Dave Smith Instruments Tempest – Soon… Really!

It’s been coming for a while now but it seems that the Tempest drummachine is around the corner. We could expect it at the end of the summer and that time has almost arrived. Below is the statement of Dave Smith and Roger Linn about the arrival of Tempest, …. soon!

From the DSI website:

We here at Dave Smith Instruments have been claiming a “late summer” ship date for Tempest for several months now. Well, summer doesn’t get much later than this and Tempest isn’t quite ready to ship yet, but it is close. “We realize it has been a long time coming, but a complex project like this is not something we want to rush out,” said DSI’s Dave Smith, co-designer of Tempest along with legendary drum machine designer Roger Linn. “There are a lot of new challenges for us in an instrument like Tempest, but we think it’ll be worth the wait.”

Tempest is a professional drum machine that generates its sounds using six powerful analog synthesis voices. It runs an innovative, performance-oriented operating system that permits an extraordinary level of control to create, edit, arrange and manipulate beats and sounds in real time without ever stopping play. “We like to think of Tempest as not just a drum machine but rather as a new musical instrument for the real-time performance of beat-oriented music,” said Linn.

Tempest will be shipping in limited numbers by the end of September. “We aren’t stockpiling instruments for a mass roll-out, and production typically takes a few weeks to get to the point where they can assemble and test a new product in significant quantities,” said DSI’s Joanne McGowan. “That, coupled with a large backlog of pre-orders, means Tempests will probably be hard to come by for a while, but they are coming.”

In the meantime, whet your appetite for percolating analog percussives with this video tutorial from Roger.