Tempest as Polysynth - Selecting Sounds

[Stoss]

So, I’ve been spending time with the Tempest gathering up all of the factory preset synth sounds nested within each factory project / beat and bringing them all together within one project. I’ve been editing them, normalizing the tuning, customizing the FX sliders and adding modwheel and aftertouch control. I’ve also been creating my own synth presets with similar external control capabilities. Essentially, I’ll end up with a project that will not be intended for sequencing with the Tempest, but rather for being played and sequenced externally by an external MIDI keyboard controller and polyphonic sequencer. I’ll end up with slots for 32 synth presets within 16 beats all within one project for a total of 512 presets.

So, I’ve found one thing extremely frustrating and wanted to see if anyone has ideas, or wants to point out what I’m missing. When I’m in a beat and want to switch the external MIDI keyboard from one preset (pad) to the next, I have to go into the system preferences and change the pad that is set to be controlled by the external MIDI keyboard. It’s cumbersome and removes you from seeing where you are at within the Tempest as well as being able to control any of the buttons on the Tempest itself while in the menu.

Ideally the Tempest would have settings that would allow me to either:
1) Control the currently selected pad with the external MIDI keyboard
Or
2) Change the pad assignment of the external MIDI keyboard via external MIDI CC.

So... am I missing something here? Does anyone have a proper work around, or method for using the Tempest as a polysynth with presets that works comfortably within the existing limitations?

Thanks! 

[Razmo]

You are out of luck here... I tried extensively to find a way to change the selected pad via MIDI when I created my editor for sounds... It is just not possible... It is yet another one of those stupid MIDI limitations of TEMPEST.

I needed this to be able to have 32 buffers in my editor, but instead I have just one, and have to physically hit the pad I want to send the edited sound to... I even cannot play the sent sound after dumping it, from an external keyboard because as soon as TEMPEST receive the sound, it waits for you to hit a pad to exit dump receive mode... So I need to have the TEMPEST at my side at all times because you will need to constantly touch it's interface for different tasks

Lately I found yet another annoying thing about tempest... If you attach a monosynth to TEMPEST MIDI out because you want to sequence it from TEMPEST, you not only loose a TEMPEST voice when the sequencer trigger the external monosynth, you also cannot play the monosynth via a connected keyboard to TEMPESTS MIDI input, only via the pads because TEMPEST does not echo the external keybord's note on messages out of its MIDI output... Works fine with the internal sounds, but not a connected monosynth...

This leaves you (yet again) with the feeling of yet another half done feature... Unfortunately.

[muleskinner]

You can't do it but you can switch beat remotely so at least that should give you access to 16 of them (small things, I know)!

[Stoss]

By not including the FX slider settings into the the saved sound, this also limits the ability to have a dedicated pad and just dial up a new sound... not to mention the extremely limited storage space dedicated to saving individual sounds.

[Razmo]

I think that it was meant for the Sound storage space to be used mainly as a scratch pad storage... the real "presets" in Tempest are the BEATS, which is probably why the sliders are stored with the BEAT instead of the Sounds... I think it was meant to be used in a way where you quickly dial in a sound to a BEAT, and then tailor that sound with the knobs, and assigning things there... Everything seems to be included in a BEAT... all sounds, all the mixer settings, the distortion, the compressor etc.

Anyway, there are free space for 649 sounds in the sound storage space... this is more than many synths will deliver (todays standard being either 512 or 1024 presets), so I would not say that storage space for sounds are limited compared to normal synths... maybe some users are used to samples where they literally can have tens of thousands of sample files.

Honestly... I would not want to create more than 649 sounds... it would take forever to do that, and too many choices could also get out of hand.

Also, i find that almost all drums loaded need some kind of tweaking anyway, to fit the other sounds in a kit... but I can see why you would not need that, if you're just creating synth banks.

Anyway... this is just my point of view of course

[Stoss]

I think the sound storage becomes a little thin in the context of the Tempest being a drum machine and a polyphonic synth. Kicks, snares, hi hats, etc, etc... things fill up fast.

In any case... I totally agree and use the Tempest in the context of designed BEATS consisting of all the sounds you like to use together and ready to go. I will say that for each sound within that beat I put in significant time designing the function of the FX sliders to give me intuitive expression of the sound while playing/recording it. The problem of course becomes that if I like a certain sound within one BEAT and would like to copy it to another, I have to manually dial in everything in the FX sliders after saving and loading the sound. It’s a shame, as I consider those FX sliders a key part of the sound’s performance design.

