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 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

Tips

The emitter primary colors can be changed globally in Settings .
When an emitter is playing on a track, the Tracks edit pages show grain sparkles indicating grain spawn points in real time.

Per-emitter parameters

Emitters have many parameters which determine their behavior in time an space, with some available as targets for Modulators .

The parameters are available separately for each of the four color-coded emitter 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 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 there will be one grain played shoulder to shoulder. The buttons enable optional Jitter (random variation for each emitted grain) and Snapping to whole numbers.
Grain trigger cross-fades between grain generation based on free length/density, and grain triggers synced to time.
Sync time sets the note interval at which new grains are emitted when Grain trigger is synced to tempo.

The screen is divided into three parameters Active steps, Step duration and Total steps, with the parameter under editing selectable using the <> buttons.

The Total steps parameter activates an Euclidean grain sequencer (inspired by Godfried Toussaint’s Euclidean rhythm algorithm), which distributes the number of Active steps across the available steps, conveniently generating various non-trivial rhythmical patterns.

The resulting pattern can be further rotated when holding the Round button.

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.

Turning the encoder while holding the Tilt button shifts the envelope shape away from its center point, creating asymmetric ramp-up and ramp-down. This allows the grains to take on shapes anywhere between a pluck, a symmetric window, and a swell.

When Attack is enabled, the first grain emitted by a new note or a newly placed emitter 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 .
Grain pan (L/R) or Grain mid-side (M/S) controls the spread of grains in the stereo space with an optional Jitter.

Pitch detunes or transposes generated grains by up to ±48 semitones.

The encoder provides smooth control over a ±12 semitone range, while the -oct and oct+ buttons transpose shift the grains in steps by up to ±3 octaves (or ±36 semitones).
Pitch 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 random variation to fifths and/or octaves, in both directions.
Probability controls the percentage of grains being randomly skipped and/or being played in reverse. Both probabilities can be used in conjunction and the Skip/Rev buttons toggle the value being currently adjusted:
- Skip probability of 0% means grains are emitted normally, while 50% means half of the emitted grains are randomly skipped.
- Rev probability of 0% means all grains play in the standard forward direction, while 100% means all grains are reversed.
  
  When a reverse grain is emitted, its starting position is where it would have ended if it were a forward grain. This ensures that both forward and reverse grains play the same chunk of audio regardless of grain length.
Send controls the amount of audio sent to the global Effects chain (Chorus, Delay, Reverb and Patina) and enables or disables audio input to the per-voice main Filter.
Tone applies 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.

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 .
Emitter fade controls the In and Out fading of grains after the emitter is placed or removed.
Name of each emitter can be changed from the default Emitter 1–4.
Prefab enables you to Copy and Paste emitter parameters from one emitter to another when in the Clipboard mode.

Turning the knob reveals options to Apply one of several basic emitter configurations, which serve as starting points for common scenarios: Pad, Rhythm, and Scatter.

Tips

Set Grain density to below 1.00 and try playing with a super short Grain length.
Press the 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.
Pitch and Pitch spread are not applied for tracks in BPM mode.
When editing an emitter, holding the Round button and pressing the 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 Relative X and Relative Y positions with a modulator or MIDI input in the Modulators menu. Emitting short grains is recommended for smooth scrubbing, while with longer grains it is possible to do grain sequencing.
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.