From SP1200 to MPC60 to SP303...

[zindan]

considering the size of the 808 vs 404 i think myself and other more amateur people in the area of repairs and shit would be a bit more confident with taking a 404 apart haha

100%
and guess what! when you repair your 404 yourself, you turn a $400 job into a $20 job REAL SHIT

[Girru]

I used to repair my own tape decks, and mod/repair my other gear. Trust me - the bigger the unit, the better...















...said the barmaid to the vicar.

[Girru]

Considering the prices they're charging for 202s and 303s it makes me wonder why the fuck you paid that instead of just getting an 808 in the first place!

Like I said, I was looking into getting one a few months back but discounted it on account of the drive issue. Forgot to reconsider it when I finally went through with selling the '60, but Mr Swift and Mr TGN flipped me back with their gushings. Except for the drive and the slightly lacking sequencer, it's the perfect unit for me, I reckon.

Anyway, it's just as well you bought an 808 when you did cause I don't know what the fuck just happened, but I'm suddenly seeing the black one going for over £500, over £600 and one even over £900. They've got a red heart-shaped sticker on them but I don't see what that has to do with anything and I certainly won't be paying that for one - they can keep the red sticker!

Go by the Sold Listings, always. Up to them if they want them sitting there for years on end. At least they don't do what the Flower Pot guy on eBay does and buy their own stuff to make the extortionate price look reasonable.

As far as I can tell, the Vari-Pitch slows-down and speeds-up the whole machine. It's desirable to have that but it does mean that if you want to sample that as performance or whatever, you're out of luck because the entire machine follows the same speed and therefore you cannot separate playback from recording - at least that's what I gather from the manual.

EASY workaround - varipitch the 808 down/up to match the sample you're taking. Varipitch it back up/down after. BOOM.

[Girru]

@ Girru
Don't be in too much of a haste to part with that 303 man...you could use that with the 808 for some killer stuff ..it's a very dope combination,trust me!

Like I said in the DM, I'm gonna keep the MS-1 for utility duties (and main sampling when the zip fails, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha). I'm tryna get as cheap and as slim yet as creative a set-up as poss.

my impression from this thread though is that you're probably more into a different style of music, what's your thing?

Breakbeat stuff. I realised recently that, altho I don't regularly listen to it these days, '92 UK breakbeat hardcore ('rave' to the layman), as well as being my first musical love, was actually the biggest musical influence on me to this day. I realised that the stuff I make is basically rave but about 50bpm slower, as if the drug of choice from that scene was weed instead of E, LOLZ. Simple building blocks of samples, using the arrangement to get musical effect. Chopped breaks and loops, basically. Cannae get away with wonky off-beat Dilla-style drumz. The only time I use single hit one shots is if I'm faking a flam or summat.

Here's some of my recent shizz, if you want a laugh. I consider all of it unfinished as I get stuck in a rut and end up giving up and releasing as-is coz I lose sight of the original vision. Hence why, along with the financial reasons, I started shedding my pricey pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Geoffreygeefresh95/videos

Empathy for your OCD. I got maaaaaaad anxiety since Covid. Hence the financial reasons, lolz. WWIII kicking off (as I predicted) isn't helping either, ha ha.

[Jaytreaze]

@girru, got a nice sound, naturally gravitated to the Sadvillainy upload you had there lol, get involved in the beat battles!

[ellaguru]

Breakbeat stuff. I realised recently that, altho I don't regularly listen to it these days, '92 UK breakbeat hardcore ('rave' to the layman), as well as being my first musical love, was actually the biggest musical influence on me to this day. I realised that the stuff I make is basically rave but about 50bpm slower, as if the drug of choice from that scene was weed instead of E, LOLZ. Simple building blocks of samples, using the arrangement to get musical effect. Chopped breaks and loops, basically. Cannae get away with wonky off-beat Dilla-style drumz. The only time I use single hit one shots is if I'm faking a flam or summat.

that's interesting and inspiring, those was part of the roots of my influnces too;
listen to your tracks, they're cool man

( some rave/pop classics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i04xP4y ... F&index=39
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMWhpg ... F&index=11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpjnzxtZ6Qg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmVsYFK ... Bx&index=6 )

[Girru]

@girru, got a nice sound, naturally gravitated to the Sadvillainy upload you had there lol, get involved in the beat battles!

