been spending my free time on other projects recently, but after a long day of rushing last minute schoolwork under the influence of too much caffeine, it felt really nice to sit on the carpet and make this tune while watching tech repair videos. had the s1 going into the sonicware evokes fx, both of those going into the p6. i didnt do a whole bunch of melodic sequencing on anything, i mostly just free recorded little phrases onto the p6 and tried to get them to work together. a nice sloppy escape from the normal routine. i thought it would be funny to call this song “fuck august” because im not really a fan of this month but i figured that was a bit too harsh because i dont hate august. so here it is, just august
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I continue to try to use the P-6 as a mini standalone groovebox, and I continue to find it maddeningly frustrating. I want to perform what I’m playing in real time and mutes/unmutes are a massive part of that workflow. Within seconds I lose track of what bank or pad I’m (un)muting, due to the whole bank A/E thing, and it becomes almost pot luck “Am I about to mute the drums, or the pad sound, or something else … oh well let’s find out”
I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be used as performance groovebox, but then I wonder - why put a sequencer on it at all? If I was to sequence/control it from an external device, that would help a lot, but it’s not going to let me make music while on the train or sat in my garden
Gah, maybe I’ve just got too much gear
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I use sequencers all the time and don’t perform. I just make music and I use sequencers. And sometimes I don’t.
That would suck if it didn’t have a sequencer. I’m me of the reasons I bought it was because it had one.
Hang in there!
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i guess the benefit of the sequencer is that you dont need to unmute and mute things live if you sequence different patterns and take out/add different parts
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you’re not wrong for feeling this way, this is a niche that really isn’t being served at what I would call a reasonable amount… in every instance of an instrument for this niche case we are waiting on 2nd, 3rd, and probably 4th models of what’s currently out to fulfill the simple request people have for this niche demographic…
I know that I don’t have the skill and capability to build the instruments that I want, and that is something that I never lose site of, but I also never lose site of for example, the cultural contrast between how the synth market is clambering for new unheard of features and methodologies in those products, and developers are racing to try to satiate these request with varying levels of success that are all over the spectrum, while on the other hand their cousins in the beatmachine market are only requesting no brainer features to pretty much just make these beat machines work in common sense fashion… I’m always struck how the majority of request I see for beatmachine development are hardly ever ground breaking, and almost always just request to make features already in most of these instruments work together in a way that makes sense… unless it’s a basic feature that is just inexplicably missing like muting, slicing, etc…
frustrating innit
the problem is that this thing has features that grooveboxes and samples that cost up to $2000 dont have. its just infuriating that roland or another company cant make a polphonic sampler/groovebox with ALL of the amazing features and sound quality of the P-6, but in a full song-creation and sound design box like the sh-4d(or ideally, something like the dt2)
so, it’s not ideal, especially for something this convenient and portable, but i find it works really well as a companion device to a more fleshed out/powerful groovebox like the dt2 or the 1010 Bento. you can record your samples into it, do all the awesome sound design/fx processing/shaping the contour of the amp and filter/reduce the bitrate, then put it in a granulator, resample that and turn the resulting sound into a polyphonic synth voice or soundscape/texture
and then, you take that sound and sample it into your groovebox for arrangement. it literally has all of the things i wish these other much more expensive samplers had. you can even use its built in microphone as an external sampler mic for your digitakt or bento or whatever. in my case, its the most practical solution for a portable pre-amp-less battery powered microphone for a sampler that inexplicably doesnt include a mic for sampling
so on one hand i really wish my bento or the DT2 had a built in mic, a very capable polyphonic granular engine with control over all of the grain parameters, a resonator/chromatic pitch shifter/dj eq-isolator/vinyl sim/cassette sim/chorus/ring mod/lofi/compressor/scatter/additional filter w-drive, looping audio rate envelopes, multiple lofi sample rate options, step sampling, motion sequencing-plocks, polyphony, the option to easily swap out the battery with a <$20 battery that lasts at least 11 hours, ext audio 3.5mm trs input, step lop, micro timing, the ability to gate looping granular polyphonic voices and hold them - creating individual pitched micro-loops, physical knobs for sample start and end
BUT on the other hand, i wish my P-6 had an sd card and an elektron sequencer. maybe the ability to record and retain longer loops and arrange them into a song on a more macro-level. can you imagine if elektron made a model:samples with these features? it wouldnt have the full song arrangement capabilities of like a Bento or DT2, but you could definitely craft full tracks on it.
that would honestly be the most appealing hardware groovebox of all time.
