Geist Lite limitations?

[bluedad]

Kontakt is not a sampler.

Uhm... yes and no.

No... It can LOAD samples, cut/slice/edit etc. samples, combine them, arrange them, and make playable sampled Kontakt instruments out of them, even with its own scripting language.
In that aspect, Kontakt is SO much more powerful than Geist.

But yes... it's an INSTRUMENT CREATION sampler, not a drum (pad) sampler with a recording function.

Age old argument... but to me, a sampler, samples... open Kontakt in standalone mode and you can only work with existing audio... no recording. Every hardware sampler records. That is/was the very source of the word sampler. Kontakt is the worlds most powerful sample player... and it is impressive what it does. But I refuse to call it a sampler... cause it doesn't

/pedantic argument

^ this

[braj]

Has anyone used the full version with Studio One? Can you drag and drop from the arranger to Geist?

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

the whole 'sampling' thing is the biggest draw...i have 'ultrabeat' and 'battery', but watching the video for geist with the sampling demonstrated the huge workflow benefit of the in-house sampling

can't afford it, especially for just that functionality, but i still remain hopeful that 'battery 4' will be able to do it

[pdxindy]

the whole 'sampling' thing is the biggest draw...i have 'ultrabeat' and 'battery', but watching the video for geist with the sampling demonstrated the huge workflow benefit of the in-house sampling

can't afford it, especially for just that functionality, but i still remain hopeful that 'battery 4' will be able to do it

The sampling is the biggest draw... I agree... cause people usually have other areas covered

Also, some people like smaller targeted plug-ins and sometimes I agree, but in this case, I like Geist because it is all there in one program. I also particularly like the scene mode. You can switch between many different multi-engine snapshots with different midi notes and it keeps it in time. THis can either be used as a powerful performance tool, or for a kind of spontaneous track creation. Like the sampling it opens up new workflow possibilities. I also like how easy it is to set up multiple sequences with different lengths and timings to create complex patterns and poly-rythms.

The slicer is also very good. I never really used slicers before, but in conjunction with the sampling, I now sample a bassline and slice it right to the seq and pads... preserves the timing and it is a snap to change a note or two and have 2 or more sequences with slight variations which I can chain together or swap on the fly...

The included effects are quite good and musical and what I do in Geist just always seems to sound good without much effort.

For me, in this case, the sum exceeds the parts. Anyway...

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

The slicer is also very good. I never really used slicers before, but in conjunction with the sampling, I now sample a bassline and slice it right to the seq and pads... preserves the timing and it is a snap to change a note or two and have 2 or more sequences with slight variations which I can chain together or swap on the fly...

yeah, this is what i mean...the rest i can do without

[ezelkow1]

Has anyone used the full version with Studio One? Can you drag and drop from the arranger to Geist?

I dont think geist can work that way in any host, dont think it lets you drop midi from a host on to a pattern in geist. It does work the other way around though, you can drop patterns from geist on to tracks in s1

[braj]

Has anyone used the full version with Studio One? Can you drag and drop from the arranger to Geist?

I dont think geist can work that way in any host, dont think it lets you drop midi from a host on to a pattern in geist. It does work the other way around though, you can drop patterns from geist on to tracks in s1

I was thinking of samples, ie. record some audio in S1 and drag and drop that onto a pad. Maybe I just need to look up video demo or two.

[ezelkow1]

Has anyone used the full version with Studio One? Can you drag and drop from the arranger to Geist?

I dont think geist can work that way in any host, dont think it lets you drop midi from a host on to a pattern in geist. It does work the other way around though, you can drop patterns from geist on to tracks in s1

I was thinking of samples, ie. record some audio in S1 and drag and drop that onto a pad. Maybe I just need to look up video demo or two.

