Interesting Deluge features: triplets mode and note length

So, after playing with the Deluge for a couple of weeks, I’m glad I was never really planning to replace the Pyramid with it, but I’ll admit that while it’s missing a lot of basic sequencing features the Pyramid got right, there are a few interesting ideas that the Squarp team should seriously consider.

Triplets Mode

At every zoom level, you can switch to triplet mode, where only 12 of the 16 pads are used. The deluge uses a very faint with color on the pad that is disabled, to show the fact that every 4th pads is inactive, and the other 3 steps show the triplets. Switching back and forth between 16x 16th notes and 12x 8th note triplets feels really natural.

Note Lengths

The other feature that is pretty useful is the fact that notes that last for more than a single step are shown with reduced brightness on all of the steps that contain that note. This helps a lot when you have held chords at different zoom levels, because it gives you a better representation of where you have notes an where you don’t. The pad that contains a Note-On event is full brightness, and all the pads between the Note-On and Note-Off events have reduced brightness.

I realize that this should be a different brightness level than a Muted notes. So what I would propose that a muted note doesn’t have tails ( doesn’t show the duration ) and is brighter than a tail, but not full brightness like a note-on pad

The other interesting feature is to use a shortcut to set the note length by selecting a pad, rather than rotating an encoder. In the case of the Deluge is the only way to set the note length, which is not as precise as the Pyramid way, but in some cases, being able to just click on the step you want the note to end, instead of counting steps while rotating the encoder would be more immediate.

Discuss…

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very interesting…:sunglasses:

aaah… :upside_down_face:I asked this implementation for 2 years on the Pyramid!:roll_eyes:
(since the old forum)
in my opinion, this is the most intuitive way to manage triplets

yeah … it would be awesome indeed, but I think it would be quite tricky to do without RGB leds (hence the interest of having RGB leds in a future hardware version of the Pyramid… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)
even on the electribe2 where there were bi-color leds I remember it was very confusing.
With RGB leds, with all variations of color and brightness it is very easy to represent the tail of the notes (this is the case on the Ableton Push for example and it works very well)
+other states (mute states, waiting states etc.)

in any case,
I hope Squarp will put aside these features above
it could be useful for the future …:wink:

(note: the main risk with RGB leds is to want to put different colors everywhere and, in the end, the machine looks like a Christmas tree :nauseated_face:
the line is very thin … it is necessary to remain vigilant so that each choice of color/variation of brightness remains really justified by the ergonomics)

+100 for the triplet mode. While it’s certainly possible to enter triplets in step-mode as it is, it’s ridiculously cumbersome considering how ubiquitous triplets are in music.

In http://squarp.community/t/track-length-problem-in-12-8-time-signature/ @thetechnobear suggested using the bottom row for triplet zoom modes, which to me sounds like a nicely pyramidsque way of implementing it (as opposed to a separately toggled triplet mode).

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Another interesting post.
I don’t generally try and programme triplets… just play them in live… but switching scale like that sounds very interesting.
Regarding the statement above. Could you give a little more information ? I’m interested to know

me too, i also think this is very interesting given the high praise the Deluge sequencer gets on the internet. just another reminder to wait a bit until the hype has cooled down a bit before judging a new piece of gear.

I agree that none of these ideas are new, and I remember some of those discussions in the old forum.

On the color. I think that Squarp still has ways to express values with a monochrome LED that haven’t been explored yet. Right now there’s only 2 intensities used ( full and half ) and you can probably add 1-2 more level, specially if it’s not for primary information ( I consider Note Length to be secondary, compared to Note Start )

And yes, RGB pads go toward the xmas tree effect very quickly. The track groups in the Deluge are color coded ( only ) and that gets confusing quickly, IMHO.

Deluge can’t… basic editing is seriously lacking on the Deluge compared to the Pyramid. Starting with the fact that you can’t select anything other than a single note or a “screen” ( a single 16 step region at the given zoom level ) makes the workflow significantly slower.
You can’t change the length of multiple notes at all.
You can’t stamp chords, copy/paste deletes the entire region first, you can only offset notes by whole steps at a given zoom level, there is now way to see or edit automation ( cc or the synth engine ). you can’t make a note length longer than the end of the loop. You can’t set track lengths quickly in bars, only in steps at the current zoom level. Creating a 8 bar track means rotating the encoder to add 120 steps of length at the default 16th note zoom.

Weirdly enough, while the piano roll view is nice to enter notes, being able to see all notes on a step like on the Pyramid is actually incredibly useful. so you don’t forget about notes that might be outside the narrow 8 semitone tall window of the Deluge.

Okay the Deluge triplet mode implementation only really hit home here after seeing it on video. Coming back here, I see @O_o did explain it in detail, but I largely missed the point.

Disabling every fourth pad (rather than disabling four at the end of page) means it’s much easier to grasp the whole, the content doesn’t crazily jump around when switching views and mixing triplet and non-triplet content on the same page is no problem at all. Nice, really nice.

That’s very interesting. Thanks. I had wondered how functional / usable the ‘zoom in / out’ element was. It’s not a surprise that this carries with it limitations on what you can and can’t do at a given zoom level. The lack of a display is the real hindrance there I suppose.

exactly!
that’s the impression I have when I watch the DELUGE videos
on the Pyramid the modes are already color coded and maybe having the tracks in yellow, the sequences in blue, and the patterns in green (for example) would be much more clearer
the waiting on a pending sequence or a pending track could be represented by a red blinking pad, mute states could be just a lower brightness on pads etc.
in short, I think there is a way to be sober with colors :slight_smile:

also, the principle of switching from a 16-steps grid to a 12-steps grid would be useful not only for triplets, but also for compound meters, on which a division into 12 steps would be more appropriate than a 16 steps division (since it is all about subdivisions, in two or three parts …)

programming 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 patterns (and other compound time signatures) would be easier with 12-steps grid

simplecompound

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One way to do it (preferably before you input any notes) is shift and press <|> encoder.

But yes the Pyramid still has a lot of power compared to the Deluge wrt editing.

+1 for the suggestions though!

I am in search of a Sampler. Thinking on Deluge or OT MK1 . Both powerful but in different ways.

So , how it is recording Deluge grooves on Pyramid?

What about building songs on Deluge and then transfer them somehow inside the 32 sequences and using those not as “Sequences” " but as “Big Scenes” where we move in with Deluge?

To me the track extend/duplicate shortcut is not really a good replacement workflow to setting a tracks length in bars directly.

Yeah I kind of agree, but I think that if the sync scaling button was instead a function button they could have added a lot more shortcuts for more useful features, such as track length, shift individual note, parametric note modifiers and so on, and sync scaling could have been accomplished by pressing function and tempo encoder. I might suggest it on the Deluge forum.

Also, the Pyramids looper function to realtime record until the next bar would be handy on the Deluge.

Sorry for going off topic…

Hello @o_0

Very nice text.
Question :
If we set Pyramid to 16 channels/track , is it possible to make the sequences of Pyramid somehow corresponding to the song mode of the Deluge? I wonder if the two sequencer can become a ONE.
I think this arranger mode is way more powerful than any other out there.

Is there some combo that can be achieved ?