Squarp Pyramid [compilation topic]

Forgive if this has been answered before…I did a search but can not find it.

Can the Pyramid have different tempo(BPM) per track?

I use different time signatures per track, because I’m a victim of piano school. Will that work for you? Not entirely sure about BPM per track though.

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Thanks for the fast reply, appreciate it!

I do not own a Pyramid (yet), but have a Keystep Pro. The Keystep Pro can also have a different time signature per track, just like the Pyramid, but no different tempo per track. I was wondering if the Pyramid has that feature.

I’ve been on holiday and as usual I’ve forgotten how to do some things on pyramid. Is there a way to copy more than one bar except for using zoom and pressing first and last step? For example copy bar 17-20 of a sequence. I seem to remember that this was possible but now I can’t find it

I just got the mk3 and immediately fell in love with it. It’s sooo nice, especially for the MnM and MD with the midi fx and polymetric AND polyrhythmic capabilities.

It’s weird to me that there isn’t more hype for this thing in the Elektronauts community.

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Glad you love it! I love mine too

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I got the Hermod and I really like the FX section so Pyramid is looking at me BUT the SEQ is kinda a mystery to me. I have tracks that seems to be stored in SEQ1 automatically when creating a new project. I can copy SEQ1 to SEQ2 and change everything I want in SEQ2. so are SEQs just another name for patterns?

Congrats on the Pyramid!

The hype is real, just sustained over 10 years or so, so it can look a little attenuated from today’s perspective. That and a lot of it shows up in other topics — usually in the form of “I tried _____ but it’s just not as good as my Pyramid.” :wink:

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Thanks! Yes that makes sense. I’m just so blown away by it and see people on various forums looking for a great sequencer and often times without a mention of the Pyramid.

No. Perhaps confusingly for people who come from other gear, a sequence is the mute status of the 64 tracks.

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Thanks!
I wonder if Hermod and Pyramid are different on that side.
Hermod has “only” 8 tracks.
When I created my first tracks they were all stored in SEQ1. I copied SEQ1 to SEQ2 and then changed the same 8 tracks (from 1 to 8) with different notes/modulations, etc. then I was able to switch real time between SEQ1 and SEQ2 to chain them.

If Pyramid allows for 64 tracks the muting unmuting would be like SEQ1 from 1-8 unmute and everything else mute. then SEQ2 from 9-16 unmute and everything else. You could therefore get 8 “patterns” or 16 if you use 4 tracks at once. but obviously you could mix & match the tracks (say 1,2 with 13,16)so it would be even more flexible than just patterns!
I think I like that idea then

EDIT
Ignore everything I said. :sweat: The Hermod is quite different (and way less complicated/flexible) than the Pyramid:

Every sequence is totally independent and contains a new set of tracks to be played with, for a total of 64 tracks in a single project.


Only sort of.

IMHO, everything on the Pyramid (and, I assume, Hermod see EDIT above) is easier to understand by using it for a week or two without patterns. Then the structure is much more clear:

  • You use step or live mode to add events to a track.
  • You build up a bunch of tracks — these can be organized any way you like, but one common way is one track per instrument per section of the song. Arranged this way, tracks are kind of equivalent to clips.
  • You don’t want all of these tracks to play at once. Just the ones needed for the current section of your song. The way the Pyramid does this is to mute everything except the tracks you want to play.
  • This would be annoying to do manually, and that’s where Sequences come in. They are nothing but a list of which tracks are muted and which aren’t. Importantly they do not store the contents of the tracks. Just which tracks are muted.

So if you want to start your song with a kick, and then bring in a snare, and then a bass line, you would make separate tracks for the kick, the snare, and the bass. Then SE01 would mute everything but the kick, SE02 would mute everything but the kick and the snare, and SE03 would mute everything except the kick, snare, and bass. Your tracks are essentially just a flat library of clips, and you have to keep track of them.

Honestly you can do everything the Pyramid is capable of with just this. And I would get real comfortable with it before moving on.

The problem with the “flat list of clips” setup is it requires a certain amount of “horizontal” thought and organization. Nothing is grouped together. You have to know that your kick is on TR01A, the snare is on TR02A, the bass is on TR03A. And you have to know the bass for the chorus is TR04A, that the fill you want to sub in for the snare is at TR05A, etc. Once you fill up one or two banks of tracks, it can get pretty confusing.

Patterns are a way to arrange sets of events “vertically” under tracks. In this layout, TR03A-P1 is the bass line for the verse, and TR03A-P2 is the bass line for the chorus. Now you just have to remember that TR03A is the bass, and all its variations are patterns under it. A track becomes less of a clip and more of an “instrument track” like we think of them in a DAW.

Seqs get complicated because of this. Now, not only do they store whether each track is muted, but also what pattern should play in each track. That way you can have SE01 that unmutes the snare on TR01A, SE02 that unmutes both TR01A and the bass on TR03A and plays P1 of TR03A, and SE03 that unmutes TR01A, TR03A, and plays pattern P2 of TR03A.

It’s all just a different way of organizing tracks. And honestly, in practice, it makes much more sense than it looks like here. The important points are:

  • Tracks hold events put in them by Live or Step mode.
  • Sequences hold whether or not each track is muted (and the pattern # to play for each track, if the track has patterns)
  • Tracks are not stored in sequences. If you change a track, it’s changed everywhere no matter what sequence is selected. The only thing a sequence stores is whether a track is muted and its active pattern.
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I see, thanks for the detailed explanation!

Hermod seems a better fit for my brain right now haha.

I think if each track can be the length of a song, we could have full songs from MIDI files created in a DAW. from bar 1 to 16 nothing then from bar 17 to 24 something, then nothing for 16 bars, etc. like a linear view in a DAW (not sure one would want to use it like that but this could be useful to create backing tracks with live analog synths to fool around while it plays)

Tbh I watched Loopop video and was so confused by it, it stopped me buying.
But I got the Hermod at the price of an euclidian module so I thought I couldn’t go wrong and I was right :wink:

I will look into the Pyramid flow a bit more

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Yeah. Honestly one of its greatest strengths is it can work almost any way you want. And, for all of that, it isn’t insanely complicated. Just modestly complicated :slight_smile:

You can absolutely have 10 tracks, 384 bars each that just play an entire song like you suggest. Then you can ignore SEQ all together.

But you can also have 5 tracks of incommensurate lengths that loop polyrhythmically. Or each of your drums on their own track. Or all of them together on one. Or all of them together with patterns that hold all their fills and variations. Or each of these and MIDI effects and CC tracks and euclidian patterns, all together in a single song.

But like you say. it gets confusing to dive into all of it at once (like the Loopop video). And the Pyramid doesn’t do much to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot. So figure out a handful of deal-breaker scenarios that it absolutely must support, make sure it can handle those — then forget about them and focus on just one thing for, like, a month at a time :slight_smile:

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yeah with great power comes great responsibility I guess haha.
MIDI FX are really fun so importing MIDI files and applying some of them could already be a fun experiment.
there’s a mk2 second hand looking at me right now. time for some more research haha

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Great explanation! You should write manuals! :wink:

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Just out of curiosity, does someone here have a Pyramid and a Cirklon? It would be interesting to know what are some of the most important/useful things that one can do that the other cannot.

If you want to know the differences between a Pyramid and a Cirklon, you can at least find some discussion of the differences between a Cirklon and a Pyramid here:

and there’s plenty more discussion in various topics that you can read if you search the forum.

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im going to print this and laminate and post it next to the SP. Thank you.

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Thank you!