[muleskinner]

You can copy a sound from one beat to another and keep the FX slider settings. I usually save beats as 'sound collections' and keep beat 16 as a kind of scratch pad for this.

I agree it's ridiculous they're not saved with the individual sound though.

[Stoss]

You can copy a sound from one beat to another and keep the FX slider settings.

Hmmm, I forgot about this. I’ll look it up and give it a try!

Also, on a related note, I was thinking that I could assign A16 as my pad playable by the external keyboard. In each beat I could leave that pad blank and just copy the sound from one of the other 15 pads to A16 to be played or sequenced externally. I could also use Soundbank B in a similar way, just copy one of the sounds to B16, then copy B16 to A16 with a double tap. Kind of a finicky workaround, but maybe the most viable option.

[muleskinner]

Also, on a related note, I was thinking that I could assign A16 as my pad playable by the external keyboard. In each beat I could leave that pad blank and just copy the sound from one of the other 15 pads to A16 to be played or sequenced externally. I could also use Soundbank B in a similar way, just copy one of the sounds to B16, then copy B16 to A16 with a double tap. Kind of a finicky workaround, but maybe the most viable option.

Good idea!

You may know this but you can copy sounds from bank B to bank A (and vice versa) without the double-tap. If you press the 'Sound Bank B' button mid-way through the copy/paste procedure it works!

Double-tap is good for quick switching though.

[Tundrah]

Also, on a related note, I was thinking that I could assign A16 as my pad playable by the external keyboard. In each beat I could leave that pad blank and just copy the sound from one of the other 15 pads to A16 to be played or sequenced externally. I could also use Soundbank B in a similar way, just copy one of the sounds to B16, then copy B16 to A16 with a double tap. Kind of a finicky workaround, but maybe the most viable option.

Actually, this is not a bad idea at all! I might use this myself! Thank you

[Stoss]

You can copy a sound from one beat to another and keep the FX slider settings.

I tried copying a sound from one beat to another using Copy Sound within the Edit Menu. This does not copy the FX Slider settings. Is there another method I’m missing?

[muleskinner]

You can copy a sound from one beat to another and keep the FX slider settings.

I tried copying a sound from one beat to another using Copy Sound within the Edit Menu. This does not copy the FX Slider settings. Is there another method I’m missing?

Sorry - my bad! I was sure it did this but apparently not.

I think because I tend to use very similar FX slider settings for all my percussive sounds I must have deluded myself into thinking it was copying the values across but in fact it wasn't!

[Stoss]

You can copy a sound from one beat to another and keep the FX slider settings.

I tried copying a sound from one beat to another using Copy Sound within the Edit Menu. This does not copy the FX Slider settings. Is there another method I’m missing?

Sorry - my bad! I was sure it did this but apparently not.

I think because I tend to use very similar FX slider settings for all my percussive sounds I must have deluded myself into thinking it was copying the values across but in fact it wasn't!

No problem. I thought maybe there was a technique I had forgotten. In any case, I’ll just use my existing method for copying Sound FX Settings from one Beat to another... shoot photos with my phone and recreate everything. 🙄

[MeekyP]

The work around I planning on using is to control the tempest sound pad with external synth e.g. Prophet 12.

TEMPEST Setup

1: System: MIDI Polyphonic Keyboard Play menu > 1 MIDI: Synth IN Channel 1
2: MIDI: Synth Sound A16 (this is the pad where the Tempest synth sound is loaded)
3,4,5,etc...: Leave AS IS

Now on the Prophet 12 etc...
1- I will turn down volume/off, so that when play keys the synth sound on PAD A16 on Tempest will sound
2- I can then highier the volume of the Prophet 12 to hear both patches (from tempest and Prophet 12) play together

IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION
3- If I MUTE pad A16 on Tempest 16 MUTES > PADs I will only hear the Prophet 12 patch therefore I can choose different patches as normal on Prophet 12 and not affect the sequence of the Tempest.

Unfortunately as mentioned above in other replies we have to physically change the pad (A16,15,14 etc..) MIDI: Synth Sound on the Tempest to be able to play that particular sound from a specific pad.

SO

You could create or copy beats with different synth sounds on the same pad e.g. A16 then that way you could just select a pad to trigger the beat effectively just changing the synth sound playing from your external keyboard of choice.