Hi, everyone, I'm Peter from Roland,
and this is the SP-404MKII.
The SP-404MKII
is a compact,
creative sampler and effector that's
a staple in lo-fi and other
styles of hip-hop and electronic
music.
During the development of the MKII,
we listened closely to the SP
community about how we can make it
better. But we were also careful to
maintain the essence of what people
loved about the SP.
In this overview, we're going to
talk about what's new with the
hardware, updates to the sampling
and effects workflow, and options
for customizing your SP.
Let's get started.
Let's take a look at what's new with
the hardware on the SP-404MKII.
Probably the most obvious is the
OLED screen.
You can use it for waveform editing.
You can use it to smoothly navigate
through the different modes, and you
can even customize it with personal
startup screens and screen savers.
There are also 17 velocity-sensitive
RGB pads, which you can customize.
On the back, you can see that we
have a quarter-inch input and
output. We also have eight-inch,
MIDI, both MIDI IN and MIDI OUT.
Lastly, we have a USB-C port
which is useful for external power,
streaming audio from mobile devices
or your PC or Mac, and connecting
to the SP-404 app.
On the front panel, we have
quarter-inch and eighth-inch
headphone jacks.
We have a quarter-inch input for
microphone or guitar and that'll
feed a dedicated input effects
with things like guitar amp
simulators or vocal effects.
Inside the SP-404 MKII,
there's 16 GBs of internal
storage for really fast startup
times, internal project switching,
and importing and exporting samples.
There's also thirty-two voices of
polyphony so you can really stack
pads on top of each other with no
risk of cutting samples in and out.
The SP-404MKII comes preloaded
with nine banks of high-quality
sample content made for the modern
SP user, and it can run
on batteries, so you can take this
thing basically anywhere.
The SP-404MKII has an
updated sampling workflow.
We've added things like real-time
chop, auto-chop, sample envelopes,
pitch shifting, all
sorts of different types of
enhancements to make the sampling
process really fast and really
creative.
So let's take this sample here.
Say, I want to chop that.
I can just go to the chop mode here
and start the process.
And at any time,
I can preview those and even
zoom in, maybe make a small
tweak.
And if I'm happy with that,
I can assign it to a pad.
And there it is in my bank.
And
if I want to assign some kind of
envelope or a way to shape the
volume, that's a really easy process
where I just press the sample that I
want to change.
I can go into the envelope screen.
You can see the diagram of what the
envelope is doing.
So if I raise the attack,
I can get a kind of almost
sidechain type of sound with these,
and in context, it'll sound like
this.
We've also made updates to the
resampling workflow and added
something called Skip Back Sampling.
They technically do the same things,
but they approach it a little bit
differently.
So let's take this pattern that I
have right here.
If I want to resample that as audio,
I can do that now just by hitting
the resample button.
It'll ask me for a location to
record this and then
press the pattern that I want to
resample as audio.
And it's going to play through that
and I can stop it basically at any
time.
And there's my sample right there.
Skip Back Sampling, on the other
hand, is like always having a tape
recorder in the background.
That pattern that I just resampled,
let's put a really aggressive effect
on it, like the new Cassette
Simulator. That
has just been recorded.
If I just hit the Mark button, it'll
go into the Skip Back Mode, and
I can preview up to twenty-five
seconds in the past
that can then be exported to a pad.
There that is, put
it on pad 8.
So now I have my original resampled
pattern
and I have that affected pattern.
One of the key things that people
love most about the SP are the
effects. On the MKII, we have
classic effects like the 303
VinylSim, 404 compressor, amongst
other things, but brand new things
like the Cassette Simulator,
Resonator, a bunch of other cool
stuff to play with.
So let's check it out.
So I can start using the
effect controls in the same exact
position that the 404 and 303 were,
I still have a top-five effects
selection that has mostly
classic effects like the DJFX
Looper,
things like Isolator, Delay, Filter + Drive
are basically unchanged, but there's
a new one called Resonator,
which is really good for
kind of getting melodic textures
out of percussion or non-melodic
textures.
So this is really good for sampling.
And if I go into MFX, I can see
that there is 303 VinylSim or
404 VinylSim, new
Cassette Simulator.
