NAMM: Dave Smith and Roger Linn Create a Tempest

YouTube via DaveSmithInstruments | January 13, 2011

Boomchik arrives in a Tempest (click and scroll to see how it has evolved over time).

"Analog Drum Machine a First for Legendary Designers

January 13, 2011—Dave Smith Instruments today introduced Tempest, a new analog drum machine, at the 2011 NAMM Show. Tempest is a collaboration between Smith and longtime friend and fellow instrument designer Roger Linn. Though they've consulted with each other on past projects, Tempest marks the first time a product will carry both the Dave Smith Instruments and Roger Linn Design logos. 'If you're going to make a drum machine, who better to have in your corner than Roger Linn?' said Smith, referring to Linn's legacy as inventor of the digital drum machine.

Though Smith is also responsible for some fine drum machines—most notably Sequential's DrumTraks and Studio 440—Tempest is his first to utilize analog synthesis to generate the sounds. "We've designed a very flexible new synth voice for Tempest," said Smith. Linn added, "The design of Tempest reflects a rethinking of what a drum machine needs to be in the current era. It's not so much a drum machine as a new musical performance instrument for the creation, manipulation, and arrangement of beat-oriented music, with an intuitive and efficient use of human gestures."

Tempest's 16 velocity- and pressure-sensitive pads are arranged in an 8 x 2 array to facilitate both real-time and step entry of beats. Two pressure- and position-sensitive Note FX slide controllers provide a unique new method of performance and control.

"We're very excited about Tempest," said Smith. "It's an instrument with a lot of personality and it's great fun to play. It has been a long time since there has been anything new in the drum machine world."

Tempest is expected to be available by June 2011 with a projected MAP of $1,999.00.

Summary of Features

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DSI TEMPEST DEMO 1

YouTube Uploaded by carsonday303 on Sep 28, 2011

Update:

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Dave Smith Instruments & Roger Linn End Updates for the Tempest

The Tempest is now finalized with Main OS 1.4.5.1 & Voice OS 1.5. The DSI Tempest was first announced back in 2011 and is still available. This announcement only pertains to OS development.

via Dave Smith on the DSI Forums:

"First, and most importantly, I’d like to thank you for being a loyal Tempest user. We appreciate all of your support, feedback, and especially your creative use of the Tempest over the course of its 6-year development. It is now a mature product that has undergone many changes and improvements.

When the Tempest was first conceived, we never imagined the many ways you would ultimately put it to use. As such, over time, we've done our best to add as many features as we deemed implementable within the Tempest's technical framework. We've listened to your requests and have enhanced its operation, editing, and performance capabilities. While there are still some minor bugs remaining, we’ve addressed the bugs affecting the Tempest’s essential operation and feel that it is stable, reliable, has abundant functionality, and is very fun to play.

Though some of you continue to request new features and offer useful suggestions for improvement, we’ve reached what we consider the limits of the instrument's available memory and processing ability. For these reasons, we consider this release (OS 1.4.5.1) to be our final Tempest OS release.

Again, we deeply appreciate your enthusiasm for the Tempest. As we move forward, we are committed to creating still more ground-breaking instruments in the future.

-Dave"

And via Roger Linn:

"I'd like to add a few words to Dave's statement above. Though I may have chosen differently, I understand Dave’s decision to finish Tempest development with this update. He’s devoted far more effort and resources to Tempest than any of his other products, and I feel that even with some remaining minor bugs, Tempest is incredibly deep and remarkably functional, and in my opinion has no competition for what it does. The interesting thing about a a product that stores your music is that it’s an invitation to an infinite number of feature requests, because everyone’s needs for music creation are unique. I actually would have preferred a simpler Tempest with less features, but I admire Dave and his team for working so hard to implement so many of your requests, and those efforts have probably made it a better product than I originally envisioned. On balance, if you look at the totality of things Tempest can do and its vast internal complexity, I think it’s pretty amazing and may never be equalled. I certainly couldn’t have made Tempest on my own and appreciate that Dave was willing to devote so many of his resources to this collaboration of ideas."

User Petition for the Tempest and Dave Smith Instruments Response

Update: a new OS is coming.

You'll find the petition here. The following is DSI's response from Carson Day of DSI:

"CARSON DAY'S POST:

The description in the campaign is interesting, though somewhat misleading. The vast majority of Tempest owners are happily making music with it. Most importantly, if anybody had contacted us directly at DSI support to ask whether we have quit development on the Tempest, we would have told them no. We do intend to continue, and finish, development of the Tempest.

