Feedback on voice assignment/panning pattern

[Simple Rabbit]

Hi there! I'm trying to structure my Tempest kits in a reasonable, flexible, and consistent way. I'm newer to it though, so wanted to check with you all to see if my assumptions and ideas are sane.

1. Synth output:
Voice 8 and 16 in all my kits are synths (basses or leads). Both are set to voice 6 so I can send it to a dedicated effects chain with overdrive, etc. I only expect to use one synth at a time per beat.

2. Panning main outs into two separate mono outs:
I want two overall drum effect chains. Chain A for compressor, overdrive, bitcrusher, etc. Chain B for reverb and such for snares.

Instead of a dedicated snare voice, I was thinking of hard-panning everything L and sending my L main out to chain A and my R main out to chain B. Then I can pan my snares and anything else I want hard R to chain B. That way I can have multiple simultaneous voices output separately from the rest, rather than a single, dedicated voice...and could even mix my snares to get a little reverb AND whatever master effects the rest of the drums are getting in chain A.

I know this will effectively mono my drum mix, but I don't think I have much use for stereo. If I ever want to do detailed recording and mixing with panning, I assume I can separate things out in multiple recording passes.

Will I get in trouble and be frustrated with this, or does it seem generally sane and useful?

3. Finally, I think storing each kit as a beat file makes most sense. Is that right? My general sound scheme looks like this:

Code: [Select]

Misc - Shaker - TomH - Kick2 - Snare2 - HhOpen -  Clap  - Synth
Misc - Crash  - TomL - Kick  - Snare  - HhTight - Crash - Synth


[Yorgos Arabatzis]

You should read the tips & tricks thread..A lot of gems in there..
Tempest needs special handling in many areas.One of that is when you assign a Bass,pad or sustained sounds in general to a voice and try to play fast you can hear clicks because of the voice architecture.If you leave this type of sounds to Main Outs everything’s normal.So if i were you i’d make my plans based on that.

[John the Savage]

To expand on what Yorgos said above, I also think you'd be better off using the main-outs for synth voices and whatever percussion sounds you want to be able to play simultaneously (hard-panned for separation if that's what you need), and then dedicate one or two of the voice-outs for special processing cases like snares or what-have-you.  That way you'll at least have the option of playing polyphonic synth lines, and on monophonic lines you'll avoid the 'clicking' that happens when a sound is otherwise assigned to a voice and chokes itself.

The rest of your plan sounds perfectly reasonable to me.  Yes, storing kits as "beats" is the way it has to be.  You are, however, given the option to load just the sounds from any given beat (as a kit) into another sequence if you want, or conversely you could also load just the sequences, note FX, or other aspects of the "beat".

Cheers!

*Edit: it should also be noted that the Amp Feedback is tapped from the left output, last in the signal chain; so if you are planning on creating separate mono signal paths by hard-panning sounds, just be aware that any sound that relies on feedback, either for character or entirely, will be noticeably affected by panned: i.e. panning left will increase the amount of feedback, while panning all the way to the right will negate its effect altogether.

[muleskinner]

I have settled on a working pattern that's not dissimilar from what you suggest. Basically treating the outs from the Tempest as mono (apart from the main outs) and doing all the panning on a mixing desk.

I tend to use voices 1-3 for kick, snare, hats, all panned hard left via voice outs. 5 and 6 for backing synths / percussion via the main outs. 4 is often for a synth sound that I want to mix separately (like a strong arp or bass) or sometimes I unplug this and also route to the main outs (e.g. for poly).

I use the right channel of 1-3 for other drums that I want to process separately and can get away with this as long as they don't overlap whatever's on the left channel.

It changes a bit per project but that's the general approach I've settled on. Usually have reverb and delay as a send fx on the desk.

 

[Simple Rabbit]

  ok cool! Thanks for the help you three!

I'm glad I asked before reworking all my projects. Tempest is so bizarre. I'm half in love with it...but it's a struggle getting all the way there.

I'll update when I have some time to give these ideas a try.