These files are designed to complement my review of the Roland SP-555 sampling groovebox in Electronic Musician magazine. —David Battino
The SP-555 is a phrase sampler featuring realtime effects, resampling, and an infrared-controlled monophonic synth and filter.
Here I set the SP-555’s dual chromatic pitch shifter to –5 and +4 semitones, producing a major chord (G, C, E). Then I spoke and sang into the internal mic, dropping the upper pitch to +3 semitones (a minor third) partway through. My telephone rang unexpectedly during recording, so you can hear it get harmonized too.
This composite performance illustrates how you can build up a groove by overdubbing in the Loop Capture device. I resampled each iteration to a new pad and exported the phrases to my Mac, where I stitched them together in BIAS Peak, but I could also have duplicated the performance live simply by pressing the pads sequentially. Saving the intermediate stages let me weave parts in and out during the final performance.
The medley starts with a shuffling drum loop I programmed in the pattern sequencer. The first overdub is a bass line I played on a Novation BassStation (a monophonic analog synth) routed through the SP-555’s amp simulator effect. Next we hear a wah-wah effect I created by waving my hand over the D-Beam in resonant filter mode. Subsequent effects include slicer, voice transformer, delay, and reverb. (All pitched parts came from the BassStation.) Finally, I overdubed elephant calls from the SP-555’s internal D-Beam synth.
You can set each pad’s sound to lock to the current tempo, but the sync isn’t sample-accurate. Here I set two Black Eyed Peas loops — one originally 100 bpm and the other originally 102 bpm — to the same tempo and then triggered them simultaneously. You can hear them drift apart fairly quickly. To keep loops in sync, you need to play them from the pattern sequencer, which retriggers them at the beginning of each phrase, as the second example demonstrates.
Like a theremin antenna, the D-Beam infrared controller changes the pitch of the SP-555’s monophonic synth as you move your hand closer to the sensor. However, it’s easier to play than a theremin because you can restrict the pitches to notes in one of 21 preset scales. Here I set the scale to Natural Minor and flip through several of the eight preset synth sounds while one of the SP-555’s demo loops plays in the background. At the end, I switch the D-Beam to filter mode and lower my hand to fade out the music. I recorded the performance over the SP-555's USB audio interface into Cakewalk Sonar LE, which comes bundled with the SP-555.
This clip starts with a percussive loop I recorded by flapping my lips into the SP-555’s internal mic. Then we hear a wah-wah riff I produced by waving my hand over the D-Beam (set to filter mode) while a factory loop played. Finally, I add a D-Beam solo played on a triangle-esque synth patch. The solo would have sounded better with vibrato, but because the synth’s pitch is restricted to a preset scale, the best I could have mangaged would have been a trill.
The SP-555’s monophonic synth has a built-in delay effect, but you can add one of the main effects as well. Here I dialed up a fourth and fifth on the dual chromatic pitch shifter (+5 and +7 semitones, respectively) for an effect reminiscent of trumpeter Jon Hassell.
The background loop is from Karsh Kale’s “One Step Beyond,” a WMA file that came with Windows Vista. With all the FUD about Vista’s copy-protected audio, I was pleased to discover that I could simply play the song in Windows Media Player and sample it into the SP-555 over USB.
The SP-555 can alter the tempo of a sample from 50–133% without changing its pitch. You can hear the quality of the tempo stretching on this 102 bpm loop. Using the SP-555’s CTRL 2 knob, first I slow the loop to 52 bpm, then crank it to 132 bpm. I sampled the loop from a Black Eyed Peas CD playing on my laptop, via the SP-555’s built-in USB audio interface.
A dedicated button activates the SP-555’s Super Filter, which features a steep six-pole (36dB/octave) slope. (Typical synth filters use 12 or 24dB slopes.) CTRL knob 1 controls cutoff frequency, knob 2 controls resonance, and knob 3 switches among four filter types: lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and notch. Here I play a loop through all four types sequentially while twisting the cutoff knob and occasionally varying the resonance. The original sound was again Karsh Kale’s “One Step Beyond.”
To test if the SP-555’s USB audio interface would pass audio from a copy-protected DVD, I played a commercial sci-fi disc in my Windows Vista laptop. The scene I sampled contained some reverberant footsteps with an interesting rhythm, so I enhanced the groove by overdubbing drum hits in the SP-555.
Here I used the SP-555’s pads to play a software synth running on my computer while processing the computer’s output with the SP-555’s internal effects — all while sampling my performance into the Loop Capture device. Halfway through, I switched the effect from delay to distortion. Despite all this roundtrip control and processing, there were no glitches — pretty impressive!
Among the SP-555’s unusual effects is Roland’s signature voice transformer, which lets you alter the formant (characteristic frequencies) of a sound. In the first part of this example, I sing the classic HAL 9000 shutdown song while lowering the CTRL 1 (formant) knob. In the second part, I perform the move again on a radio sound bite while mixing in a bit of the original audio for a chorusing effect.
One of my favorite SP-555 effects is the tape delay, which resonates when you set it to very short values and pump up the feedback. Here I assigned the effect to the internal mic and drummed my fingers on the SP-555’s case to produce a percussive groove. Then I overdubbed finger scrapes and slides.