How to use a Roland R8 drummachine as a hardware sequencer 

Thanks for your support John. Really apreciate it.

Thanks Paudical. I will try and do some other videos.

Thanks! Glad that I was able to help you with this video. Cheers!

You're welcome Phillip. Glad the video was helpful.

Thanks for the compliment Zoadanoise! I do not own an mc 303 but do have an ef 303. Currently saving money for an Ensoniq EPS 16+ :-)

I know how the mc 303 works but what do you need to know ?

Thanks Cary! Yeah, I think it is possible to program flangs and rolls in a sequence. You also can use the "scope" function where you have the ability to add up to 6 extra drum hits per step. Maybe I should do a video on that as well. Thanks for the tip! Really appreciate it.

@@vainsacrosanct2014 Yes that would be incredible! i would pay for a scope video!

Hey Steve and thanks for stopping by. I am not sure if you can mute sounds during pattern play. Let me know if you found a way. Cheers!

I need to look into that. I don't have any sound cards however. Have you tried it with the standard sounds?

@@vainsacrosanct2014 thank you for the response . Let me try again with standard sounds as well but I think I was having the same problem. Basically I’m trying to do what is done here at the :44 section of the video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-c8pYJkTwQ_4.html . You see that each pad has the same sound pitched to different amounts

Hey @tacuches and thanks for your question. You don't need to clear the banks but have to make sure that your drumpart is being played by, for example, bank A and the sequence for your synth by bank B. You can assing the outputs of Bank A in the menu of the R8 to the main outputs while all other banks are routed to another, not connected output. It's been a while since I've worked with the R8 but I think this way you will get it to work. Thanks for the compliment and have a nice one!

Thanks Glenn. Now about setting the R8 as a slave: 1) Press SONG PLAY to get into Song Play mode or PATTERN PLAY to get into Pattern Play mode. 2) Stop the current Pattern or Song (if necessary). 3) Hold SHIFT and press Pad 16 (SYNC). 4) Use the VALUE -1/OFF +1/ON or VALUE SLIDER to select “MIDI.” 5) Press EXIT to return to the previous display. 6) Press START/STOP. The R-8, R-8MkII will not start playing until it receives a MIDI message from the master device. 7) Make sure that your master device is setup to transmit MIDI Clock messages. START the master device. The R-8/R-8mkII will now start playing in sync with the master device.

@@vainsacrosanct2014 Thanks Ivan I took your advice and that worked. You are a legend mate. I have one more question I hope you don't mind. Would you happen to know how to adjust the settings to change the time signature eg 3/4 or 6/8.

@@cambo6319 This you can do by clearing a pattern (press shift+clear). Then press one of the arrow buttons to go to the measure and change it using the + or - buttons. I think (but need to check it you can go as long as 32/8.

@@vainsacrosanct2014 Thanks again mate, I did that and works a treat.

I think you need to set each individual pad of the spd to the corresponding sound (like a kick or a snare or whatever) on the R8 by selecting the same midi channel. So the pad you use to trigger the kick on the R8 must have the same midi channel. Same for the snare and so on but every time you need to set a different midi channel. I do not know how to set this up exactly as I do not have an spd but you can assign different midi channels on each individual sound of the R8. Hope this helps in some way. Thanks for watching my video and for subscribing to this channel.

Hey Arne, thanks for watching my video. You can run 5 tracks using the five soundbanks of the R8. However I do not know if you can mute banks but you can route the audio of each bank to the individual outputs and have them connected to an external mixer. You have eight individual outputs and a left and right main out. All those can be setup using the menu of the R8. I did a video of that as well: "routing individual outputs on the Roland R8" In short: you can route each audio of every bank to another audio output and have that go into a mixer. On a mixer you then have the ability to mute them. Hope this was helpfull! Cheers!

I think you can. It's been a while since I used it but I think you need to program a song or pattern on, say midi channel 1 as an output using the internal sounds and on another midi channel you need to program another song or pattern on a different midi channel. This midi channel then can bu used to trigger external hardware when it has been set to the same midi channel.

@@vainsacrosanct2014 thanks for the reply.