yes I did run out and there are not too many options anyway i ordered it today as it went back in stock today and it has two midi outs so that is a lot to sequence i think itll make a nice partner with the OT.
if only there were one piece that would do everything.
if only there were one piece that would do everything.
I feel you on this. That may be the Pyramid one day, at least once it crosses OS version 1.0. Its biggest hindrance is that there are only 64 “tracks” (and zero patterns or variations per track) available per project, so if you want to load this thing up with 45+ mins of material for a live performance, you will have to cozy up with the idea of linear playback of relatively few and very long patterns rather than having more small patterns to “improvise” with, as on the Elektron sequencers. This is expected to change with OS version 0.89, and we’re currently on 0.86.
Until then, your best bets are either (a) Cirklon or (b) Numerology + Launchpad (for studio usage where you might be more comfortable having a computer involved, then for a live setting dump or record the MIDI data into something else). After wrestling with an RS7000, an Octatrack on its own, and an Octatrack + Pyramid combo, I’ve found that only Numerology gives me everything I’m looking for when it comes to building tracks. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to dump lots of 4-36 bar .mid files into either the Octatrack (requires arduous live recording into each MIDI track separately) or the Pyramid (with only 64 “tracks” available, you will quickly run out), so I’m really hoping that it won’t be too many more months before we cross the OS v0.89 Rubicon or else I may have to look into other options for a live set (MPC, or leaning heavily on playing stems back in the Octatrack).
yes I looked at the cirklon too but the pyramid was much smaller, more of a pack up small synths and take to the beach type of thing, the cirklon would be great for the home studio. Like all things comes at a high price. As you say the developers of the pyramid are close at hand to the community so they will take pride in their clever updates. so hopefully itll move forward at a large pace now. I guess you live performers really do find the troublesome spots and limitations of equipment relatively quickly and certainly more than i would being a hobbyist only.
who is enjoying 0.87, I’m finding the new FX great, especially SCALE. Need to work out how to automate or play the SCALE from the key pad
This is so interesting for me. I currently have a rytm and ocatrack plus bunch of hardware synths and fx. I use the OT for midi sequencing only. I like the sampling functions but just don’t have enough time to get stuck into it. Absolutely love the rytm and its sequencer and sounds. Looking at the pyramid it looks very interesting to replace the OT as a midi seq. The OT is a good one at that but pyramid just looks like it does more and also more of a pure seq in use. I find the OT slightly clunky to use as a pure midi seq. Interested in peoples thoughts on this and any experiences here. Would be sad to let the ot go but i am not going to use it to its full potential which is important to me. I know people say it needs a good amount of time to conquer but im just not going to have enough time to do so.
You might be interested in my rambling comparison of Pyramid to the midi sequencer of the Octatrack in this post: Octatrack only as a MIDI sequencer?
Hope you find it helpful and I’d be happy to share further thoughts.
Thanks that was very helpful. Was researching this for hours then one came up locally for sale in Australia just now at a good price. So grabbing this and will sell the ot. Think its going to be a good switch for me.
I have both and love both.
I had the Pyramid for a while but I sold it because of too many things i did not like ( don’t want to talk about again but if you read french language I suggest to go to the AUDIFOFANZINE forum ) .
I switch for the GOTHARMAN FUZION , more expensive , but more stuff ( sampler, synthtizer 8 voices ) and mostly, a better sequencing , less rigid.
I love my Fuzion and can just advice that device.
Really orginal sequencing, quite unique .
This box has EVERYTHING the A4 doesnt: Polyphony, MIDI sequencing (A4 only does CV) and you can play live on a keyboard and record it freely, with human feel and play it back exactly like you played it - Unlike the Octa which totally ruins your live performance… I like this box because its not just another step sequencer
Got to thinking about this again as I’ve been thinking about polyrhythmic sequencing, and came across this video posted a few days ago:
The spoken audio is poorly recorded but totally intelligible, but the overview of the math and visual representation of polyrhythms, as well as the demonstration of the a Pyramid itself for this purpose is really good and worth a view.
Really thinking I might try to get in on the next batch of these. I’ve been really uninspired for the last couple of months and have barely turned on any gear in a few weeks, but the last couple days I’ve been back into it and have only been focusing on couch sessions with the Monomachine, which has had me thinking a lot about sequencing and what I want to realize the sound and workflow that fits my brain, and the Pyramid seems to just about nail it. The track/sequence/part thing seems a bit limited to me and I wish there was more CV (dunno if any kind of breakout box is realistic), but I have yet to meet a piece of gear without some compromises.
In the manual (I read it somewhere) there was a breakout box planned … maybe it’s yet to come, I think the OS development must have taken pride, which is fair I guess… I was reading on the muff’s thread there’s some kind of breakout it already works with (not official) but i only skipped through and missed the details.
Edit - I guess the point would be weird shit !! Like sequencing A4 with squarp midi - sending cv to squarp and sending that back into A4 as midi etc… ?!
I got one two weeks ago.
The good thing is it does everything I wanted the octatrack to do which it wouldn’t and it seems really relieable so far. The bad thing is that there is still a lot of stuff missing and the way it is working and you have to use it is a bit uncomfortable for my way of doing things (e.g. lots of menu switching when editing notes and adding program change or midi cc). Also so far there is no way to edit a note that is set already. The developers say this is planned for the next update but for now (please correct me if I am wrong) you can just delete the note set its values and place it again (holding note just allows to change pitch but not length, position or velocity).
P - Locking my minitaur works very well (which didn’t on the octatrack not even using a midi processor to change midi cc to program change - it worked but the program change came too late so the sound was glitching sometimes.
