Yeah. I would love that. I think it looks really nice in Koala. Fingers crossed the developers do too.
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Those headphones have been aroundā¦ 
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Haha yes. I canāt even remember when I bought them, maybe 10 yearsā¦
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Aha, I see Noir! Nice. Should go well with sp404 
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Just for fun 
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OK, so I finished my first track on the SP. Itās a bit rough, as I was literally having to learn everything from scratch since this is my first SP. Be gentle. Haha.
I sampled in myself playing the organ, some guitar, some vocals, etc. Iām super proud of the organ playing (as itās my first time playing the organ), but cut me some slack on the guitar stuff. Haha. I didnāt get the levels right, and itās super cheesy (I had been listening to a lot of Keith Hudson), but I just didnāt have the energy to redo it. I also originally recorded myself playing bass too, but I lost that because I trimmed it poorly (be careful!), so I ended up doing a bass line in chromatic mode.
Man, I lost so many things and had to do so many things over because of mistakes. I was originally going to do some synth sound effects, and was also going to do a less busy mix, but I decided to just be done with this one. Haha
Anyway, I learned a ton along the way, so future tracks will be much easier. Itās a good machine, but will take some time to learn properly. (PS: I couldnāt find the SP music thread. Did that get deleted?)
(Edit: I swapped out the original version with the one I recorded through my Portastudio as I like that mix better, and will delete the old version from my YouTube channel)
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Excellent stuff, really enjoyed that.
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Really really nice. Thanks for sharing canāt wait to hear more. Never would have guessed what it was made with
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Blezz Beats is my favourite. Dude is so much fun! Thanks for sharing!
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Fresh!
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The organ is boss, I thought you sampled some root dub track first, really good.
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Nice! I liked how it felt like a song and not a loop on repeat (also nice sometimes btw). Ace organ, would sample!
Did you sequence/arrange everything in the SP?
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Probably a shot in the dark as I assume nobody from Roland is reading this but hereās a wish:
Iād love to be able to deactivate monitoring when sampling/resampling, for when I use the SP to record stuff from my mixing board while auditioning the SP through said mixing board (love how it works for other cases!)
Goal: avoid complicated operation to kill feedback loops.
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Thanks everybody! Pretty much.
The track itself is all arranged and layered in the SP through a very complicated multistep process (which I now think I can refine). I wanted to try not sampling records/YouTube (except for the intro, of course), so I cobbled together some āfake breaksā in Logic and sampled those. Once those were in the SP I sorted out what drums worked well together.
After I figured out what drums I wanted to use, I sampled other stuff, and layered things on top of the drums using the resample method, and then I finally I made a bunch of patterns out of those resampled bits.
I then used the song mode/pattern chain to come up with the arrangement/sequencing, and once I had something I liked I resampled that into a single sample using live effects (and Bus 3-4). Then I went back and used resample again to do live overdubs on top of that to get the final track.
Finally I exported the final track to the computer and just used a limiter to boost the level.
I didnāt know what I was doing and had to come up with the workflow on the fly so I made a ton of mistakes along the way and had to change direction at times and also do a lot of different takes.
More than making a track though, this was about experimenting with things on the SP to learn all the functions. That mindset made it a lot easier to suck up all the work I lost along the way (and to come to terms with some of the less than perfect results).
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Thanks for the in depth post on your process. I am playing the waiting game (as Iām sure many of us are) so every little bit of hands on experience is helpful. The track was pretty great as well-not too shabby for a first track on a new machine. So what are you going to refine about your process now that youāve created a track? I am thinking I will employ the resample workflow but giving up The control over the final mix is still hanging me up. This is something I struggle with all the time with the Digitakt. I can never decide whether I want to individually track each element or just arrange and mix in the DT and live with the results Of the stereo track.
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The first thing I plan to do (when mine comes in, est 45-90 days) is sample my Teenage Engineering PO collection. For those that have done it, how close is the sound mangling capabilities and sampling when using the PO samples on the SP? In other words, will it have that PO feel while being better at patterns and songs?
I ended up selling mine. I have too many samplersā¦too much gear and I was mainly using the 404 to process sounds and not to create tracks with. Decided I wanted something a little more portable and powerful so I sold mine so someone else can enjoy it. Made a slight profit, but didnāt list it for $800+ dollars like some people are doing.
Anyway, the device is great. I love the reverb on it a lot. It really did some nice things, but my combo of the MPC One and OT is working so well that I decided to stay focused on that.
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Thanks very much!
A couple of things that come to mind are that I will make a lot more use of pattern mode now that I understand it better. Ultimately, it will be a combination of resampling and pattern mode, but in hindsight some of the things I did in resample mode would have been done a lot easier in pattern mode, and pattern mode can still be unquantized (or a combination of quantized and unquantized) if you like a loose feel.
Also, when sampling things like instruments, Iāll probably try not to use the āmixā record function so that I can adjust levels and processing later. Iām feeling a bit burned on a couple of things I lost or screwed up.
Here are a few specific things I learned during this track:
I think Iāll try a hip hop track next for fun, but I also really want to make an old-school sounding psychedelic guitar track sometime soon to dial in my guitar recording process (and redeem myself).
I mentioned it earlier, but what I find most inspiring about this is that it inspires audio recording. For instance, I want to do the old school recording technique where you keep recording and layering handclaps. Iāve seen people do it on a portastudio, but itās a huge PITA bouncing those on a tape machine. It would be simple on this and I bet you could get some really cool, original results. Iāll probably record a lot of my own percussion.
(This is the technique done with snaps, for an old school soul kind of feel).
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Come to think of it, I was bouncing tracks on my Fostex X15 and it degraded each time. And hitting the Record button simultaneously with the key was a pain. Resampling on the SP is similar, minus the degradation! But yeah, once you lock it in, hard to adjust anything.
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