Unfiltered Audio - Battalion (soft drum synth)

How do you actually work with Battallion along with other gear?

Do you just export clips? Do you change patterns on Battallion?

I’m kind of wondering how to do it – I didn’t find much controls in terms of transitioning, say, from one pattern to another. There are MIDI controls for starting and stopping playback of the Battallion sequencer, but that does not reset to 1 when you send the Play command.

How do ya do it?

2 Likes

here’s how I use it - it sits in my VST folder until they update it with patterns and a pattern sequencer :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

2 Likes

this thing is crazy…

yup, and it soon lands on iOS!

hiu, hiu, hiu

1 Like

No live performance here, writing and tracking in a DAW. I typically save the work in Battalion as a preset and track it to audio when I’m happy with it, edit for length and additional processing in the DAW. When I need more than 8 tracks or sections, work on a new preset and track the parts.

1 Like

Battalion is kind of weirdly useful; i use 99.5% hardware, with MachineDrum, Rytm, Maschine plus a bunch of eurorack modules (Intellijel Plonk, SSF Entity Ultra-kick, Perc plus a few other ones) doing the heavy lifting.
When i want something else, i have some software to help but i am incredibly picky and in general stay away!

But battalion works well enough to add some value actually, and that is very good praise! :+1:I use weird gear sometimes, but this and microtonic rocks my world in their own way!

9 Likes

Fun fact; the new Sonicware CyDrums hardware drum machine/synthesizer actually reminds me a bit of Battalion sound-wise! It´s a digital drum machine/synthesizer and it´s kind of quirky… Gives me the same feeling as Battalion. I am going to buy it, and then they will work together, hopefully some cool tracks will come out of it. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Just wondering, is there a way to save user samples with presets? (to export to another computer running Battalion)

Battalion and the midi looping feature of Loopy pro are the two things I’m dying to put my hands on, on iPad ! Soon they say… :rofl:

Soon…Did someone change the meaning of that word while I was asleep ? :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

In the good old days of first iteration Waldorf music, ”soon” was known to be waldorfian for ”never”. :laughing:

2 Likes

It’s coming! And sorry for the delay. It’s been a non-stop series of “Oh dang it, Apple” and “wait, there’s got to be a better design.” A behind-the-scenes adventure from the past month:

  • Got preset import working from local and iCloud for single or multiple files. This copied the files from the visible file tree to the invisible file tree (security group) shared by the standalone and AUv3 versions of each plugin.
  • Found out that JUCE 6 didn’t support iOS file browsing specifically for folders. Went through the process of getting everything working and tested with JUCE 8.
  • Got COVID (again).
  • After banging my head against a wall for 2-3 days, found out that copying folders is not possible on iOS, at least in JUCE.
  • Went to NAMM and Buchla & Friends.
  • Got NAMMthrax (again). Still recovering.
  • On advice from Chris Randall, added .zip import as a workaround for the folder nonsense.
  • Found a better folder import option in Koala. Reached out to the Koala developer to ask about the technique used (bookmarks, not file copying).

That’s where we’re at currently. The folder bookmark option is nice as you won’t have to copy all samples over to the Battalion app, plus you can keep them in one place and not take up more space. We’re working on a design that hopefully will benefit sample management on desktop Battalion. Everyone is kicking down our door, though, so we might release this design in iterations.

Long story short, I’ve been spending every day working on this, but have hit a dozen obstacles. I want this as much as y’all so that I can lay in bed and create Drambo + Battalion sequencing hacks. Hopefully I will have something to share. “Soon” :laughing:

43 Likes

so that I can lay in bed and create Drambo + Battalion sequencing hacks.

i see… a man of culture

11 Likes

might we see patterns in the not too distant future? :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers:

3 Likes

Maybe in the future release you can “cut” Battalion into single instruments, like Fors did with Opal.

Lot’s of people here probably use loopy pro…They know that “really soon” means at least 7 months and counting… ! :sweat_smile:

1 Like

So awesome! I‘m so happy about how much perseverance you have and passioned work you put into this! I literally checked the AppStore each day… :grinning: I‘ll cross my fingers you‘ll succeed soon and I‘m sooo looking forward to this, unbelievable. It‘s my favorite Drumsynth since its initial release, just Bravo! :hugs:

This is the only app I’m waiting for on iOS!
I’ve basically paused all app purchases besides audio effects…and have been sticking to my DT2, DN and Minifreak…. But battalion!!! Will absolutely be mine!

If you do a limited TestFlight I’d be happy to spend hours tweaking and sending feedback

Missed this part of comment, how do you split out into 8 midi channels to feed it externally?

Made a mistake in posting here… I’m on the run atm, but is this the info you‘re looking for?

1 Like

So my understanding from post i was replying to, is that you can control each individual instrument in Battalion with designated midi channel, one channel per track (f.e. If i wanna send midi from dt2 i can setup 8 midi tracks controlling individual instruments in battalion), but so far i can only get all instruments on one channel playing chromatically like in your example.
Now that i think about it, you can still do that, all, can be set to same midi channel, but each track on dt2 can trigger different key chromatically