Simply drag the end point of a lane to the left to set its length, generating all manner of polyrhythms as each lane cycles around its specified number of steps. Speaking of the Slicer, while it's not seen much change beyond a UI redesign, it's worth noting that it can, of course, distribute its slices across four times as many pads now, making those enormous sliced kits much easier to play and sequence than before.īy far the most significant addition to the Pattern Sequencer is the same independent pattern lane length adjustment that we dug so much in FXpansion's Tremor drum machine. Indeed, it's actually gained a choice of Assign modes for capturing each take to the next Layer, Pad or both, or sending it to the Slicer, which makes the process of on-the-fly kit creation faster and more fun than ever.

More importantly, the Sampler has been greatly reduced in size and prominence from its previous dedicated panel to a pop-out extension of the pad section, with no loss in functionality. The Engine and Global Mixers are now unified, and the previously oversized pattern keys section has been shrunk and moved to the top of the Pattern panel, for example. It's wonderfully liberating and a vast improvement over the previous setup, but we're surprised there's no option to save workspaces for instant recall - big pads for performance, fullscreen sequencer for sequencing, huge mixer for mixing, and so on.Ī few specific elements have been sensibly relocated, too.

Not only is the whole window now freely resizable with no effect on graphical fidelity, but every panel within it can also be stretched vertically and horizontally (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the individual pane), with pads reshaping to fit, scrollbars appearing as required, and multiple automation lanes now viewable for each pad in the Sequencer. While the latter hasn't been lessened (nor should it be!) for Geist2, the GUI has been utterly transformed by the transition to vector graphics and Retina/HiDPI compatibility, and the introduction of a muted, more contemporary new look. The original Geist could be undeniably fiddly at times, due to the awkward disconnect between its inflexible interface and the multi-layered complexity of its architecture. Patterns can be arranged into Scenes, and strung together as arrangements manually or in real time, making Geist2 a full-on production environment in its own right - albeit one that still can't host other plugins. Sequencing of pads is done using a familiar pattern sequencer that stores up to 24 patterns of 1024 steps each and features automation lanes for Volume, Pan, tuning, timing Shift, effects sends and much more.

Geist 2 installer