I was just thinking of how nice it would be if korg re-released the emx-1 and esx-1 (2?) with the tubes, because most modern grooveboxes still lack some of those features and workflows as well. im a big fan of even the es-1. if they could implement what he p-6 was able to include in this tiny little box, in one of those things, with the motion-sequencing and 12 bit adc/dac of the es-1, or ideally a combined synthesis + sampler machine, i would buy it without question
im getting lost in my gear dreams here, but all of this is to articulate how frustrating it is to me that this little $250 box can do 70-80% of what i need for a full all-in-one sound design & composition box, but none of these companies that do have the architecture for a more powerful sequencer box have combined these features into one of their devices.
so i really think this thing is special. and if you combine it with another box that does have a capable sequencer which can sample the output of this device, like the Bento or the Dt2, you basically have the perfect dawless setup. i just hope that someday one of these companies can figure out how to combine the two into one perfect piece of gear
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sometimes these conversations make me think of a situation where someone is a drawing a picture with a pencil and paper and then someone comes up and says “man, if only you were drawing with a multicolored pen, then you could draw a full picture!”
the pencil and paper works fine, just like the multicolored pen and paper. just depends what kind of full picture you want to draw!
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roland is the native instruments of hardware, everything they make every time is phenomenal… but.
still have two mx-1 mixers from them, for them it’s an after thought, for me it’s an astonishing coulda been
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if you’re referring to my post, i understand that im being picky and dreaming out loud, but i think its worth asking why it isnt possible to put the p-6 stuff in a sampler that costs 5 times as much
but i get the criticism, i think
also i love the p-6. its one of the few things ive never sold
yeah i can totally see this. i should have been more roland-oriented early in my hardware gear career
the only things ive owned from there are the s-1 and p-6 i think. but i absolutely love both of them and they both blow away other similar gear
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I have a lot of their stuff and love this company, imo it’s only their beatmachine department that has this issue… it’s like they’re teasing us 
I was in rare form when I eschewed the P6 only because I really, really need something just like that right now too much to go through those frustrations…
I feel no remorse about it, people are more sensitive about sneakers… I’ll keep my beatmachine sensitivity thank you very much haha
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P-6 is still crazy amount of decades of Roland/Boss DSP R&D in a volca priced box. If thats all you have, you just make it work. If not, add a complementary bit of kit.
Never regretted buying a P6 for a second. Still regret buying some volcas though
One of these days I’m giving that S1 a try
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I sample my Volcas into my P6 to mask the pain.
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i think the specific thought that triggered my response is the idea that it would be better if it had an Elektron-style sequencer/muting capabilities. im just always confused by this request, like the people suggesting implementation of an Elektron style sequencer probably have at least one Elektron sequencer already. and its like, yeah, use the Elektron sequencer if you want Elektron-style sequencing. Roland and Elektron have very different vibes and from my perspective, a very different approach to making music in general. which is why i like them!
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I can see where @less_wexners is coming from, esp with the P-6.
It’s bananas what Roland have managed to stuff into this tiny box, and in some areas it’s a more powerful sampler than the big boys (glares at lack of polyphony on DT2). It’s bloody amazing.
It’s also bloody awful 
So I find myself having something akin to cognitive dissonance when I use it. The tension between it’s huge potential and it’s janky reality
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i gotta say i cant relate with this at all. i dont experience any jankiness, nor a feeling of potential. its just right imo
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Fair, and you’ve made a lot of great sounding tracks on it.
Can I ask - do you arrange them fully on the P-6? Or rather how do you go from “a bunch of 4 bar patterns” to a finished track?
thanks! i just copy and paste patterns until i have around 11 to 15 patterns in one bank, then switch through them as i record the tune into the 404. i have the same process on the ep133, i find it easiest to just arrange the track linearly through the pattern numbers.
its maybe not as useful if using a bunch of diversely populated sample chains but the “pad delete” function is really useful for quickly removing parts from a pattern. then i either record a new pattern with the same samples or i go with something else.
i’ll add, i had both a digitakt and a digitone and really didnt get along with the sequencing workflow on them. granted, it was earlier on in my hardware journey and just generally less experienced but i’ve found that playability when recording a sequence is what i need, i dont really click with the extra sequencing bits and bobs.
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I bought a P6, and hastily sold it, last year. I hated it at the time.
I got one in again on a whim… I don’t hate it now!
Here’s the first little beat I got out of it after playing around enough to make something simple.
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Two quick questions - can it process external audio and can you record it via usb on iphone?
Yes and yes.
You migth need a camera kit if you have lightning connectyor. USB-C should work without.
Hold “C” when starting up to not draw current from your phones battery.
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