I'm just starting to get the hang of the pattern sequencer, but whenever I turn my 404 back on the bpm of my pattern isn't what I left it to. Along with trying to figure out quantizing, this is a head scratcher for me.

the BPM doesn't save at all. your best bet is to write down the BPMs of your beats in a notebook you keep near the 404.
or you can Tap Tempo until they sound right

hmmm...that seems a little retarded to me, but it must be so. Also, can you go back in and edit your patterns after you've recorded them or are they unchangeable?

yeah it's not ideal, but it really isn't that big of an issue once you accept it

yes you can edit patterns afterwards, but not as intricately as some may like.

NO, it's real retarded that you can't save bpm. this is very unprofessional imho.

I dont know if a new OS could fix that- but if it could then I would suggest sending a PM to Big Mike.

I poked around with 404 pattern files and as far as I can tell it does not have a place where the bpm is\can be stored. Thus it needs complete rewrite of the pattern saving and your old pattern will probably became unavailable for use with 404.

I guess you need to believe that this will probably never ever happen... as you know Roland actually don't give a damn about their old models so if they released 555 I wont believe they will devote time to write a new os update for 404.

Besides I actually cant understand why they didn't implement real old school keyboard style pitch shifting in any of the SP model because the data is processed in digital form anyway and the difference actually is in the number only but instead the SP models will always play their samples at the samples frequency 44100, 22000 and so on.

Unbelievable...

Believe it or not I will cop 2kXL sometime soon because of the real pitch shifting I know this machine is not that fast for quick idea realizing but I cant live with the fact that my mostly used feature for my beats when I used other samplers back in the days are missing on both of mine SP samplers.

I'm confused by what you mean here. I'm not familiar with old school keyboards (nor do I pitch shift that much), but I'd be curious to know what you're referring to. Obviously the SP has pitch shift FX, but I'm guessing that's not what you're talking about here.

Here here the REAL (or old school pitch shifting) is when the samples PITCH and TIME are changed both. For example if you play lower pitched sample it will be longer than higher pitched sample as the time of the higher pitched sample are shorter because the playback frequency is higher. This is like all old school and all other pro samplers work like.

But Roland instead ignores this and gives us a wack pitch shifting FX which is useful only for on stage DJ'ing steez. SP's pitch shift works implementing both time stretching and pitch shifting in real time. But as the sp processors are not that fast as computers or other pro sampler's it cant calculate the sound of the pitched sample very accurate thus the effect makes the sound worser and almost unusable for good beat if the pitching or time stretching is very moderate.

Even my lovely SP-505 in its PITCH shifting function uses that NEW SCHOOL note pitching although the algorithm is way better than on simpler SP's like 404 or 555 the sound after pitching is still quite dirty ( I mean not grimy that I would like but kinda without HI frequencies and some other artifacts) compared to what it would sound if it was pitched using real pitch shifting function.

C'mon even I without knowing maths or those programming steez can tell that the real pitch shifting imo would not be hard to implement compared to what it takes to make the new school time stretched PITCHED sample calculating algorithm because real p.shift would only change the samples frequency of playback but the new school p.shift uses heavy formulas to stretch and pitch the sample at the same time. Brrr...

You can do both old and new-school pitching on the P606 software that comes with the 606...perfectly with NO artifacts whatsoever.

I know that most people will say 'ewwww a computer', but meh and pfft to that; point is, it can be done with an SP sampler, with NO additional hardware or software.

Fact is, any hardware is limited by it's digital processing power: a computer just adds unlimited processing power to that hardware

Ohhh! I thought you were talking about something much more complicated than that. Something about processing and sample rates. That is kind of silly that the SP doesn't have any kind of normal pitch shifting. But because the quality of time stretching is so weak (as you mentioned) I've always used my computer for stretching or shifting samples. It would be nice to do that accelerate/decelerate effect on the fly though, since I do it a lot with my turntables already.

Shouldn't old school pitch shifting be a simpler effect to implement than the style they have now? For some reason I thought the 303s PITCH button was the style you're talking about, and the MFX(chromatic ps) did the DJ style. On the 404, which I have hooked up now, they're both essentially the same effect.

EDIT: Oh! It's the MFX(tape echo) that speeds and slows samples VS the DELAY button that's quantized. So that makes it even sillier that they didn't include old school pitch shifting; it's already there essentially... just inside another effect.

hey olby, is this 'mapping' you are talking about?

what's interesting is that the 202 had a pretty good time stretch and pitch shift function. not perfect, for sure, but i recently broke out the 202 and was surprised by how much better it is than the 404.

As I have said in my other posts I don't have nothing against computers I am computer game designer my self and beat making is my hobby so after full day using just computer I don't want to go home and turn on my pc to make some beats. I better lay down take my sp and produce a complete track just for fun of it. And thats why I don't like the hardware-software connection of the SP-606. I perfectly understand that it would be easier for me to hook up everything to my pc and work this way but what I really like about samplers like MPC or MV is that you can make beats even without having a computer at all. The only problem of those samplers are the price tag which imo is quite big compared to that they still are a small dedicated computer with pads for drums.

@ Huph - Yes, thats what I meant. They better should include real pitch shifting at first rather than code a heavy time-stretched pitching for a simple samplers like sp's are.

@ fauna - I don't know nothing about the 202 so I cant comment about it's pitch shifting. But I guess it is still the same new school styled pitch shift anyway.

The 202 has 6 effects. One is "pitch" and if you turn the pitch down, it's at a lower pitch (obviously) and it slows the sample down. When you turn it up the sample pitches and speeds up. The time stretch is seperate effect and it time stretches. I'm not a huge fan of the time stretch, but the pitch shift on the 202 is actually really quite good. I've never pitched anything on a 303/404 before so I can't comment on that. The 202 would be a fucking beast if it had resample, and more than four voices.

yeah, that's sorta what i was getting at. its been pointed out before but i don't understand why the 404 didn't build on these qualities of the 202, rather than developing pitch and time stretch in a different way.