Emitters Emitters

To make sound, Tempera needs an emitter placed and voice played.

An emitter can be placed on any cell on the touchgrid, from where it will start emitting a stream of grains. All placed emitters are activated per each voice and can be one of four color-coded configurations.

Each display in the main Emitters Emitters menu corresponds to one emitter. Turning the corresponding knobs tweak the emitter’s volume while the action buttons allow to:

  • Edit the emitter parameters

  • Select the emitter for placing on the touchgrid

Holding the Round button reveals alternate context:

  • Clear all placed emitters

  • Pause / Unpause emitter grain generation

Tip

The emitter primary colors can be changed globally in Settings Settings.

Per-emitter parameters

Emitters have many parameters which determine their behavior in time an space. Some parameters can be modulated by Modulators Modulators, and some can be added an optional jitter (random variation for each emitted grain) by turning their encoder while holding the Jitter button.

The emitter parameters are available separately for each of the four color-coded configurations. When navigating through the parameter pages, the emitter under editing automatically changes to the next one when you cross the last page. This can be disabled in Settings Settings with Emitter x-scroll.

  • Grain length controls how long the generated grains are. This can be measured as the number of grid cells from 0 to 8 (when in the Cell mode) or as note duration in time signature (when in the Note mode).

  • Grain density determines how many grains are generated in time per note played and emitter placed. A density of 1.00 means that there will be one grain played shoulder to shoulder.

  • Grain trigger cross-fades between grain generation based on free length/density, and grain triggers synced to time.

  • Sync time sets the time signature at which new grains are emitted when Grain trigger is synced to time.

  • Spray X and Spray Y set amount of randomness in grain spawning horizontally (across different tracks) and vertically (along a single track).

  • Relative X and Relative Y manually scrub the grain trigger position away from its home base.

    An optional Align makes the emitted grain always start at the beginning of a cell. When not set, grains might be emitted from positions in between. Setting this on is useful for percussion tracks, where there’s likely a transient at the beginning of each cell. When Align is off for Relative X, grains emitted in between tracks will be a weighted blend of the two.

  • Grain shape determines how sharp the envelope of each grain is. Low value makes sharp transient grains, high value makes each grain smooth.

    When Attack is enabled, the first grain emitted by a note will have an instant ramp-up, overriding the grain shape (this is useful for playing long and smooth grains while having a distinct sharp attack, without which the ramp-up is slow even with a fast attack of the main ADSR envelope). The attack can be then controlled on the ADSR page of Modulators Modulators.

  • Tone will apply a gentle low-pass and/or high-pass filter pair with Center frequency and band Width controllable. This is essentially a variable-width band-pass filter.

  • Grain pan (L/R) or Grain mid-side (M/S) controls the spread of grains in the stereo space.

  • Tune spread gives each grain a random tuning variation, in the range of ±1 octave. Apply this very gently for a thickening detune.

    Snap 5 and Snap 8 will quantize the grains random variation to fifths and/or octaves, in both directions.

  • Octave transposes the generated grains in the range of up to ±3 octaves.

  • FX send controls the amount of audio sent to global Effects Effects chain (Chorus, Delay and Reverb) while Filter send controls audio input to the per-voice main filter.

  • Placement changes the touchgrid behavior:

    • Instant: Touch to place and emitter, release to remove it.

    • Toggle: Touch to toggle the emitter placement.

    • Latch: Once all fingers are removed, all emitters are cleared at next placement.

    When Lock is enabled, the placed emitter is locked to prevent it from being replaced by another.

    If 2-lane is active, the emitter gains exclusive access to the pair of tracks below it. For example, when activated for the blue emitter, anytime an emitter is placed on the first two tracks, it will be blue regardless of which emitter is selected for placement.

  • Channel determines which MIDI channel the emitter listens to. When set to Global, it follows the MIDI channel set in Settings Settings.

  • Fade in and Fade out control the fading of grains after the emitter is placed or removed.

  • Name of each emitter can be changed from the default Emitter 1–4.

Tip

  • Set Grain density to below 1.00 and try playing with a super short Grain length.

  • Press the Emitters Emitters button twice to edit the last edited emitter.

  • Once a grain is generated and already in flight, it will stop either when it runs its course, or if the voice playing it is released.

  • Regardless of FX send setting, the per-voice ADSR amplitude envelope is always applied.

  • Octave and Grain detune are not applied for tracks in BPM mode.

  • When editing an emitter, holding the Round button and pressing the Emitters Emitters button will cycle to the next emitter for editing. This makes it easy to adjust the same parameter for multiple emitters quickly.

  • Set various emitters to different MIDI Channels to achieve multi-timbrality.

    For example, Setting your percussive emitters to a separate MIDI channel can be useful.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • How can I scrub through a sample smoothly?

    It is possible to modulate an emitter’s Rel X and Rel Y (short for relative) positions with a modulator or MIDI input in the Modulators Modulators menu. Emitting short grains is recommended for smooth scrubbing, while with longer grains it is possible to do grain sequencing.

  • Can effects be applied to each emitter separately?

    As of the current firmware this isn’t possible.

  • My high-density short grain emitter sounds very metallic, as if glitched. Why?

    When a lot of grains are emitted from exactly the same position periodically, for example 100 times per second, this will create an audible frequency component of 100 Hz. Add a tiny amount of unaligned Spray Y and grain trigger will no longer be harmonic.