I have a hunch that Roland is working on a new bigger, almost flagship style SP. So this little pal could almost be like testing out some new ideas. I have no data to back up my hunch. Just dreaming.
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If they do, I hope they consider making it less cluttered and more user friendly than their current line-up of samplers. The sp-404 mkll and now the p-6 have so many cool features for the price, but using them all seems to be a pita due to the UI, for me at least.
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Forget it, Jake, it’s Roland.
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Gonna use the software to input all sorts of drum sounds and record random noises to play granular. That’s just about what I’m interested in wth the P-6. 3 hours of batt time seems shorter than the 4.5 hours mentioned by Andy from Roland for the S-1. Smaller batt or P-6 just uses more juice I wonder.
some fun surprises learning this …
when youre in sampling mode, you can activate fx, so you can basically use it as a live fx unit. was just drumming on a topo chico bottle with live reverb, delay etc.
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Ah - that makes a lot more sense!
Still not sure from the manual and videos so far…
a) Do you need to grab the samples from banks to those 6 surface pads to start a pattern? And work with those six sounds only…
b) Are all the samples and banks available at all time? So you can use all 48 sounds at once in a pattern unless you exceed the polyphony limit… In other words do you have in pattern 8 sequencer lanes for separate banks?
From the nonjuror video it seems the latter is true…
The latter.
All 48 samples are available for each pattern. Plus the granular.
49 sequencer lanes. Each sample has it own lane.
I’m pretty sure the granular pad is just its own thing. no banks.
It’s my understanding that you are limited by a polyphony of 16 but also 8 simultaneous triggers per step.
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8 samples per step and 8 modulation lanes, if I remember correctly? (Total polyphony of 16). Also, only four granular instances (not sure what to call that) at a time, if I remember correctly.
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Cool!
For the granular part, I understood it that way you can asign to it any sound from any bank.
And the 8 notes per trigger - that is for one sample, right? So you can have for example 4 note chords on 4 different sample lanes at one step of a sequencer… Plus those 4 notes of granular part which are separate thing…
I thought it was just 8 samples per step total (with polyphony of 16 I’m assuming meaning if other sounds from a different step are still playing you are good up to 16 sounds simultaneously).
I wasn’t thinking the granular was on top of that, but assumed it was more limited because it’s more processor intensive. I may be wrong.
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Yes, you are probably right. I watched that passage in loopop video again. 8 voices per step and the other voices “help stealing voice between steps”. Still not sure whether the additional 4 granular voices act separately…
But my main question was if all sounds in all banks are accessible at the same time. Which they are - so great!
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Yeah, especially since each pad in each bank can have theoretically up to 64 sounds (only limited by sample time) if you do the step sampling mode. That’s a ton of samples.
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I’m real curious about the granular stuff too. I guess it can be resampled, but can you use a sample already assigned a pad as granular? Is granular its own separate sample?
RTFM time🥳 here I goooo
Ah, much better than the manual.
Loopop says: press and hold PATTERN, GRANULAR then the sample pad of your choice.
So you choose something you already sampled.
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Yes, the already recorded sample. You can resample the granular sound to another pad, then reassign the granular engine for the new one and granulize it again… 
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The circle of life.
Er, sample of life.
Ooh I’m getting excited! I don’t get why I didn’t care about samples before, but this maybe really will make it fun.
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I am getting excited too. Again. I mean - i was enthusiastic the first day it was announced. Later on I kind of calmed down, thinking about limitations (namely the process of backing up and the sharing of sample settings across patterns).
But now I am beginning to be optimistic thinking about how it could be used. I was looking for an on the go device for quite some time. Small, working on batteries, quite ease to operate on surface level, but flexible to keep engaged…
So now I am thinking the use case - fill 2 banks with some prepared (musical) sounds at home, catch some found sounds to other 2-3 banks and leave the rest for resampling experiments. Approach to it as it is one project. (Maybe two projects could be mentally possible to manage when everytihing - banks and pattterns amount is divided in halves). Try to come up with something complete in week or two - just what can be done on ways to work and lunch breaks.
Btw., which of the sample settings exactly are shared across the patterns? Just the playback mode - i.e. gate/loop setting? The amp envelope? I didn’t read the manual from start to finish and can’t find it…
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As far as I understand, every setting for a sample is shared across all patterns. So if you pan the hihat left in one pattern, it will be panned in all patterns.
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That is why I never clicked with them, the workflow was just not there.
That is the thing that confuses me - you can record or parameter lock the pan movement (at least it seemed to be done in some of the videos), so it somehow (in my mind) goes against the idea that this is one of those settings shared across patterns. Unless it is but you can force it (to the right in your example) with the modulation lane.
But I somehow doubt you can “parameter lock” the sample playback direction for example…
Edit: It seems there is even some pan randomization parameter…
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