Thanks!

As you heard, no relation other than the name and cover, lolz.

That was made on an Amiga 1200 with Octamed IV and recorded (poorly) to tape, hence the sound, roflz. I split up with m'Julie just before Covid hit and that was my outpouring, lolz. Actually, I think most of my tracks are, ha ha.

[Girru]

that's interesting and inspiring, those was part of the roots of my influnces too;
listen to your tracks, they're cool man

some rave/pop classics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i04xP4y ... F&index=39

Thanks!

Sweet Harmony is TIMELESS. I bought my son a keyboard recently and ended up working out the riff on it while I was trying it out for him, ha ha.
The rest is, indeed, a bit too 'chart rave' for my tastes...altho The Prodigy Experience is a classic album to me.

Get on the outside of this EPIC...

'dem me never tell ya 'bout the ragga muffin bizznezz an' ting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXxkVTEOGA8

[ellaguru]

Thanks!

Sweet Harmony is TIMELESS. I bought my son a keyboard recently and ended up working out the riff on it while I was trying it out for him, ha ha.
The rest is, indeed, a bit too 'chart rave' for my tastes...altho The Prodigy Experience is a classic album to me.

Get on the outside of this EPIC...

'dem me never tell ya 'bout the ragga muffin bizznezz an' ting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXxkVTEOGA8

yes 'chart rave' that's why i use to call some of those tracks pop-rave but no irony, they were popular at some point in the 90s, at least here in europe

wow, so your son learned sweet harmony? cool story

[Girru]

wow, so your son learned sweet harmony? cool story

No, I worked it out whilst I was trying the keyboard sounds for him. Piano, obvs.

[SP-USER]

considering the size of the 808 vs 404 i think myself and other more amateur people in the area of repairs and shit would be a bit more confident with taking a 404 apart haha

100%
and guess what! when you repair your 404 yourself, you turn a $400 job into a $20 job REAL SHIT

Bro, if you think I'm not aware you just bought that SP-808 for £191, you must think I was born yesterday. And BTW, I wouldn't worry about popping the back off' it, it's easier to work on than your 404 from the looks of it.

Check this video out and join him in his happiness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWQgTMMtg4U

EASY workaround - varipitch the 808 down/up to match the sample you're taking. Varipitch it back up/down after. BOOM.

Sounds awesome but are you sure that would work? I was reading more of the manual and the Vari-Pitch thing seems to be marketed in the wrong way in my opinion.

As far as I can tell, the Vari-Pitch is actually a global sampling-rate adjuster, and man, that is epic when you think about it because in reality, you are in fact capturing the sound of the sampling rate in everything you do, so it is kinda getting sampled all the time. It's designed with a toggle switch so that you you can leave it on all the time or switch it off. I think the idea is to switch it on and set it to whatever sampling rate you choose right at the beginning of your project and leave it there. It's like having a continuously variable sample-rate selector knob so that instead of choosing a specific preset sample rate such as 44.1 etc, you can instead adjust the knob until you get the exact sample rate you always dreamed of. So I reckon you're meant to set the sample rate however you prefer and leave it there per project sort of thing.

It's quite possible that after the engineers designed it as a sample rate adjuster, maybe the marketing division decided to market it as a pitch adjuster instead. I reckon so anyway, cause it's basically a global sample-rate adjuster and that's absolutely killer in my opinion!

And because it's a global thing, I don't understand how your suggestion would work, because it changes the sampling rate of everything together, both recording and playback - everything. That said, I could be misundertanding it and in that case what you're saying is most probably possible - I just don't know.

Have you received it already and tried it?

