As long as you only do one-pattern songs, this should work fine. I noticed that that’s what every demo so far is doing and based on how this machine works, I think I understand why.
Keep in mind that the second you switch pattern, sounds will reset to the saved state again, so if you’re actually performing on the synth (which is the whole point with this hands-on interface), then you may run into some issues.
Yeah, this is pretty amazing actually and the drums sound great. Perfect combo of samples and synthesis.
Couldn’t agree more!
It’s no doubt their best UI yet, but I still would have vastly prefer endless encoders. To me, that suggests they have home studio producers in mind rather than performers on stage.
I’m not sure I agree fully. It seems more of a sound designer’s synth for a production environment rather than a performance synth to me. If by “performance” you mean using the synth parameter creatively on one part at a time while recording into a DAW live, then I can agree with you. But given their design choices of knobs shared across parts and patterns that reset the sound presets on pattern change, I’m not sure they had live performances in mind when designing it. At least I suspect it will be a less smooth experience, but maybe something you can get used to.
Many thanks for your input! Again I’d love to see you explore this more deeply. How does it handle switching the control between different parts given that the knobs are not endless encoders? Is it a smooth experience in a real live situation? And how would you deal with pattern switches for more elaborate song progressions? A video that explores these things would be great to see. Thanks again!
If your goal is to write full songs, the way the 101 handles tone saving is actually vastly preferred. I don’t really care to reuse sounds across songs and it’s irrelevant if I picked a preset or if I dialed in my own tone in a project. What matters is that the tones I use are all saved within the project. And if I really want to reuse that lead sound from song XYZ across other songs, it’s a simple case of loading the tone from project XYZ into the new project I’m working on.
I agree with you though that from a pure synthesizer point of view, it would be nice with proper (global) preset management, but for my purposes of making songs, if I need to choose between global sound presets that are not connected to the song projects, or only being able to save sound presets in song projects, it’s an easy choice.
Yeah I know (would’ve been smarter if it was the opposite) but it didn’t feel good or ”fast” to me, it just felt tedious and unintuitive
Why in the world would you include a stepped encoder that increase with +1 and has something like 1024(?) steps, it felt like some kind of strange joke.
It could’ve been excellent but it was just face palm after face palm.
Thanks for this, confirms my fears about the machine. Still worth it for having a multitimbral 4 part synth. But if I need an Elektron to sequence it, it loses a lot of its appeal to me personally.
I agree that it is not intuitive, I just give it a ‘SHIFT - couple of hundreds up/down’ and then see what happens, between 50 and hundred goes slower.
Snappy-Hands-On is not what it is.
I think assigning the parameter to a knob can be better if you want to keep tweaking.
The ‘Reset on pattern change’ thing has completely killed off any gas I had for this unfortunately, if you’re really going have this ‘feature’ at least have the option to turn that off… grrrr.
Just to be clear, I’m basing that on what the manual says and I haven’t tried this live. It says that a pattern loads each sound preset across the different parts, so I’m assuming that that’s what it would do. However, there’s a theoretical possibility that it might behave differently if a new pattern tries to load the same preset on the same part as is actively loaded. It might go “oh, it looks like you’re loading the same preset on the same part, so I’ll just keep things the way it is without resetting”. But this is all theoretical and, knowing what I know about how Roland writes their manuals, I’d assume that they’d include this exception as a “Note” if this were the case.
One can hope that Roland is receptive to feedback and begins to see the potential of the SH-4d as a groovebox with firmware updates, but for now, it’s pretty squarely a multitimbral synthesizer with some sequencer capabilities added on top of it.
Same for me. The whole battery power and laptop friendly jamability loses its appeal if I need to do a sort of sequencer “bait-and-switch” to reprogram the parts on an Elektron down the line to get to the full jam.
But to anyone who is comfortable with seeing it just as a sketch pad synthesizer, the SH-4d sequencer is more than adequate.
It isn’t a big deal for me, that’s exactly how I expect a pattern based groovebox to work, since each pattern can have different a program attached to each track, I’d expect the device to switch to the correct program upon pattern change.
Isn’t this how most pattern based machines work? Don’t Syntakt, Digitakt, Digitone, Electribes, MC-707 and TR-8S all reset on pattern change? Or have I missed your point?
…another “toy” from roland…no syntakt killer at all… with an obvious inspirational overshoulder look on swedish devices…
which will trigger elektrons dev’s to come up with more next new “little and limited” but huuuuge sound toy engines…
BUT, i have to admit, and that’s a rare thing, me saying so, this one is a surprisingly nice take on their very own classics…if i’d be still in my somewhat hw fan days, i’d give it a go…
that hidden “fad” option, the layering function, it’s overall knob/fader layout, not way too much menu diving, the usb “single outs” and these fx make it a nice hands on tool to lay out quickly all sorts of standard but convincing electronic flesh and bones elements u might need for “actual” floor bashing…
not so much in solid realtime pro flow, but for quick and dirty fun moment recordings in the studio, to sketch out pretty convincing phrases and combos, defenitly…
Possibly but it shouldn’t be this way at all, it ruins any chance of ‘jamming’ on this box… I suspect this unit would be a good drone/soundscape box, were the drone morphs and changes/progresses over time, then trigger new beats/patterns over the drone/soundscapes… can’t do this now because your drone/soundscape will snap back to the original form on pattern change, which is highly annoying.
There are some subtle but ultimately critical differences when performing live. Let’s say you have a really simple song on two separate patterns. Yes, when switching to pattern 2, sounds would change, but when switching back to pattern 1 again, it would remember where you left off. So if you actually tweak the synth parameters live (which, if you love synthesis, you tend to do quite a bit), then you will find those gradual evolutions get lost every time you switch things up.
Then the other aspect of performing live across a number of tracks is the knobs vs endless encoders. With the Roland knobs, parameter values are bound to bounce around as you twist them after switching tracks/parts, whereas on an Elektron, the values will always change relative to the current value.
The Digitone/takt pattern management isn’t perfect either btw, I would love to be able to selectively share a track sound across patterns so they don’t change on pattern changes. This is an option on the MC-101/707 series, but not so on the Elektron Digis or this SH-4d.
And that’s how the majority of grooveboxes that have user program/patches work. There is nothing strange or wrong with how the SH-4D works. Especially when one can record automations on top of the patch.
It’s this way on most grooveboxes, it never stopped any of them from being fit for jamming, provided tracks can be sequenced in real time. And there are automations on top as well.
Clearly this isn’t a non issue that is being exaggerated here…
The SH4D will play a program in the state is was saved upon pattern change, with the automations on top, normal behavior.
Yes I really like this about the Elektron machines, great for creating variations live and switching back and forth. But I have also seen people complaining about this behaviour, some people prefer patterns to return to the save state. You can’t please everyone I guess
