Jscottk

I often want to retain the organic qualities of MIDI parts that I record into the Deluge, but I sometimes want a little bit of quantization on a part that I've recorded.

My understanding is that the only way for me to apply quantization to a recorded MIDI part is to manually zoom in on the notes that are "wrong" and fix them note by note, which becomes really tedious. I can quantize parts as I record, but can't quantize anything I've already recorded or control the amount by which MIDI input is quantized.

I like how Elektron boxes and Ableton Live allow me to apply quantization to existing clips on the fly and how they allow for quantization to be applied in small amounts, so I can for example dial in 1/16 note triplet quantization at 25% and get a nice groove that is close to being on grid but retains the human quality of the performance. I'd love to see similar functionality available in the Deluge. Triplet quantization would also be extremely helpful.

I've thought for a while that it would be really neat to be able to use the pad grid to visualize sample waveforms for editing on the fly.

It seems fairly straightforward to down-sample a waveform to the resolution of the Deluge's grid at a given zoom level and display it on the pads:

(Edit: simplified image.)

The above shows a waveform at four different zoom levels and the corresponding Deluge output with selection markers. I was thinking an accent color (orange in this case) could be useful for highlighting peaks.

Selection markers mapped to knobs could allow users to crop samples, and a highly granular zoom would allow people to identify zero crossings to avoid "click" sounds when playing back looped samples. Selection markers along with zooming and scrolling would also be useful for honing in on specific subsets of long samples that you want to play with further.

Does anyone else think this would be useful?

Under the resampling section in the manual it's stated that "Or, if you wish for it to stop at the exact instant that a loop finishes playing, press record+play (again - if you began output-recording with this combination)." I'm wondering why we don't have this functionality for basic sampling (not just resampling) and whether or not it's on the roadmap?

This would allow for significantly easier real-time looping of external audio and seems trivially easy to implement.

@minigoat @emptyvessel Here's a rough video showing my workflow.

Apologies about the quality, I was recording output directly from the Deluge speaker with my cellphone a few feet away.

You can tell I still struggle with quickly trimming newly recorded clips but I think it'll get faster/smoother as I get more practice doing it.

Edit: after thinking a bit more about how I can trim recordings quicker, I realized that using a 4-beat count in before playing on my external gear would help immensely. Basically I'll just use the last 4 beats of the main loop to get ready on the external keyboard, and after laying down the first layer I'll know about how long each subsequent layer will need to be trimmed by (because they'll have roughly the same time before the start of the first measure as the first layer does). I'm aiming to finish trimming new samples by the time the whole loop repeats once.

I was playing around with a Korg SQ 1 sequencer attached to a 0-coast synthesizer via cv + gate the other day and found that I was really drawn in by the direct (continuous, non-scalar) control over each note's pitch that the SQ 1 afforded.

I started to think about how I could replicate that experience with the Deluge and the closest thing I could think of was using the transpose function to pitch notes around (edit: turns out I can only do this for the whole track rather than individual notes). The only issue is that transposition occurs by a minimum amount of one cent, and I am interested in exploring weird untempered scales and the space between cents.

I'd love the ability to use one of the smooth/unstepped knobs to continuously sweep through voltages when outputting to cv. Then I could line up notes in a pattern (like on the SQ 1) and go through each note setting different voltages with more granularity. Anyone else interested in this?

+1 great idea. I'd love to be able to automate track muting as well (so I can set up cuts/drops within tracks easily)

As I was playing with the kit technique I mentioned above, I realized that each sample slot on a kit can hold a loop from an external source. That opens up a workflow that allows me to arrange a whole "scene" in one track and then use song mode similar to ableton live's session view where each row represents a distinct group/loop. It's amazing!

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to disable automatic playback of files from the file browser so when I'm setting up a new bank to record a loop to, the music is often disrupted from the previous loop playing back immediately. I can work around that by selecting the audition pad + new only at the start of a new measure/downbeat, but it's still annoying.

I can record a video showing the process if anyone's interested.

Edit: just realized I can stop playback by hitting "back" as soon as I'm in the file browser! That solves the problem for the most part

I'm not suggesting that your work would be saved over without your consent, simply that your song gets periodically saved to a new dedicated recovery/autosave slot (which I was imagining at slot -1 or the last slot).

You wouldn't be losing any functionality or experiencing any change in existing functionality other than a new ability to recover what was in the temp/autosave slot.

Think of how Word or Gmail implements document recovery. If you've worked on something for a while without saving it there's a backup draft that you can pull up. That's all I'm suggesting here.

Edit: it would also be useful for the scenario when batteries run out while working on a piece that hasn't been saved.

I've found that with long samples I often want to add reverb to a particular step in the sample or abruptly cut out the audio within a certain range, and my only option for doing that right now (AFAIK) involves manually turning the reverb and volume knobs while recording. I often can't turn them quickly enough from 0 to full (or vice versa) to create a clean cutoff or apply an effect satisfyingly, so I've thought that the ability to hold a pad within a sample and set the value of a parameter for just that step would be extremely useful.

Is there any other way to easily add abrupt blank space (or cut out a range) within a sample?