, just because of the chore of trimming the samples.
These two factors keep nagging me, as I learn to use the Deluge. Iāve yet to finish an entire track with this thing, and at this point, I had two or three things done with the Digitakt and one of them on Soundcloud. Granted, I was familiar with the Elektron way and it took me about a minute to figure out the Digitakt. The Deluge is different in so many ways.
But if the actual playing of the box is important to you, as is an immediacy to sampling for perfectly timed loops, then look closer and see if the Delugeās haves and have-nots have an impact on you. I was already aware of these things as I bought it and they donāt frustrate me, Iām just being aware of how much they mean to me when I focus solely on the Deluge.
Thereās a flip side to the first point, though, which I feel I should add as well. Again, being a classically trained guy, Iām familiar with sheet music, harmonics and stuff.
So if I hear something in my head, get an idea or whatever, itās stupid fast and easy to write it down into the Deluge, as if it was an interactive piece of sheet music. Including rests, ties, breaks, scales and chords - it all just happens so fast.
So the upside of the Delugeās approach, if youāre an ivory key guy like māself, is that for composing in a more traditional manner, itās absolutely brilliant.
So thereās that, as well.
Ah, who am I kidding? The Deluge is awesome. Iām just out of ideas and try to say something clever about it, instead of just admitting that even though I got all these great possibilities here now, I just canāt get anything groovy going for the moment.
Man, how this would suck if I did this for a living
I read these last post just out of pure geekness, since Iām not considering getting one, but I remember beeing really curious about it when it was announcedā¦ great insight as always, @andreasroman!
I have to admit, the all-in-one approach always interests meā¦ and I really appreciate how these guys are really doing their own thing - wished there were more developers going for these kind of risksā¦
I know itās probably been said many times, but I canāt help thinking how much more streamlined and user-friendly this wouldāve been with a better screen - maybe one day there will be a V.2 where that is taken care of
Iāve given the Delugeās master section some more attention lately, if you can call it that. Again, I feel that this feature is worth a mention, especially considering the latest firmware now allows real-time manipulation of any Audio In signal.
Essentially, the Deluge has a set of pre-defined short cuts through the two main edit knobs. Typically, these involve volume and pan, cutoff and resonance, delay time and feedback, stutters and stuff. When you edit a patch, these are very handy for scuplting, and whenever you wanna go deeper, any other parameter is just a Shift button press away.
However, for those of you familiar with the Tempest, you also know that some of that instrumentās edits are also available as pure realtime fx when you play live, in Pattern mode. The Deluge is the same. So if you go into the Song mode with the Deluge, where you get an overview of all available tracks in your song, these edit knobs maintain their function, but now for all tracks at once.
So essentially, if you wanna go DJ style on this, you have access to - in real time - volume, pan, LPF and HPF cutoff, LPF and HPF frequency, Hi and Lo EQ, Delay time and feedback, Attack and Sustain, Distortion and Noise, Stutter and ā¦ oh, you get it.
The Tempest has about eight of these fx available in real time and was by far one of the coolest features of that instrument. The Deluge applies the same idea, but with more features and slightly more hands on. So if you wanna tear up the track live, you can go absolutely crazy with these parameters. For a reference perhaps more relevant to many Elektronauts, compare this to applying your favourite parameters of choice to the Octatrackās master track and create a set of interesting scenes that blend between these, to go bonkers live with all tracks at once, and you get the idea.
And like the Octatrack, and unlike the Tempest, this can also be applied to an audio in signal. So if youāve got something funky going on from an external source, just plug it in, assign the track an Audio In oscillator and go for it. And that includes real-time pitching.
The fx are shamelessly digital, of course, and anyone familiar with the Octatrackās character will feel at home. Iād say the Delugeās fx are better, especially the delays and reverbs, though Iām sure some would argue about the quality of the saturation, dist and bit crushing.
But seriously, come on. All this power in this little box. I know I should be posting audio samples of all my rants, but I canāt get myself to sit down and record something proper as learning this thing is still too much fun.