I have just ordered myself an SP555 (B Stock return cheapy) to complete my home studio and I thought I’d take some time to say what it is I’m going to be using the SP for and ask the question of if anybody has done anything similar and can offer any advise or good criticism?
I am a Bass guitarist who has become tired of the band environment and sick of the lack of respect that a riff writer/song writer gets in a band if they happen to not be the lead guitarist. So to cut a long story short I decided to wall up and do some solo stuff. And I have spent the last year getting my kit together. Next week my SP will arrive and I think that is going to be the centre piece for my studio.
I started off with getting an MC808 which I hoped would be enough of a sampler to record bass ideas and then drum and synth around them into full songs. But alas Roland in their wisdom cut the MC feature set down to not allow different samples to be placed over the pads and then to cut it down further to not allow the patterns to mix into each other (there is a nasty sound cut off bug between patterns) – so I got myself a Tascam 2488 MKII to do my pattern mixing and eventually mix down and burn a demo. Nice bit of kit but I found I was still missing was two things that the SP will provide.
The velocity sensitive keys (which I want to provide my MC with dynamics in the drumming 16 Roland pads should map over the MC’s 16 non velocity pads pretty well over MIDI I hope). I found nothing on the net anywhere to find out if this is as logical as I think it should be! (I tried the new MPD32 but sent it back coz the pads had rubbish responsiveness for my fragile tappy fingers – I thought I’d be able to tap it but IMHO it was poo). I hope that the 555 has the same pad response as the MC808 coz they are lovely (just not velocity sensitive).
And the second thing it'll bring me is the ability to hear all the riffs that I’ve been sampling spread over the pads and to be able to organise/copy n paste and create new fill parts with my bass plugged straight in (via a DI box – thanks Roland for SP555’s powered the line in!). All this I hope will provide me with an entire work flow from beginning to end. Although I might grab a vocal mike and a punch in pedal at some stage when I get that far I think I should have everything I need to finally lay some ideas to disk.
Is this a similar story for anyone? Do you always chase that missing bit of kit? Or am I a freak of rock that has no place on an electric music forum
Rock on.
