Roland Sh-4d

Not sure what that has to do with the SH-4d, however I think your money is safe for some considerable time

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There are loads of effects and a master compressor built into the thing. They are sort of set to ridiculous extreme guitar FX settings where when you dial them down a bit it can get nice and warm and fuzzy. There are seperate FX per channel and then a shared reverb chorus and delay plus another master effect on the main out. Within the FX there are plenty of really decent distortions, filters and lo-fi fx.

There are of course also nice ways of synth programming to make the gnarl too, there’s a drive knob in the VCA section, if you use sh-3d as a machine you’ve got 2 LFOs to play with plus there’s the matrix, there’s plenty of way to get warble and grack in even before the fx section.

The rhythm track really could do with a tiny bit of attention. If you want a slightly reverby drum mix, you’re going to need to go into each drum used in the pattern and set the reverb for it. The lack of any modulation for the rhythm section is also a real bummer, it’s another elektron spiling us situation but being able to LFO the velocity or decay of a pattern over time really unlocks whole new dimensions, as does conditional triggers, it can make patterns on the SH4D a bit static really.

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not sure if im reading the manual right as im not the most familiar with midi jargon in general but from my reading it seems like the knobs and faders dont send midi out, is this correct? it would be a cool controller for the m8

Thanks for your thoughts, Stlaub. I’m interested in the SH-4D but will likely remain on the fence until a firmware update brings some refinements and bug fixes. Saving patches and patterns sounds like it might be a hassle, and that seems like an area where they ought to improve the experience.

Following this discussion, I’ve just made a thing that takes the direction of how warm/tapey? it can get. Everything internal, usb’d into reaper and straight out again with a little bit of normalisation to it.

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Man, that’s fantastic Stlaub. Really nice work on your part, and an elevated GAS level on my part. Catching a Seefeel vibe in there.

Very seefeel like

How long did it take to save the patch and the pattern?

Just bough SH-4D.
Nice synth.
It’s less capable in sound design area than MC101, but it much more inspiring and immediate.
Sound… It’s the Roland sound which I like.

This jam is more about sound than music. I wanted to achieve that retro vibe.
No external processing. Sound of the box is recorded as is.

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Very nice :ok_hand:t2:

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can you record normal arp and visual arp into sequencer to playback those arpeggios as a part of the pattern?

Yes and then no (I think)

The visual arp just sort of lives in its own dumb menu outside of everything.

Obviously the regular arp can be at any speed but the resolution of the sequencer is what you set as so you might need to tweak to make it work.

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you mean that if resolution of the seq set to 1/4, it won’t record 16th arp notes? Yes it’s quite obvious.

sad visual arp isn’t for recording and canā€˜t be hold to play along with other parts. maybe they will fix it since it’s quite annoying

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tbh this is exactly what i needed to kill my growing GAS, thanks bad gear

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I legit laughed out loud at his last remark about Roland’s direct to Bad Gear synths and the pic of GAIA2

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I feel like at a certain point everything sounds the same, Roland sets a certain expectation so people assume it should blow everyone away. To me the sh-4D is the Nintendo switch of synths. It does everything really well, is fun, and affordable. It just won’t have the same capabilities of many high end synth/grooveboxes.

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Interesting that he enjoyed the JD-08 and the MC-101. I’ve heard both are not ideal. I’m curious about each of them though

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Gabe Miller and Ben Coe (among others on YouTube) both have MC101 video’s showing their workflow and how they deal with it’s shortcomings. Both seem to be fairly dedicated to the MC-101 as one of their main tools…

tbh the parts that turned me off are all the little things, i like the sound thats what drew me in. but i hadnt seen anyone else actually draw attention to small things like ā€œrecordā€ being a shift function.

if anything it just highlighted for me how much i do want a preset box like the mc101

Yup. The little things like that (and patch management) made me sell it. I wanted to love it but I couldn’t. So many UI decisions are just weird.

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