Beetlecrab Tempera Granular Ambient

video upload by r beny

Click CC at the bottom of the player for the subtitles.

"Hello, I hope you are taking care. This video is a performance centered around the Beetlecrab Tempera granular sampler/synthesizer. My intention was to create a long form piece of music using only the Tempera, outside of sequencing (as Tempera currently doesn’t have a note sequencer).

I’ve had the Tempera for a while now, but have only recently gotten around to really getting to know it well - learning its ins and outs, learning its boundaries and edges. When learning a new granular instrument, one of the first things I like to do is figure out the relationship between grain length/size and grain density/rate. Tempera is quite unique in that regard, as grain sizes can span the entire length of the buffer (~11s in this instance) - this allows for one to play back entire samples as-is (polyphonically as well), without being “granularized”. On the other end of the spectrum, Tempera also excels at creating grain clouds with an abundance of short grains all firing off at once. I make use of both of these techniques in this video.

Some patch notes:
Tempera is loaded with 8 different samples from various sound sources from my studio. Each sample is just a single note of the sound source, recorded directly to Tempera. Tempera has a note detection feature, so each note was recorded at slightly different notes (mostly either A or C).

From to left to right across the 8 cells, the samples are:
Mannequins Mangrove
Mutable Instruments Rings (patched to make a “harp” sound)
Mangrove with another timbre
Korg Z1 (with a “flute patch”, which I didn’t end up using in this video)
Rings (patched to make a “glockenspiel” sound)
Korg Z1 (with a “bassoon” patch)
Felt Instruments Blisko Cello (with a Sul Tasto patch with only a single string)
Novation Summit (with a pad patch)

In the video, I use the 4 granular emitters in conjunction with sequencing from the Squarp Hapax to sequence and play the various samples across the grid. Emitter 1 is set up to play just a single grain per note, with a grain length that matches the entire buffer. Emitters 2-4 are set up in various grain cloud formations.

The Tempera is running the latest beta firmware as of 6/24/25 (2.2.beta13, shoutout to the Discord).

This is a long one. Thanks for stopping by and sticking with."