Choke and voice assign – Dave Smith Instruments TEMPEST User Manual

Page 48

38 Choke and Voice Assign

Dave Smith Instruments

Choke and Voice Assign

Each of a Beat’s thirty-two Sounds can be choked by one of two other Sounds in

the Beat. The most obvious use is to enable a pedaled or closed high-hat to choke

off an open high-hat.

To Set Choke for a Sound:

1. In 16 S

oundS

pad mode and S

oundS

edit mode, press S

hift

then M

athS

or repeatedly press the P

age

own

or 6 key, to navigate to the Misc screen.

2. Tap any pad to select a Sound.
3. Use the C

hoke

1 Soft Knob to choose the Sound/pad that will be choked

whenever this sound plays. If desired, use C

hoke

2 to specify a second

choke Sound/pad.

oiCe

SSign

restricts a Sound to playing on only one of Tempest’s six voices.

By default, Tempest uses dynamic voice allocation. That is, if a voice is already

occupied with playing a Sound, new notes will play on the next available voice.

When all six voices are in use, new notes will steal a voice from one of the

Sounds already playing, causing that Sound to be cut off. Assigning a Sound to a

specific voice guarantees that voice won’t be stolen, at least not by the remaining

dynamically allocated voices. Multiple Sounds can be assigned to a single voice

and will still steal the voice when two or more notes play simultaneously.

Again, using a high-hat as an example, assigning the different high-hat articula-

tions to a single voice will guarantee that the high-hat will always sound and its

voice will not be stolen. If a Beat has a steady 8th- or 16th-note pattern, it will be

pretty obvious if the high-hat’s voice is stolen, even for one note.

Be aware, though, that some Sounds—particularly Sounds with longer decays

like crash or ride cymbals—can benefit from the voices being dynamically

allocated. These Sounds tend to sound better or, at least, more realistic, if they’re

allowed to overlap and not be cut off by voice stealing, so it may take some

planning and tweaking to achieve a good balance between Sounds assigned to

specific voices and Sounds that use the remaining pool of dynamically allocated

voices.

oiCe

SSign

also assigns a Sound to a specific voice output. For example, if the

kick drum is assigned to voice 1, the kick drum will be available for separate

processing via the Voice 1 jack on the rear panel. Inserting a plug in one of the

individual voice output jacks removes that voice from the main outputs. The

voice output jacks are stereo, and so retain any pan settings.