Separately, the campaign appears to be an inaccurate representation of Tempest users since there’s no way to qualify who is an owner and who is not.

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Dave Smith Tempest Drum Patch Design Tutorials by AdamSchneiderMusic

Dave Smith Tempest 808 Kick Drum Tutorial

Published on Mar 30, 2017 AdamSchneiderMusic

"After seeing some rumors that the Dave Smith Tempest is lacking when it comes to bass drum power I decided to make this video where I recreate the classic 808 kick sound. Simply put: the Tempest can design kicks that are as deep and thumpy as you want, you just need to know how to program it. While I didn't do it in this video, the sounds of the Tempest only get better with additional effects processing similar to the techniques used on the classic 808/909 machines.

I highly recommend listening with a sub woofer or headphones.

http://www.adamschneidermusic.com"

Update:

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Dave Smith Instruments Releases New OS and Soundset for Tempest & New Tutorial Videos

Published on Jan 3, 2015 Dave Smith Instruments

Playlist:
Tempest Tutorials: Updating Your OS
Tempest Tutorials: Audio Connections
Tempest Tutorials: File Management
Tempest Tutorials: Designing a Kick and Snare
Tempest Tutorials: Designing Bass & Lead Sounds
Tempest Tutorials: How to Make a Beat

"Dave Smith Instruments Releases New OS and Soundset for Tempest Analog Drum Machine Gets Enhanced Feature Set and New Sounds, Beats, Projects

San Francisco, CA—January 3, 2015—Dave Smith Instruments has released a new operating system for their acclaimed Tempest analog drum machine that adds a number of highly requested features — as well as entirely new internal sounds, beats, and projects. The new version, OS 1.4, ships with newly purchased instruments and is also available for download from the company’s website for users wishing to upgrade instruments with older versions of the OS.

Notable among the new features are:
• Increased sequence length (up to 128 sixteenth notes, or 8 measures of 4/4) • Arpeggiation
• New modal scales
• Free-running LFOs
• Compressor envelope controls
• Quantize disable
• A total of 928 new factory sounds, 64 new beats, and 16 new projects

Co-developed by Dave Smith and noted instrument designer Roger Linn, Tempest has been embraced by musicians from a wide range of genres for both live performance and studio recording. “The new OS adds several powerful new features to an already powerful instrument,” said Smith. “And we’ve enlisted the talents of some heavy-hitting sound and beat designers to come up with a extensive amount of new content that’s not only fresh and inspiring, but also versatile.” The new content takes advantage of the new OS features and was over a year in the making.
As Smith puts it, “Our users have put Tempest to a lot of really creative and expressive uses and this upgrade is going to allow them to take it even further. We can’t wait to hear what they do with it.”

The Tempest has a MAP of $1999.

Price and specifications subject to change."

tempest 1.3 - DSI Tempest controller for Ableton live

via Max for Live:

"Tempest is a simple utility for Dave Smith's and Roger Linn's Tempest analog drum machine with Ableton Live.

You can control the parameters that are available on the Tempest as they come with the tempest OS updates. The tempest os used is 1.4.0 for this version.

The available parameters are:

- Distortion
- Compression
- a value other than 0 reverts Beat FX params to defaults
- Beat FX All Osc Frequency
- Beat FX Feedback
- Beat FX Lowpass Filter Cutoff
- Beat FX Lowpass Filter Resonance
- Beat FX Lowpass Filter Audio Mod
- Beat FX Highpass Filter Cutoff
- Beat FX All Env Attack
- Beat FX All Env Decay

The virtual pads show both bank A and B. These pads are clickable and send midi notes, the MIDI notes used in this device are ascending from 0, it is a chromatic scale from C0 to G2 (pad A1 to pad B16), the pad display will work with this config in your tempest system parameters, and will act accordingly to your 'pad to note' config in the Tempest System parameters. As beats and mutes pad mode do not respond to note-off messages from your daw nor this device, you might need to trig the pad twice to mute or unmute a sound, or to lanch a beat, and the lights won't be coherent in these modes.
You have to set the output of the Live midi track to your Tempest midi PAD in channel.

Save your soul."

Something New from Dave Smith Instruments in the Works?

Soviet Space Child spotted this one on the VSE forum:

"Pym has already stated it will be "large" and this is his post on the subject from the DSI forums

'I'll say this...

