In addition to consigning your samples to digital oblivion, you can treat them with loads of different effects like reverbs, delays, multi-mode filters, and most importantly, a vinyl emulator for flavor. That real 404 position. The six sample pads on the front aren’t velocity-sensitive, but they’re large and responsive enough to do some basic finger drumming.
Unfortunately, cutting a pattern will spread across the smaller pad on the bottom, instead of the larger pattern pads. Those keys are very small, mushy and difficult to play. However, if you want something compact to mix lo-fi or boom-bap beats on the go, the P-6 isn’t a bad choice.
A small toolkit
When building beats, you have quite a few tools at your disposal. You can set the steps manually using the step sequencer or play them live to keep things from getting messy. You have 64 steps to work with along with probability, sub-steps, micro-timing and motion capture for added complexity and variety.
Then, once your loop is ready, you can use a number of effects to create quick builds, breakdowns, and plugins. Most notable are the Scatter, Step Loop and DJFX Looper borrowed from the SP-404.
The dispersion is divisive, to say the least. It adds stutter and glitch effects based on pre-programmed patterns. It can sound okay when used sparingly and with the right settings, but it’s not at all refined and can turn more complex and melodic rhythms into unlistenable chaos. Okay.
Step Loop simply repeats the steps you hold down on the sequencer. It’s a more flexible and interesting use of the type of rhythmic repeat effect that you can find on other devices like Junior Engineering PO-133. It’s great for creating variations and live fills while jamming. This is honestly one of my favorite performance features on any music device, and I’d like to see it on more music devices.
Photo: Terence O’Brien
