asking the real questions right here
While we’ve got a forum with one of the creators visiting regularly I’ll keep making UI requests. Just little things:
- the solo buttons are a bit confusing because a non-selected track that’s soloed looks the same as a selected track that’s not soloed. (the same ‘s’). If a soloed track had say a bold ‘S’ and non-soloed tracks had a non-bold ‘s’ then it would be identifiable whether selected or not.
- also when multiple tracks are soloed and we want to get out of solo mode we have to go and unsolo each and every soloed track. Other software has a nice touch where double-clicking a soloed track it un-solos the rest of them. Makes a quick way to get back to only one track being soloed (or none). Does that make sense?
I wouldn’t be making these requests if the software wasn’t so good! Cheers
its really hard to follow all of this so a simple question:
how far out is midi out for desktop?
Hey new here ![]()
I love Battalion, especially the perfom page.
I agree with the feature requests brought up here, there is so much potential in this device.
Something I do a lot is sequencing the perform knobs with Opal Ctrl by Fors.fm. Helps you brake out of the fact that battalion has no mulitple scenes/patterns.
You can check out my instagram for examples:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DN_nc6KjRzy/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
All of the slides in this post are made with the same pattern and same samples. Just by sequencing the perform page I got complete different results.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMI2u9xtHlZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Those examples are great! Are you grouping Opal with Battalion and then mapping the perform knobs like that? The results are wonderful. So dynamic. I’d love to hear more about how to set this sort of thing up. I’ve used Opal a lot, but never quite like this.
Thanks! Glad you like it. Yes, exactly as you said. Mapping the 10 available Opal Ctl knobs with the perform parameters of Battalion. You have to be selective which parameters to map as some of them can get quite easy out of control
Most interesting are the trigger parameters in the bottom row plus the decay in my experience.
I sequence and modulate almost everything I do with Opal CTL, it just like having the Elektron sequencer in a DAW ![]()
This is a fantastic idea. I haven’t used the ctrl version myself, really. Ableton is a PITA with modulation. It got a bit better with 12, but I still can’t throw a stock LFO on a midi track? Come on…
So: great idea, gonna try it out tomorrow!
Hope you’re well and I know you’re working hard on Battalion, and don’t want to add to the load too much ![]()
My number one request now is:
MIDI CC mapping of the controls directly to the plugin.
And MIDI out from Battalion, when you load a preset/pattern, all the controls should send their CC values (so my Ipad layouts are in sync with the plugin).
All the best, hope life’s good for you!
Hello there!
Fun fact, you kinda sold me Battalion (along with this thread) a few weeks ago. I’ve been following the thread for a while and then saw your posts on IG, cool stuff! …I also love Fors’ Opal, so it was a no brainer!
That quote is from this thread. Scroll back 29 days. Nothing to suggest it’s imminent.
Yep! I still have that big workflow patch that I’m wrapping up. It got delayed since “Garbage-Fi” (which shipped on the iOS update) was actually a pre-alpha slicing engine. I have no clue how it made it in, but I think it was a git (version control) collision. Anyway, the workflow update will now have two finished slicing engines (so that no one’s projects are affected) along with the real Garbage-Fi.
Paging @captain8 - check it out, home slice ![]()
I finally bought Battalion as it’s on sale. I was waiting for the midi drag and drop update, but I went ahead and bought it as I know that’s coming.
I love the drum engine, but the sequencer engine has some stuff I don’t quite understand. For instance, when I select a kick drum and set fill for 4… I get 116 patterns and, while the first one is 4 on the floor, only 1 of the next 115 patterns puts a kick on the last beat and none of them use the last 3 16th. Even with fill set to 10, almost none of the 504 patterns on offer use the last 2 16th.
I do like the density control, but so far I much prefer the pattern sequencer that comes with Cubase where I can set how many drum hits I want and then hit a ‘randomise’ button which gives me all the variations and seems to spread them out in more musical and engaging ways.
The drum engines are great though and I love the variety, the modulation options and the variation knob!
I’ll keep messing around with the sequencer, but I it looks like I’ll be using Battalion with the Cubase step sequencer, even after the update… (which is fair enough)
“Hey Claude. Please fix my git conflict, commit and push.” ![]()
what’s good what’s good, has Battalion become a home for slicing? ![]()
Super excited about this one - While waiting for native pattern/preset switching etc., I decided it would be worth it trying to build a patch in MaxMsp to host Battalion. I wanted to see if I can get the parameter system in Max working with Battalion and if so, how smooth and efficient that would be. To my surprise it’s really really good! You can recall individual settings, whole presets and whatnot.
Here’s a little rushed jam I did after setting things up. I’ll be testing this much more in the coming days to see how stable it is and if there are any drawbacks to this. If all ends up fine, I might make a little m4l device for this purpose and share it here with the community
If that’s okay ofc
Trying to troubleshoot Battalion… can any confirm/disprove/explain my findings please so I can pass it on to the dev team?
I’m trying to get samples played in Battalion to sound the same as they normally do.
I’m doing this:
Placing a sample on the timeline in Ableton.
Putting the same sample in Battalion and having it trigger with a MIDI note. Setting the blend to play only the sample. Turning off everything (no distortion, open filter etc).
First thing - there’s a huge amount of hiss coming from Battalion. You can hear it if you put an 808 bass or similar low freq only sample. It plays cleanly on the timeline, but from Battalion there’s a loud hissing sound (white noiseish).
Second thing, the gain is off. Samples from the timeline are slightly louder. This seems to change though, depending on which distortion algo is selected - even if the distortion knob is at zero.
My gut tells me that the hiss is coming from the distortion algo, which doesn’t get switched off at zero.
@trickyflemming Is this true? If so, please could we either have the distortion algo turn off properly at zero, or if not, could we have an ‘Off’ setting to choose from in the distortion algo selector?
The hiss adds up if you have 8 samples playing!
Sample chains in Battalion… anyone tried them?
The workflow I’d love to enable is this:
-
Have a sample chain of 128 kicks (for example).
-
Use a MIDI CC to select my kick.
-
Mix in some synthesis on top.
Currently it doesn’t work (I believe because of rounding errors on Sample Start parameter).
@trickyflemming Apologies for the questions. But do you know if the upcoming slicing engines will enable this workflow?
Please can you let me know, if possible. PM if necessary. I’m trying to sort this out and it will save me a huge amount of work if the new engines enable this workflow correctly!
@trickyflemming I’m loving Battalion on iOS. Something that I find pretty annoying about working with auv3 guests in iOS grooveboxes is that most of them (EG Nodes is a notable exception) don’t have a native rhythm step sequencer for guests - if you host a multi-voice drum synth, you’re programming it with the piano roll. Have you ever considered a lightweight, single-voice guest? I imagine that’s a fair amount of extra work, but I’m interested to hear what you think about it, as I haven’t seen many iOS apps that do that, and I would use the heck out of it if it was available.