We learned a lot on the Tempest optimizing for drum sounds. The new voice will have some relation because we learned a lot, but it will not be the same. The DSP is not optimal for anything more than sample playback, which was fine for drums, but would not be for a synth. We have a lot of ideas building on the Evolver/Prophet lines, so both analog and hybrid options are on the table.

Multitimbral code has been done well in the Tempest and would not be hard to move into future products. This does not necessarily mean there will be a separate MIDI channel and/or individual outputs per voice, although that is an option. The real benefit of the new code is that I have granular control over a different program (or multiple programs) per voice. Think about this in terms of stack/split behavior and other interesting combinations. There's some really cool ideas I have related to this that may or may not make it into the next product, but I have no doubt we'll do at some point.

The sequencer code on the Tempest is something I plan on reusing as the backbone of both sequencers and arpeggiators in future products. There is a tremendous amount of flexibility with this that I've barely scratched the surface of in the Tempest. Swing, duration of notes, the Note FX (param locks), etc, etc. Think of that structure confined to an arp... really, really flexible. If we do a 5 (or more) voice synth it would have a big keyboard, as a keyboardist I find there's little value in having a small keyboard with a polyphonic synth. It's just plain annoying. The OLED is a great compromise between cost and functionality. However any type of visual display changes the way you interact with the instrument; I'm always looking at other options to streamline the workflow. I hate touchscreen interfaces for music as they have no tactile feedback. Until it gets to the point where it's cheap enough to have a dedicated touch screen for specific functions I doubt we'll go in that direction.

Scalable voices on the hardware is something we have talked about. There are pros and cons to this and nothing has been decided.'"

You might remember Pym hinting on something new that turned out to be the Tempest in this post.

Update via Pym on Gearslutz:

"Responses to random parts of this thread...

The Tempest is NOT the Evolver 2.0. That is ridiculous. It has no digital effects. Compared to the Evolver, it's a pretty straightforward synth.

We will not likely make a synth based on the Tempest voice... we made a lot of compromises to optimize it for drums while still being affordable (such as the simple sample playback) and would want a far more flexible architecture for a synth voice.

We love modulation (isn't it obvious?) and the limit of how many we add is only processor power... the Tempest has 8 per voice and it's pretty likely there will be at least that many in any forthcoming synths.

'Analog FM' is not realistically possible with the voice architecture. The first reason (the big one) is that there is a crossover point on the oscillators to go from the lower to upper ranges and the phase of the oscillator is not kept consistent while shifting which would cause really weird artifacts. The second reason is the precision of the Curtis chips is not enough to lock down the oscillator Hz precisely enough to avoid the annoying pulsing you get when doing FM with imprecise signals.

However... if you had a fast enough CV sample rate, you could do FM to the CV signals in the chip. The Tempest, for example, has LFOs that are usable up to the 2kHz range or so. As the chips get more powerful, you should have more range here.

The Tempest has a tweaked filter from the Prophet/Mopho lines which I prefer quite a bit, way more clarity in the high end. However this does lead to people who prefer the dark sound to ALWAYS have the filter on... so it's a give and take. We will probably have the new filter design in new synths but may offer a global switch to change the character of the filter from old to new styles or something like that. Most people won't notice too much of a difference but you know how it is.

I will say that we DO listen to a lot of the common criticisms and have investigated several solutions to many of the problems you guys bring up but I have no firm dates or ideas about when those will be fixed... we are easily distracted by new and cool ideas so often don't put enough energy into fixing the little things. That is changing slowly as we have hired a new hardware engineer who is looking into all sorts of things. This applies to the power supply being internal, the pops on the outputs during power up, and to several other things you guys have mentioned on this thread or others that I really shouldn't comment on because it would give away too much.

How's that for teasing?"

DSI Tempest, DSI MoPho, & Eurorack Videos by Steven Morris

Fantastic Time (DSI Tempest & Eurorack) Published on Mar 14, 2014

"©Steven Morris. All Rights Reserved. 2014

Instruments:
DSI Tempest (Drums, synths, piano bass, etc.)
Eurorack (Bass/Lead & Drone)
-Makenoise Maths 2013
-Intellijel uVCF
-Doepfer A-111-5 Synth
-MFB Dual ADSR
-Doepfer A-183 Dual Attenuator
-(The DSI MoPho is used to control the A-111-5)

Effects:
Ibanez AD202 Analog Delay
Vesta Kozo DIG-410 Digital Delay
Vesta Kozo RV-3"

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Dave Smith Instruments Tempest Finger Drumming & Voyager Jam

Dave Smith Instruments Tempest. First finger drumming attempt.
Published on Apr 22, 2013 Andrew Jensen·12 videos

"Ive been following some tutorials on creating sounds for the Tempest. While doing so I modified the tutorials and created some of my own sounds based on the principles in the tutorials.
The first half shows the sounds dry and the second half adds some distortion.

