Roland SP-404 Mk2 (Part 1)

ah waftlord - you are the master of that setup

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Thanks man! That nameā€™s a nice blast from the past.

Cheers! They were good times those early brainfeeder days. I can try and talk about the process but not sure whatā€™s useful info or how useful my rambling will be but Iā€™ll try. I was testing out the AS-1 as Iā€™ve hardly used it and running it through the 404 for fx and got carried away :slight_smile: There wasnā€™t much of a plan in mind. From what I rememberā€¦

Summary
  • Got an arp going on the AS-1 I liked that I set to run at 92bpm.
  • Sampled into the 404 and messed around with a few perc sounds on top. Skipback and because I knew the bpm from the arp put it into the pattern sequencer hard quantized on the first note.
  • Found a bass sound I liked on the AS-1, sampled in and sequenced into the pattern unquantized.
  • Added hats, hard quantised to 16ths using 16 levels for some volume variation.
  • Added kicks, snares and claps and stuff unquantized. Just random hits I had loaded up in a bank. Pitched down a bit probably.
  • Sampled a few takes of the higher synth line from the AS-1, chopped and put into the pattern unquantized.
  • Canā€™t remember what effects I was using and at what point and on what sounds but at some point had the lo-fi effect (bit crushing?) - Iā€™ve found some settings I quite like with it and a bit of filtering across the whole thing on bus 3/4
  • Played around with a low pass filter and volume on the AS-1 samples on bus 1, jamming and skipback I think with a bit of cassete sim also on bus 2.
  • Found a loop from all that. Probably an odd number of bars which I guess can help keeps things interesting-ish. Pitched the whole resampled lot down a semitone I think.
  • Bus 3/4 preset which I think is one of the funky sounding fx (echo-y thing) + maybe the 303 comp?
  • Live take into Ableton using the SX delay, 0 feedback, I think on 8th notes, bumping between 0/100 dry/wet rhytmically for little repeats that have a slight beat juggling style thing going on at least to my ears. Used this at points throughout.
  • In Ableton had the whole lot going into a Hybrid reverb a bit and put some ā€˜masteringā€™ stuff onā€¦ I donā€™t really know what Iā€™m doing there :slight_smile:
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Definitely! I hope you share a shunkplate mix at some point @waftlord, really enjoy your stuff.

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playing around with free running loops and a stratocaster :heart:

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@looms thanks for the detailed walkthrough, super inspiring!

It now occurs to me that Iā€™m not freeform enough to really let the SP shine. Too afraid to surf that line between ā€œhell yeah, dirty!ā€ and ā€œoh no, my mix is fucked beyond repair and my bassline is way out of tuneā€. Gotta let go.

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Yeah itā€™s a tough line to surf! The SPā€™s are so good for going with feel, experimenting and getting results quickly but then the results can sound socially not so nice and especially with resampling/skipback youā€™re limited in what you can do sometimes after the fact to change that. Thereā€™s probably workflows and methods to capture both feel/inspired sessions and have some flex to eq and whatnot later but I havenā€™t worked that out! And thereā€™s definitely a magic to skipback in that for me and no doubt others itā€™s great for avoiding that ā€˜ok here we go Iā€™m recording now,ā€™ metronome counts down and the vibe goes to shit :sweat_smile:

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404mk2 should promptly implement a loop recorder.

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Hi, I wonder how you approach to apply effects in pattern mode. Itā€™s very versatile but for example if I have a baseline and drums in the same pattern, is there a way to apply only on drums a FXā€¦ I know the busses, but it would be apply a static effectā€¦

Thereā€™s motion record which captures fx on/off and changes to the settings. Itā€™s at 4:18 in this:

I havenā€™t had much luck with it myself. Seems like when itā€™s on it resets the effects/turns them off when you switch patterns you havenā€™t motion recorded into but I might be doing something wrong.

Perhaps thatā€™s what youā€™re after?

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Yes, something like that but I think it only apply one effect at a timeā€¦ but thank you

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Great stuff. Love your style.

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I suppose if you wanted two effects on drums you could exclude the other samples from having effects - remain & pad until it turns white I think. Then if you wanted fx on your other sounds you could resample the drums with your effects, copy pattern, delete original drums and add the resampled version on the first beat :thinking:

Might not be understanding what youā€™re after. Sorry if this is all useless waffle :slightly_smiling_face:

No, thank you, it have a lot of sense what youā€™re saying. I think the best way of apply effects, at least for me, is make an arrangement, resample it and apply the effects to the whole song. You can resample only the drums, yes, and apply FX to drums and add it to a new pattern but itā€™s a very complicated workaround and I donā€™t know if it would work (different time and sample driftā€¦)

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Yeah, its a fiddly way to do it. Iā€™m trying to get up to speed/remember the button combos with some of the newer updates like being able to copy just certain pads from a pattern into a new one. With that, I suppose it would be very slightly quicker to copy only drums into a new pattern, apply fx, resample and put hard quantised (or use Step Seq) on the first beat of an existing pattern. Theoretically there shouldnā€™t different timing/sample drift. But still a long way of approaching things. Could also maybe just mute the ones you donā€™t want in the resample which would cut out having to copy the existing pattern.

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What is reaaaaally a miss is that the motion sequenced fxs are not bounced with the pattern. Like, why, Roland? It would be THE workflow accelerator + absolutely everything in the SP is built around the fxsā€¦

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I didnā€™t know that. Itā€™s weird.

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Yeah absolutely. I discovered that one the other day. Really annoying!

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Yeah, and the weirdest part is that they were both introduced in the same fw update. Itā€™s like it was 2 features brought by 2 different teams not speaking to each other.

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Still hoping for a lovely firmware update before the end of the year :crossed_fingers:

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