Don’t just crunch your samples to digital oblivion, process them with a variety of effects including reverb, delay, multi-mode filters, and most importantly, a vinyl simulator for true 404 flavor. can. The six sample pads on the front aren’t velocity sensitive, but are large and responsive enough to play basic finger drums.
Unfortunately, chopping a sample spreads it across the small keyboard at the bottom, rather than the larger sample pad. These keys are small, squishy, and difficult to play. Still, if you need something small to mix up lo-fi and boom-bap beats on the go, the P-6 isn’t a bad choice.
small tool kit
When building beats, you have a lot of tools at your disposal. You can place steps manually using the step sequencer, or you can play them live off the grid. In addition to the 64 steps, you can use probabilities, substeps, microtiming, and motion recording to add complexity and variety.
Once your loop is ready, you can use several effects to create builds, breakdowns, and fills on the fly. Most notable are the scatter, step loop, and DJFX loopers borrowed from the SP-404.
Variance is divisive, to say the least. Add stutter and glitch effects based on pre-programmed patterns. It sounds fine if used carefully in the right settings, but it’s by no means subtle and can turn more complex, melodic beats into unlistenable chaos.
Step Loop simply loops the steps you press on the sequencer. This makes things like the beat repeat effect found on other devices such as the Teenage Engineering PO-133 more flexible and interesting. Great for creating live fills and variations during jam sessions. This is truly one of my favorite performance features on any music device, and one I wish other devices had as well.
Photo: Terence O’Brien