This is my first attempt at finger drumming (as opposed to keying in the sequence one or two pads at a time).

Here is a link to the tutorials I have been using. I find them great especially for people who are new to drum synthesis (like me!):

http://stimresp.wordpress.com/tempest..."


Voyager and Tempest Jam
Published on Mar 21, 2013 Andrew Jensen·12 videos

"I didn't rehearse this so its not supposed to be anything in particular...I just turned on my Tempest and my Voyager, Loaded up a beat I had saved and ran it through the Ex. Audio input of the Voyager. I had the envelope gate set to "on / external" so the Voyagers note would hold and also allow the tempest to come through without holding down a key."

Sequential Discontinues The Tempest

via @sequentialLLC

"After nearly 9 years Sequential’s 6-voice analog drum synth Tempest is retiring. To get one while stock lasts, check with an authorized dealer or contact us at http://sequential.com/ask-sequential for referrals. On the bright side, we’re as busy as ever designing new products, so stay tuned!"

See the shop banners on the right for availability. Update: Original intro video from Dave Smith and Roger Linn added below. See this post for the initial announcement of the Tempest including additional pics and videos.


More than just a drum machine, the Tempest was a 6 voice synth with an engine similar to to the 4 voice Poly Evolver and mono Evolver.

via Sequential: "Each of the six analog voices has two analog oscillators plus two digital oscillators (with a large bank of included samples), the classic Curtis analog lowpass filter with audio-rate modulation, an additional highpass filter, analog VCA with feedback, five envelopes, two LFOs, an extraordinary variety of analog modulation routings, and stunning sonic quality, warmth, and punch. Although optimized for drum sounds, it excels at tuned sounds as well, and even doubles as a six-voice analog keyboard synth."

Initial Tempest announcement video from January 13, 2011:


YouTube via DaveSmithInstruments | January 13, 2011

See this post for a look back at the initial announcement of the Tempest, including additional pics and videos.

DSI TEMPEST DEMO 2 & 3

YouTube Uploaded by carsonday303 on Sep 28, 2011
Also added to Demo 1 here.
"Running through some beats and sounds I created for the DSI Tempest, displaying Beat FX while moving through beats. All sound recorded directly out of Tempest with no external FX or processing."

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DSI Tempest DreamProbe Sounds: Basses

YouTube Published on Jun 4, 2012 by dreamprobe

"Made entirely of analogue oscillators on the DSI Tempest. This is an selection of 11 sounds from 32. Make sure to check out the other parts of this series of DreamProbe sounds."

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Dave Smith Tempest Return of the Analog Beats Drum Machine Synthesizer Rik Marston

Published on Jul 10, 2017 SynthgodXXX

"Dave Smith Tempest 'Return of the Analog Beats'
Synthesizer Demo By Rik Marston 100% No Talking!!
**Watch in HD!** **Turn it UP!!**

A special friend visited me a few days ago for a sampling
project, The Dave Smith Instruments TEMPEST!!!
What a BLAST! I never get enough time to make my own
projects in it while I have it in the studio so in this video
demo I am just tweaking some of the internal projects & beats.
You can tweak forever! So easy to use!!!! SO FUN!!!!
What an awesome instrument by Dave Smith & Roger Linn.
How about a 'TEMPEST 2' boys?? Now would be the time!
Playing some original ATARI TEMPEST in the background,
--got to share my fantasies with all of YouTube...
The two best 'TEMPEST' creations at once!!! YUM!!

Thank you for watching!!"

Livid CNTRL:R and Dave Smith Tempest

Livid CNTRL:R and Dave Smith Tempest: Setting up the Tempest with Live and CNTRL:R from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

"While the Livid CNTRL:R provides a huge amount of control over Live's instruments, effects and Livid's Step Sequencers, the sonic originality and beauty of outboard synths are an essential part of most electronic music setups. Livid teamed up with the best synth maker in the business, Dave Smith Instruments, and explores some ways to seamlessly integrate the Tempest and Mopho into an Ableton live set. With the help of DSI's Carson Day, Peter puts full control of these analog beauties into the CNTRL:R, ending in a thick and rich mix of synths, sounds, and sequences.
In this video, Carson Day of Dave Smith Instruments and Peter Nyboer of Livid give an overview of their plan of attack for getting the DSI Tempest and Mopho setup and integrated into Live. Carson explains how the Tempest is setup and Peter shows how the Livid CNTRL:R accesses everything on the desktop, both real and virtual. Not just an ideal setup for DAW production, but the wealth of hands-on control makes for a perfect setup for collaboration and jamming."

