Hello dear c&g community!
I’m on the edge of buying a Organelle because it’s such a interesting peace of music hardware. When you search youtube/instagram/internet there is a lot of ambient work using a Organelle but the thing is i want to see this little thing in a live band situation. Could you help me deciding should I buy the Organelle by sharing your experience in using it in bands or posting some links.
Thanks a lot!
I haven’t used it in a live band personally, but I could easily imagine it being used in one. Depending on how you are using it, you may want to use an external midi keyboard/controller for it, but that may not even be necessary if the parts are simple. Due to it’s sampling possibilities, you could use it for just about any keys sound you would want. You could also use it more for things like ambient sounds or samples, or like a drum machine with live drums (a la Radiohead), or as an effects processor for guitar or voice, or anything really.
What kind of music does your band play?
Hey, thanks for the reply!
Our music is sonically influenced a lot by Radiohead (whom you mentioned) especially by the drone/strange sounds aesthetics and unorthodox progressions. Then there’s a lot of influence ranging from King Krule, Beach House, trip-hop and shoegaze. Dark, mellow and hypnotic.
We’re currently in the process of recording our debut album so there’s no material to share.
Has the Organelle the potential to be a full blooded synth in a band setting?
In short answer, yes absolutely.
I will say it is worth noting that the Organelle has a lot of depth, as in to really use it to full capability it takes some learning and work, but if you want to use it as a synth in a band setting you would definitely be able to do so, even with the stock patches alone (there are many amazing and usable user patches floating around too).
It’s kind of swiss army knife of sound (synth army knife, perhaps?), but it does also mean that it may not be your best option for every sound in every situation. For example, if you are really looking for only analog synth sounds, and you want the best analog synth sound you could get, you would probably just want to get an analog synth. The Organelle does have many patches that emulate analog synths, and they are really good. The benefit to the Organelle is you’re getting that in addition to an incredible amount of other functions.
I definitely like the multifunctionality aspect of the Orgenelle. The classic analog synth sounds that can be found in now many affordable synths on the market is what had put me in search for a different kind of musical instrument. I think the Organelle is the one and I’m really close to ordering one.
Thank you for your help ricecult!
Now, if I could only hear the organelle implemented in a band setting it would be great.
Additional question - what about the pitch of the patches? Do you need to tune every patch before using it or you could save the preset you tweaked that best fits the purpose?
As for pitch, most pitched patches are defaulted to standard tuning, but are tunable. If you wanted to save a particular patch to a different tuning, you could save it that way on the Organelle (on the usb drive) or edit then save it that way in PD.
It depends how the patch functions, if it’s based in PD synthesis or if it’s working more as a sampler, and how the options are configured for that specific patch. One thing to get used to with Organelle is that each patch is configured differently and has different options, but if you are willing to dive into it a bit, you can customize things entirely within any patch.
To be clear though, concerning tuning, that I would imagine not be a big hurtle in what you are looking for.
I’ve been using it for a few months in a 4-piece band and it’s a great tool.
I’d have to say that it really comes to life in studio situation where you often have the opportunity to fix many problems with it because of the great variety of patches.
In a live situation it’s another ball game though.I mostly use it to double my Korg Minilogue with synths and for beats on a few songs. But you have to choose how you’ll use it because you don’t want to be changing yr setup/inputs/mix in a live show.
I use it in a band as a second keys instrument to be able to play melodies with specific sounds that layer the main synth lines. I use a basic synth patch, the Mellotron sample patch as well as sample patches that allow me to play custom sounds (that I have designed in Ableton Live) melodically. We don’t really mind if sounds are lofi.
This is what how I feel about it:
I would love to use patches that react to input from other instruments. I would also love to sequence Euclidian rhythms that the drummer can play around. I haven’t gotten there yet but the Organelle supports this and much much more.
My biggest concern with the organelle when it comes to live and band settings is that much (but not all) of the sequencing of samples, drum sounds and arpeggios are NOT quantized/ attached to a midi clock, so its hard to keep in sync with any looper, drummer, or other electronic instruments. But if you are looking to use the organelle as an effect processor for incoming audio and straight up synth, it can be a very powerful live tool.
Thanks for your interest!
I thought I would add one functional aspect of the Organelle that could help in a live band setting. This the ability to save a patch’s parameters so they will load the next time you launch that patch (AKA a preset). So if you decide ‘this is how I want the patch to sound for this song’ you can save that state and go back to it again and again until you save over your settings.
The current OS also allows you to easily save multiple versions of the same patch so you can have a number of the same patch each with its own saved preset - one for each song!
You can also add patches to your Organelle’s ‘Favourites’ folder so you can easily find your subset of patches used for the band, while keeping a larger set of patches available for experimentation, jams, etc.
the sequencing of samples, drum sounds and arpeggios are NOT quantized/ attached to a midi clock
Yes, that’s the first thing that bugged me. Still trying to figure something out.
midi clock should be being used by most patches (C&G/Orac)
the quantisation then tends to depend on the patch/sequencer, e.g. i think seq2 is designed for live input so is not quantised (iirc) , but things that are more step based should be quantised - no?
which are we talking about in particular?
one thing that is I noticed missing on most patches is transport control by midi.
so whilst the midi clock might be in sync, when a sequence is actually started it is not sync.
(usually you would do this by starting a sequencer off of midi start)
this is not a big issue when using one sequencer, you can just start in manually in time,
but if you have multiple sequencers (as you can in Orac) then you can’t start them all simultaneously 
(but I’ll say thats pretty advance usage 
)
anyway, none of this is a fundamental problem, you could adapt patches/modules to make them quantised if thats your need.
The ONLY midi sequencer I can think of that isn’t quantised and syncable is seq2 (used in many of the c&g stock patches), and @WyrdAl made seqsync in Orac to solve that quibble. 
You should try Orac, where you can use other, quantised sequencers to drive your favourite synths, samplers etc
I think none of them do a sync’d start though…
e.g. imagine you have a pattern on the organelle, and a pattern on say an octatrack (as master)
you cannot just hit play, and they start in sync.
you’d have to hit play on the octatrack, then start the pattern (via aux) on the organelle exactly at the same time. in other words, its tempo sync’d…
(I suspect this is what was meant, but Id like to hear some clarification, and what use-case is being discussed here)
I notice this more when Ive ‘programmed’ things in advance on the Organelle , against other devices (or in orac on different chains)… if you are going it ‘live’ then I don’t see it since, the patterns are already running, and so just ‘stay in sync’
thats why I think its an interesting topic to clarify and discuss 
the only patch exception to this is grids-link , because there I actually used Ableton Link to synchronise the bar boundaries… and thats where I learnt how cool Link was for this, its fantastic just being able to start things dynamically and them automatically sync to bar/beat boundaries properly.
I did look into this for orac but unfortunately, I found that many of the patches/modules would need quite a number of changes to make this work properly - so postponed looking into this any further.
Is there an existing sampler patch of 48 notes with a mono parameter ( as opposed to poly) that I could use to sample a mono synth and use in a live situation ? Thanks
Oh man, this is awesome! Thanks for sharing! Peace.