has anyone tried to see how midi keys interact with it yet? Rolands manual was less than clear my guess is it doesn’t let you play a tuned sample but it would be neat to hear that it does.
I should have got in on the wave of cheap TR-8s. That thing sounds fantastic.
Thanks, will give that a go! So that totally clears the pattern, names and everything?
Having played some more with it, I do have to say it’s very annoying that motion recording is tied to the CTRL knobs instead of to the underlying parameter.
The result of this is that setting the assignment of the CTRL knobs to anything else than “User” becomes practically impossible once you’ve recorded some motion, making the CTRL SELECT knob pretty much useless.
The nice thing about the CTRL SELECT is that it allows you to quickly change the assignment of the CTRL knobs between panning, reverb send, delay send, LFO depth, instrument effect control, and the user assignment. This is very useful for quickly setting or changing the most important (mixer) parameters for each instrument by switching between assignments, but you no longer can do that once you’ve recorded some motion for the user assignments.
It wouldn’t be so bad if there was a dedicated way to set coarse tuning per-step like you can set velocity, but right now you’re essentially locked into “User” assignment for the CTRL knobs once you’ve added a single melodic line to your pattern.
I really hope Rolands fixes this, at least in the context of chromatic sample playback.
EDIT: The TUNE knob isn’t very useful for chromatic usage because it has a two octave range distributed over a -128 to +127 parameter range which means that each semitone sits at 10⅔ intervals of the parameter range of the TUNE knob which in turn means you’re only in tune every minor third.
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What about transferring samples to sd card.
Can you do that with it sd card inserted into TR-8S by connecting usb cable to unit?
Or do you have to eject card and add samples?
And all the stuff coming out on butter sessions, steeplejack, good company, temporal cast! Lots of great techno in Melbourne right now.
Not to mention the likes of Ollie Olsen, SPK, Severed Heads, Scattered Order from the 70s onwards
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Yes, but you have to enter a dedicated “Storage mode” by holding SHIFT while you insert the USB cable into the unit:
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Being a long time GAS sufferer, I gave this machine some thought. I found the promo videos quite inspiring - great what you can do with just 11 instruments and a few pattern variations.
I have decided against it, but I am currently setting up Push and Ableton such that it mimicks some of the workflow that that TR8S has - making tracks based on a limited set of instruments and effects.
In Ableton, the drum racks can hold complete instruments per drum pad. So I set up some sampler devices, each loaded with 100 samples of Roland drum machines and suitable controls (such tune, decay for all, saturation for the kick, groove delay for the open hihat etc.). The samples can be selected by one macro knob = choosing a sound for a kit. The drum rack gets a master effect controlled by a macro plus two sends for a reverb and a delay. This is pretty much what a kit does in the TR8S.
For programming variations, I start with a one bar clip, then double its length, modify, and repeat until I have an 8 bar loop… Push allows me to chain adjacent bars within each loop, so I have my 8 chainable variations. For fills, I add two more scenes that go back to the main variations automatically - these fills can be activated manually in scene mode, or can start automatically if you set up the clips.
By copying this drum instrument, I get 8 kits, each with their own master effect, plus reverb and delay sends - that’s a live set. By setting their clips so that they do now overlap, I can use the scene mode to switch from one kit/pattern to another (without gap I might add). Of course, Push could do much more, but that is not the idea here. Oh, and I use an instance of Microtonic as a means to create random patterns into the racks if needed.
The thing that I really miss are the sliders.
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I had exactly the same realisation about the Ctrl knobs yesterday. Once you have used automation on the knob reassigning it to pan etc seems odd
May i ask a few critical questions for me ?
- Can you chain patterns and save the fact that these patterns are chained ? So you can effectively think the 8 “variations” as one “big Pattern” ?
- When you do chain patterns that have individual lengths per track, how does it work ? Are the tracks reseted (when the longest one loops) or are they all looping seamlessly ?
- Can you instantly “jump” to another variation, keeping track of the current position ? (if you’re used to Ableton Live, i’m referring to “Legato Mode”)
Thanks !!
No, not with Patterns as they are defined within the TR-8S data model.
But each Pattern has 8 Variations for which the current chain is saved with the pattern.
If you create a chain from the 8 Variations in a Pattern, you effectively get an 8-bar (128-step) “big pattern”.
Length per track is a Pattern-level setting, so when you switch between Variations it does what you expect it to do. Switching between patterns starts everything from the beginning.
As far as I know, no.
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thanks for sharing this info
sorry my Bad, no loss in timing just the gap
Thanks. Good to know. Its how Id want to use it once I save up my pennies. Pretty much same as OT(which I like).
Hoping to buy it end of April. Wish I could order now… 
That’s what i meant, great !
May i ask if you’re absolutely sure that each track will loop without reset when chaining variations ? I really wish to be sure, it’s important to me.
Ok
Many thanks !
Yes, but that’s because you can only set the length of each track at the pattern level so last step is the same for each variation.
You should probably test before you buy or make sure you can return if this is important to you. I’ve found that there are a lot of different ways to inplement polyrhythm support and it is notoriously hard to explain over the internet.
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Many thanks for your answers.
Quick tester before work
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Nice classic swing 