Looper / Glitch experiment 2 (DSI Tempest, Octatrack, Remote midi controller)

YouTube Published on Jun 17, 2012 by RoonanTV

"This is one part of a double experiment trying to make a Glitch jamsession of just one pattern on the Tempest. In this session I used an Octatrack with external controller. I used three tracks, but only one recorder. I recoreded 1 bar loops by arming the recording trigger. This way everything stays in perfect sync and you can record loops at will. Playing this loops can be done on all 8 tracks and you can modify each parameter on each steps of all tracks. It will take some time to set up some nice and glitchy stuff, but once prepeared it will be usable for a long time. This example is setup in just a few minutes. It is just a short example and not a musical statement.

The Tempest pattern is from the sound design contest: beat Ace Tone Roz"

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Tempest bassline jam (is it the Moog or the Tempest?

YouTube Uploaded by RoonanTV on Feb 7, 2012

"I bought a Voyager to get that typical Moog sound. I really like a certain Moog Bass. After some fiddling on the Tempest I couldn't believe my ears. Anyone in for a brand new Voyager?"

Tempest and Voyager Acid jam (couldn't resist the hype)

Uploaded by RoonanTV on Feb 8, 2012

"After hearing all those nice attempts on the DSI forum I couldn't resist to have another go at creating 303 sounds. This is a live jam session with 3 acid parts on the Tempest and one on the Voyager. There is some EFX here and there, but no compression or mastering whatsoever. I recorded it as loud as possible and there might be some mild clipping, but you'll sure get the full dynamic :-)"

DSI Tempest - Impressions by Chris Randall

flickr By Chris Randall

Chris Randall of Analog Industries and Audio Damage put up some impressions of the new DSI Tempest. He sounds pretty impressed.

"To describe this thing as bad ass is to understate the matter entirely."

If you followed the DSI line of synths you know the Evolver has four oscillators, two analog and two digital with the Prophet VS waveforms. The Prophet '08 and Tetra forgo the digital oscillators. The Tempest has the four with additional digital waveforms added. "The digital oscillators comprise several methods of making noise (they did a very good job in the noise selection department), a couple hundred different drum samples running the gamut of styles, and the complete Prophet VS waveform library. They are quite capable, and while being necessarily drum-centric, Tempest can also do a pretty favorable turn as a synth."

The one thing to note is the Tempest is six voice polyphonic, while the Polyevolver is four. Be sure to see the rest of Chris' impressions. He also comments on how the envelops differ, MPC-60 style swing on the unit and it's overall tightness.

Laidback 4 on the floor (Tempest, Voyager, ESX and DX200 jam)

YouTube Uploaded by RoonanTV on Feb 22, 2012

"This is a work in progress. Trying to sync the ESX to the Tempest controlling the ESX and the DX200. Works very well, but I hope the Tempest will get full midi soon! Would make arranging a lot easier. There are a few small mistakes, but the overall feel is how I wanted it to be."

Minimal experiment (Tempest & ESX jam)

Uploaded by RoonanTV on Feb 22, 2012

"This jam consists mostly of the Tempest with the ESX. Trying to create endless evolving efx with LFO's, short delay's and long delay's. Warning!!! This track can get boring if you don't like minimal changes over time. I think the build up is promising, but lacks a climax."

Free DSI Prophet 12 & Tempest 1.3 Clinic with Carson Day at Robotspeak

"REE CLINIC: Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12 and Tempest 1.3 update clinic.

Stop by the shop on Saturday August 3rd at 2PM for another view of what Dave Smith calls his best synthesizer yet AND get the latest on what the Tempest's version 1.3 update adds to this sick Analog drum machine.

Ex ROBOTSPEAker Carson Day now employed full time with DSI, is back from a European DSI Prophet 12/Tempest tour. Carson will be in the shop to answer any questions you may have about the Prophet 12 and Tempest as he Demo's/jams on both of these electronic musical instruments.

It's free !

Please RSVP info@robotspeak.com"  [San Francisco]

Hopefully there will be some video captured for the rest of us.