Ahh ok, no you cant do that either, just tried in both s1 and ableton. You can drag n drop from their respective browsers but not from their arrangers. Geist does include spitter, which is a seperate vst meant to be used for what your trying to do. You drop it on any track and it feeds audio into the sampling portion of geist

[braj]

Well I'm gonna save up for Geist, I really like the workflow in Lite even though it is limited. It is superior to what I have already and the 'limitation' of not being able to write patterns to the piano roll is proving to have an upside, I'm able to easily copy and arrange patterns around inside Geist and not have to go back to the arranger for it. So I can pretty much plan the intro, verse, fills etc. set it in the song, then later if I want to change the intro or whatever I don't need to go back, delete it, and drag again into the arranger. So I guess I might as well sell off iDrum if I can. I don't generally add much effects on drums and being able to throw a little reverb or delay on them from the one available insert I think is enough for now.

[braj]

So in the full version you can record synths directly from the DAW into the sampler? Right now I am playing with it, I just rendered a note from S1 and dragged it to a folder, then dragged it to Geist, which was really easy Once in Geist from the pattern view it is really easy to create melodic basslines etc using the samples. I took the ADM CM drum machine samples and am using those in Geist too Great things can be done with this freebie, I am tempted by that $125 upgrade deal but I am not sure if I need it. Can someone sell me on more of the features, like how useful are Scenes?

[ezelkow1]

yea you can record in either using the spitter plugin, or the geist vst itself. It has an audio input so you can route a track into it and sample. The spitter is mainly for hosts that dont support that type of routing, but you can have multiple instances of it, so say you drop a spitter on 4 different tracks, each one of those instances is selectable in geist at any time

[braj]

I guess I'd need the splitter in Studio One since it doesn't route audio well. That's cool as long as there is a way. But I don't mind how I'm doing it currently, it works easily enough.

[braj]

One thing in the Lite version, I don't see how to add multiple layers to a pad. It does support it in playback using the bundled kits, but is it disabled to create them in the Lite version?

[pdxindy]

So in the full version you can record synths directly from the DAW into the sampler? Right now I am playing with it, I just rendered a note from S1 and dragged it to a folder, then dragged it to Geist, which was really easy Once in Geist from the pattern view it is really easy to create melodic basslines etc using the samples. I took the ADM CM drum machine samples and am using those in Geist too Great things can be done with this freebie, I am tempted by that $125 upgrade deal but I am not sure if I need it. Can someone sell me on more of the features, like how useful are Scenes?

In the full version not only can you record straight to the sampler, but you can use the threshold mode so that you can play 4 separate notes from your synth and each note automatically becomes a separate take... you can delete a take you do not like and play that note again (say you played it too soft the first time). Once you have all your takes, you can send them to open pads with one command.

You can also play say 5 versions of the same note for variety and you then have 5 takes and you can send them all to 1 pad as layers (one command) which you can layer by velocity or round robin etc.

It is not that it is hard to record 1 note and drag it to a pad, but if you are doing 4 layers per pad and 16 pads that is 64 times you would repeat the process... lots of mousing and switching. In Geist it gets sent to the first available empty pad so no need to even go to the layers page. It is just so fast that the tedious becomes fun.

You also have the slicer so you can take a drum loop, short melody or bassline and slice to both pattern and pads... you immediately get the pattern of that melody and the individual notes to pads... excellent way to extract patterns from existing audio content...

With the song mode, you can easily sequence patterns... say I want 4 measures of pattern 1, then 2 measures of pattern 2, then 2 measures of pattern 3 in seconds I can set that up and if I want it to loop, hit the loop button. You can manually sequence like that for each of the 8 engines.

In scene mode you take a snapshot of all 8 engines. You can save 64 scene snapshots each of which can contain 1 of 24 patterns per engine. You can then trigger any of those scenes in realtime via midi note. They can be set to start when you hit a note or at the next beat/measure. They can be set to play as long as you hold the note or until the pattern ends or you play another note to trigger a new scene. All those changes are recorded and can be exported as midi. Great live performance tool! But also useful for a kind of freeform composition that lends itself to exploration in realtime... all recorded and easy extracting/editing of the section you like.


Nothing you cannot do in your host, but it is the ease of doing it that makes it fun and productive for me in Geist...

[braj]

So in many ways this adds Ableton-like functionality to any DAW?