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PS: the number 240 comes from 4*60. That's because you want "beats per minute" to be (4 beats)
per second. This means you can alter the 240/x to whatever you want. If you need 8 beats per
minute, you could use a new equation, 480/x or you could double the answer to 240/x.
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I've actually found an interesting way to use it for loop creation. I set it to loop at one measure,
and zoom in so that you've got 16th notes (16 steps in the measure), load up a whole pile of
different single hits (24 bass kicks, 76 snares, 32 toms, 47 symbols, 4 congas, a cowbell and 2
gongs...) as your tracks, begin beat construction. Nice to make breaks with all the snares in the
world, good to be able to change pitch/vol and FX envelopes on any given single hit. Then save as
a WAV and all the beats get mashed together into one little loop.
Also fun to make it loop at 4-6 measures of mad frenzied beats, bringing different hits in and out
over the course of x amount of time, run through an FX processor (or sampled to the
SP-808 w/FX) and recorded.
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It is possible, via the use of an external sequencer such as SEQ -303, or probably many other
software or hardware sequencers as well, to trigger individual pads on the SP-808 and effectively
"build" drum loops from scratch using the SP-808. While there are many other, and more
convenient ways of doing so (Fruity, Acid, Recycle...), it is nice to push the envelope of capabilities
of a machine we already own.
It might take a little chicanery to pull it off, but here's how I do it using SEQ-303:
1. Sample your drums. Single hits are admittedly too short in duration to be effectively used, as the
SP-808's response time is slower than RAM based samplers. Maybe use one beat or two beat "mini-
loops", the first bit of the "boom. . .chack" of the full loop.
2. Set up the SP-808 to receive MIDI pad trigger from external source.
3. In SEQ-303 set MIDI options to send external signal on the correct channel.
4. SEQ-303 has a really nice "random" function that will randomly assign values
to each of the 16 steps for all of the different pages: note value, velocity, and pan.
Although the SP-808 will have trouble reading too much information, too fast and will
(I'm sure we've all seen it) display the dreaded "disk too busy" message when playing back multiple
tracks at too high of a BPM, it doesn't seem to have this problem when simply being triggered
(pads) externally. I doubt that you would be able to record the results of the SEQ-303 triggered SP-
808 pads if the BPM were too high, but give it a shot. I simply record the sequencer "playing" the
SP-808 with my computer and transfer the file back into the SP-808 via the conversion utility using
Zip disks.
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A three notes chord wouldn't work, but try this instead! What if I put on a patch that gives the
internal synth a long decay, then I go into Cakewalk and make the SP-808 play the three tones just
a few milliseconds (just long enough for the FXs to hear the tone and hold it), then I'm sure we
could get a three note layered chord. Maybe even holding a sustain pedal on the master board will
work if the sustain messages are transferred via MIDI?
I've just been using Cakewalk with the main board. I'd play the chords, split them up and sample
them as Cakewalk plays them on the SP-808. I put each part to a track, then bounce them to one.
Loop Creation
Chords
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