One of the limitations of the Roland P-6 compared to other samplers is that it ‘only’ has 8 sound banks of 6 pads per bank, making a total of 48 pads. However, by using chops, it is possible to store several sounds on a single pad.
Below I will explain two ways of using this technique, some of its limitations and how to get around them:
Method 1: Sampling directly from the device
When sampling into a pad from the device, it is possible to directly sample multiple sounds. This option is indicated in the device's manual, on page 27 of its English version. To do this during sampling, with the PITCH knob while holding down the SHIFT button, you can select the number of samples to record, up to a maximum of 64. By doing so, you can now sample each of the sounds individually, and you can even go back if you want to repeat a recording.
This technique can also be used during resampling. For example you can select two short sounds each on one pad, and resample them to the same pad to free one of them.
To play back each recorded sound, you must use KYBD mode as each sound will be assigned to a note.
Method 2: Concatenating sounds with Octachainer
The Roland P-6 performs the chopping of a sound in parts of the same length, so it is possible using a DAW or any other audio manipulation tool to generate an audio for chopping, simply taking into account that all the sounds must have the same length and placing them one after the other.
However, there is already a tool whose function is exactly to automate this process, which is OctaChainer. This tool was originally developed for Octatrack, but is perfect for performing this function for the Roland P-6.
Simply select the ‘Evenly spaced grid’ option, include the sounds, and when you press ‘Create’ it will generate an audio concatenation of all the sounds which is perfect for chopping. It is also possible to achieve longer audio durations to include more sounds by modifying the channel and sample rate settings.
Once the sound has been loaded in the corresponding pad in the P-6, it will be necessary to indicate that it is a chop of several sounds. To do this, select the corresponding pad and use the Chop (ChoP) function in the VOICE menu to indicate the number of sounds contained in the sample.
Some limitations of this technique
Since all the sounds in the chop must be the same length, it is important to bear in mind that the time used for each sound will be that of the longest sound, since the others will be filled in with blank audio. For this reason, you must be careful if you want to maximise the use of the pad, on the one hand to make sure that no sound has unnecessary empty audio, and on the other hand, that the sounds used together are of approximately the same length.
Although this technique allows more sounds to be loaded simultaneously into the Roland P-6, my experience is that it makes working with them a bit more inconvenient. For example, when entering steps into the sequencer, you will have to change the note each time to indicate which sound you are using. Also all sounds assigned to a pad will have a shared pad configuration, for example if you want to apply a filter to one of them, it will be applied to all of them. This last point can be minimised by automating the effect you want to apply to each sequencer step individually, but again, it's not fun.
An interesting alternative I'm starting to explore is to leave a sound bank with several pads loaded with multiple sounds as a library. Then, when I'm working on a new track, I can choose for example a kick drum from all the ones I have loaded, and resample it to a free pad. This way you have the benefits of having a lot of loaded kicks to select from, but also being able to work conveniently with the selected sound.
Keep it up bro !!! Loving it