Anyway, just listened to two of your tracks, "Chase Blues" and "Clouds" and really liked Clouds. Now I read you've done stuff on the Amiga using Octamed and Tape, so you can bet your life I'll be checking that out as well bro!

[Girru]

And because it's a global thing, I don't understand how your suggestion would work, because it changes the sampling rate of everything together, both recording and playback - everything. That said, I could be misundertanding it and in that case what you're saying is most probably possible - I just don't know.

I imagine it's the same as the MS-1. 'Pitch' (sample speed/sample rate) is global on that too, so you have to pitch the machine to what you want to sample, sample it, and then pitch back to the original, if you wants things in tune to eachother.
As a simple example, say you have a 'C' note already sampled but the thing you next want to sample to go with it and be the same pitch is an A. So, use Varipitch so that the C note is now sounding as an A, sample the new sound, and then Varipitch back up to C, and you have two different samples matching in pitch, C.

If you want a sample to be chromatic across the pads, sample the same sample over and over again at different Vari-pitch sample rates, til you've got all the different notes you want (you'd need a reference of some sort). As stated, SPs can't set sample speed as a sample parameter like, say, MPC programs can for the same sample on different pads. Heavy on the memory for the 808, lots of different samples of the same sample at different speeds/pitches; only the space of the one sample on an MPC/whatever, played back at whatever speed/pitch you set the pad to.

Or say you had an instrumental sample and had a drum break you wanted to go with it but the tempo is all wrong - pitch the 808 down/up til the drum break is in tempo with the sample, sample the break and pitch back up/down and your break now matches the tempo of the instrumental sample which is obvs back at it's original pitch (altho the 'pitch' of the drums has changed in relation, of course).
On, say, an MPC, you'd just change the speed of the break once you'd sampled it in by 'pitching' it up/down to match the tempo of the music sample individually - on the MS/808, you have to tune the machine to what you want to sample.

This is all separate from the actual timestretch and pitch effects, of course, (which I try to avoid using - I personally consider them cheating, lolz), which try to change one without changing the other, hence the limited amount you can move it without getting artifacts.

The Roland VS recorders have Vari-pitch too. The idea on that is that you can 'tune' your recording to match, say, the acoustic piano you're recording next but isn't tuned to perfect concert pitch and would therefore be out of tune with what you have already recorded. And, indeed, it shows that you are altering the sample rate as you do it. Sample rate is basically the same as tape speed on a r2r deck - if you record something at 15ips and then slow it down to 7.5ips, the resolution goes down and the recording is halved (?) in pitch and tempo.

Have you received it already and tried it?

Anyway, just listened to two of your tracks, "Chase Blues" and "Clouds" and really liked Clouds. Now I read you've done stuff on the Amiga using Octamed and Tape, so you can bet your life I'll be checking that out as well bro!

No, arrives tomorrow, apparently. Altho the seller used Hermes, despite overcharging for postage, so who knows if it'll be in one piece/not nicked off my doorstep.

Yeah, I used the Amiga briefly a year or so ago. It was great to use, trackers are a great way to sequence and the 8-bit sound was great...apart from the massive amount of hiss it would put on the samples. I had to have a DBX single-ended noise reduction unit on each output, hence the weird compression-like pumping. It was a real struggle...so I got the '60.
Don't get excited about it being on tape - I don't possess the temperament or attention to detail to get a good recording with analogue gear, hence the VS these days, which is harder to fuck up!

[Danswift]

The most important thing to remember for anyone considering purchasing the SP-808 right now is don't worry too much about the Zip Drive or Vari Pitch....

Chicks dig the D-Beam ...

[ellaguru]

Chicks dig the D-Beam ...

(same for the sp606/mc909)

[Girru]

The most important thing to remember for anyone considering purchasing the SP-808 right now is don't worry too much about the Zip Drive or Vari Pitch....

Indeed. Loving it so far and, despite being noisy (no worse than an old pooter), the zip has worked fine.