And if I look at the top, I see a
lot more creative and brand-new
effects that are really great for
sampling and coming up with really
interesting types of samples.
I really like Downer personally.
And there's a bunch of things to
play with. There's thirty-seven
total effects that we'll have at
launch and all of them are really
inspiring.
Also, what's new with the SP-404MKII
are Bus FX.
Bus FX is a system
that's inspired by analog and
digital mixing consoles that lets
you establish different effects
on different busses.
You can then route your pads to
whatever effects that you want.
I've got this example here that uses
this routing system.
If I go to the effects page, I can
see that Bus 1 will go into
Bus 2 and then there's two
additional busses after that for
mastering style effects or effects
that you just want over the entire
mix all the time.
I could easily change the routing
just by hitting the value knob to
get more of a parallel type of
situation happening.
But for this example, I'll leave
it as serial.
So I'll go to this pattern here,
play it.
Everything's going into Bus 1.
Say I want to route stuff into Bus
2.
I'll just select Bus 2,
hold Remain,
and start to select the different
types of paths that I want to route
to that bus specifically.
So I could see that there's two
different colors, and that's a
really good indicator to show what's
on Bus 1 and what's on Bus 2,
and let's do something really strong
on Bus 1 now, like the Downer
effect, I think is really obvious.
We'll turn that on.
So notice how all the melodic stuff
in the top-end percussion are now
pitched down, going through the
Downer effect, but the main
body of the percussion are
completely dry.
That means I can go to Bus 2, and
add an additional effect on top of
that, like the DJFX Looper.
Back to Bus 1, I
could just disable this effect and
now we're back to normal.
The SP-404MKII has an upgraded
pattern sequencer, so you can do
things like assign different tempos
per bank or assign a tempo that's
global to the project.
Let's take a listen to a pattern
that's assigned to one bank and then
I'll change it to another bank and
you'll hear the tempo change.
Another upgrade we've made is
adjustable input quantize,
swing, different types of record
input options, and that's really
easy to see. If I play a pattern,
I can hit the record button at any
time and it's going to drop me
into the recording process
as soon as it loops back around.
If I hit the record setting, I
can see what my quantize is set to.
I can see the BPM.
All of it is real-time.
So we still kind of have that very
quick and fluid type of recording
process with the SP, but it adds a
little bit more control over your
timing so that you can get a really
good rhythm that doesn't sound like
it's hard-quantized or robotic.
A new convenience feature is the
Pattern, Editor.
So if I go to the Pattern Select,
then select a pattern that I want to
edit,
I can hit Pattern Edit,
see how long it is.
I can adjust the length of it,
I can adjust where it starts in the
pattern and do things like, let's
say crop the first measure.
And now when I play the pattern,
it'll play only one measure's worth
of music.
People have been performing with SPs
for years in many different ways.
DJ Mode effectively turns your
MKII into a 2-channel DJ mixer.
You can load up two individual
tracks on two different decks and
synchronize them.
I'll go into DJ Mode and
already I can see that the screen
graphic has changed to mimic two
different decks.
The pad color configuration
has changed to mimic what the
functions are on each pad.
So I could see that there's Deck 1
is here and Deck 2 is here.
I can do things like change the BPM
using the pads on the different
decks or kind of bend
it temporarily, like I'm adjusting a
vinyl.
And I already have two songs
loaded on here. So if I played this
first one.
I can use the control knobs to
behave just like faders on a
DJ mixer, and I
could do things like temporarily
increase the tempo if I was trying
to sync it.
Temporarily slow it down.
On Deck 2, I have the ability
to cue it in the headphones as well,
before bringing up the faders to
make sure that they're in sync.
So for now, I'll play the
song that's on the second deck.
And then turn on sync.
I could bring it up.
And it's a really handy tool for
blending two songs together.
The SP scene has always been one
about customization.
The faceplate has four screws that
make it easily removable.
You can download the template online
that will help you customize your
own graphics for it as well.
There's also easily-removable knobs
and user-customizable startup
and screen saver images.
The RGB pads can be user-customized
as well to reflect your own favorite
colors.
If you are looking for a creative
way to perform and produce using
samples and effects the before
for SP-404MKII is just the thing.
Head over to Roland.com to find out
more.