When you’re in step mode, you first press velocity, length or offset then the note or group of note and turn the encoder to change its parameter
If can help to solve some of your questions.
Havfun
More easy : first press assign, then press the trig you want, then turn one of the 5 encoders !
Encoder step edit
At startup, the 5 encoders can be used to assign a CC or FX parameter, in every mode. But they can do more. In STEP mode, you can decide to assign directly the 5 encoders and the touchpad to step shortcuts.
Simply press ASSIGN to enable the “encoder step edit” feature:
It’s a great way to edit your notes and automation, you no longer have to rotate while pressing a green shortcut.
In stepmode NOTE, encoders & touchpad will control:
1 note
2 note octave
3 note velocity
4 note width
5 note offset
touchpad X note velocity
In stepmode CHORD, encoders & touchpad will control:
1 chord degree
2 chord tonality
3 chord velocity
4 chord width
5 chord offset
touchpad X chord velocity
In stepmode EUCLID, encoders & touchpad will control:
1 euclid steps
2 euclid fills
3 euclid velocity
4 euclid gate length
5 rotate
touchpad X euclid velocity
In stepmode CC, encoders & touchpad will control:
3 CC value
touchpad X CC value
In stepmode EFFECTS, encoders & touchpad will control:
3 FX value
touchpad X FX value
TIP In LIVE mode, you can also use the touchpad to set the velocity of the keyboard and the smartpads.
Press ASSIGN again to disable these shortcuts.
I have the Pyramid, and I am pretty happy with it. I am really new to making music, so I don’t know yet what it is missing. I have it as the heart of my setup, sending midi to all my little boxes to control. There are a couple of things I realize I want when I am playing with it, but either I realize they exist and I didn’t know about them, or they are on the PyraOS release roadmap.
Been checking out pretty much all the videos on the Pyramid that I can over the last few days. One thing I can’t help but notice is that it seems like most of the applications I’ve seen of it don’t seem too off the beaten path, lots of House and other well-trodden paths, and while there’s nothing wrong with that I feel like those are things I can do without thinking with Elektron sequencers. Does anyone have any audio or video of things that get more experimental? I’m thinking more like IDM, jazz fusion, anything a bit more complex where the notes and beats have a lot more variation. That’s the biggest appeal of the Pyramid for me and it seems like it would be ideal for such applications, but thus far I’ve not seen much demonstrating how weird you can get with it.
I’m not producing house music or anything that has a traditional song structure. This is just my experience with the Pyramid.
There are no internal LFOs that can be routed to sequencing parameters (although soon this month they will introduce LFOs that can be routed to MIDI CCs, and I’m very eager to see how they implement this differently from the Octatrack), so the only variations that can be “generated” within the Pyramid (and “generative” sequencing of note and rhythm variations is what I think of when I think “experimental”) will come from its “Randomizer” effect. But the Randomizer can be routed to any other “effects” on a track and you can control how much it randomizes in upper vs. lower ranges relative to baseline values, so if you’re subtle about it it can still be “musical.”
Its Euclidean sequencer can be good for finding new rhythmic fills, but tracks in Euclidean mode are limited to the same note at all times (or a necessarily random note across steps, if you use the Randomizer effects on those tracks).
It also allows you to use very complex combinations of time signatures across tracks.
You can draw (on the touchpad) automations of stuff like the Randomizer, Chance (step on/off probability), and Scale effects (NB: if you want those transpositiosn to stay within a chosen scale, you have to chain two Scale effects in series within the constraint of 4 effects per slot 
. It seems that everyone who’s commented about this on the Squarp forum is unhappy with this decision.)
Here’s its strongest asset for experimentation: If you have some interesting CV modulation sources, you can send up to 2 at once into the Pyramid and convert them to notes or into modulations of tracks’ effects (Scale, Chance, Harmonizer, etc.). You can also use one track to sequence some MIDI instrument and simultaneously have its MIDI converted to CV, and then loop that CV back into the Pyramid and route it to modulate a parameter on another track. So, there is a limited implementation of intertrack modulation as well.
Finally, it has several scales in its Scale effect that, for jazz-inspired work, you might find useful for tonally quantizing all those external modulations and drawn automations.
All that said, however, I feel that it has a fundamentally very linear workflow. This is due to its current limiation of 64 patterns in total (because there are only 64 tracks available for sequences and no concept of multiple patterns per track). Squarp has it on their roadmap to change this in the firmware update following the one planned for this month, so I hope the problem will be mitigated by the end of 2016. Until then, though, I still prefer using my 
for sequencing mono lines (the Pyramid will always be better for polyphonic and chord sequencing) because the parameter-locking workflow is 100x faster and its implementation of internal LFOs (especially the designer LFOs that can be modulated by other LFOs and that can be routed to multiple tracks and parameters at once) lends itself to faster results for me.
Hey fellows, today on Squarp forum, Jean said that loop will be soon implemented for each track of the sequencer !
That’s wonderful news
Question for the Pyramid owners: one of the things that has me considering this is using it with the OG silver Elektrons. The most obvious use would be being able to utilize the sound engine of the Elektron boxes with the more updated sequencer in the Pyramid, but I got to thinking about interesting ways you could play the sequencers against each other, like programming FX or the Sid arp or the different trig options on the Mono or the CTRL-AL or sampling engines on the MDUW to interact against longer or more complex sequences from the Pyramid.
Anyhow, on to my question: I see there is a clock multiplier/divider in the tempo section of the Pyramid, as well as a BPM effect that allows you to set a different BPM. Am I correct that the clock division is global, but the BPM effect is per track? If so, I could see all kinds of possibilities to enhance other sequencers…although a clock divider per track would be ace 