Just got mine in today. I’m really unsure about this one right now… I should have researched it more, because there are some things that I’ve taken for granted with virtually all sequencers / drum machines that I was really surprised to see missing here.
Specifically, the lack of any sort of probability hurts, and I’m genuinely surprised that there’s no per-step probability. I figured if the MC-101 had it, it would definitely be here. Hell, the TR-06 has it. That’s become such a huge part of my workflow that it hurts to not have it.
One of the known limitations of this is having the 6 tracks, right? That’s a known thing, that’s not a problem… but what kills me is that the device itself has a work around effectively built in via “alternate sounds” - some instruments (the ones that have a / in their name) have an alternate sound that you can access by holding the instrument track button and either pressing a step in TR-REC mode or pressing an instrument button in INST-REC mode. There are probably less than 10 instruments that make use of this, and none of them are toms or hi-hats - you know, the sounds that could REALLY make the most use of it. There are a couple of kicks, snares, and agogos. Which - ok, but seriously just having a hi-hat that can do this basically frees up an extra track for most people.
I’m hoping that down the road, it will allow you to arbitrarily assign alt instruments to tracks - that would open up a ton of possibility. It seems insane that they have this functionality built in with a fast and easy to use workflow for accessing 6 extra instruments that is just not really used.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly a lot to like… Really cool that you can record up to 128 steps live in inst-rec if you chain variations, I don’t think I have anything else that will do this. It’s fun and relatively fast to work with given the small form factor. The colored steps are a very awesome usability factor, it’s really easy to look at trig colors and see what’s going on with alternate or weak steps or substeps. And despite the somewhat limited sound design options, you can get some pretty wild sounds out of it, especially if you make smart use of the single global LFO (although I wish it would run at a faster rate)
I guess I just am frustrated because I see a lot of unrealized potential right now with the alt sounds, and it falls in this weird place where it’s more menu diving than many other devices without having some of the depth that i’d expect from that sort of diving, and simultaneously making some very smart decisions about usability while also making some really inexplicable ones.
I realize this is early days, and we are on version 1.0… I was also an early adopter of the MC-101, and I had significant gripes about that as well, and just sort of set it aside for a few revisions. It’s become a hell of a device since then, not only fixing a lot of my complaints, but adding things I didn’t expect to ever see from Roland (Compliant USB audio and midi) - and it’s gone from being something I sort of regret purchasing initially to something I find fun and engaging to use. I’m hoping that we see some of the same sorts of updates hit the TR-6S.
The things I’d love to see in an update that would make me not gripe:
- Probability is obviously the big one for me
- Either an ability to assign alt instruments from anywhere in the pool, or sound/instrument locks (preference on the first, because it’s super quick to work with, and we are already like 90% there)
- Ability to assign any function to any control knob for any track (it’s very close to doing this)
- Class-compliant USB audio and midi. C’mon, you all did it with the MC-101!
Pony requests that would push it over the edge:
- Faster LFO, and adding a “stepped” option would be KILLER.
- Per-track LFO would be holy-shit levels of awesome
Anyways, don’t mind this old man griping - I realize that some of these complaints are of the “why didn’t they make it to my perfect specifications” variety. It really is quite great for the form factor, I’m just surprised to see some of the things that were addressed with the MC-101 not make it over to this device, as I had thought them to be of a similar mindset.
