Since the Jan 2018 blog post ’Running Tracks On An SPD-SX’ a lot of people have reached out with further questions about a number of things. So this is part 2… where I go over a few of the most common questions I’m asked, and also some stuff I’ve learnt in the past year or two.
Accidentally stopping track playback, while playing triggers
This is something that bugged me for a long time until I figured it out. For every sound you assign to a pad, you have the option of playing back that sound monophonicly or polyphonicly.
Mono voicing means that if you play the same sample more than once, the SPD will cut off the first instance of the sample in order to play the second. Poly voicing means that when you play a sample more than once, the SPD will allocate a second tone generator for the second hit of the sample.
The SPD has 20 of these tone generators for poly voicing, and once you’ve reached 20 instances, the SPD will cut off the ‘oldest’ sample you triggered, and will keep doing so for every new sample that’s triggered in order to free up tone generators to allow sample to continue firing. A tone generator is allocated when the sample is triggered, and lasts as long as the sample lasts. If the sample is 10 seconds, you will be using 1/20 tone generators for 10 seconds. If you’re running a backing track, the BT will almost always be the oldest thing you’ve triggered (assuming the BT and click begin at the start of the track). You can only play up to 20 poly samples at the same time before the SPD begins to cut off the oldest instance of a poly sample being triggered, and so it is imperative that you run as many samples as possible in MONO voicing to avoid using up all of the tone generators with 20 POLY samples playing at the same time.
If you’re firing off one shot samples, ensure they’re MONO to avoid your backing track cutting out in the middle of your Devon Taylor HiHat buzz rolls. Keep the tracks POLY and any longer samples POLY too. It’s unlikely you’ll use all 20 tone generators and stop the track, but if you do, this will be why.
Sub Out Signal bleed into phones mix
This issue is occurs when playing a backing track with a padlinked click track. Any sounds set to outut from MAIN or SUB out bleed into the PHONES out, meaning there’s track and triggers as well as the click wav.
When you navigate to your outputting options on the SPDSX. and select SUB output for a backing track wav, this for some reason actually translates to SUB OUT and PHONES. It’s not the end of the world, you just have to make sure when you are bouncing your backing tracks, you bounce your click track as JUST click, and crank the gain a bit before bouncing so you can lower the FOH track volume later. If you bounce click with a little bit of track for monitoring purposes, you will in effect have double backing track in your ears which very easily drowns out the click!!
This issue is something that A LOT of people have asked about. Unfortunately as far as I know there is no fix for this. Hopefully this is something Roland can sort in future iterations of the SPD.
QUICK FIRE
Mute Groups
Mute groups function as the name suggests. When you assign two pads to a mute group, hitting one will mute the other (and vice versa). When running BTs, ensure you haven’t set any mute groups: you can see how this could be problematic while firing samples on top of a track.
Panning samples
Panning samples is something that works for some gigs and not for others, so be warned!
On shows that you know are capable of running all your outputs stereo, it’s good form to separate your high frequency samples, and your low frequency samples. Panning (say) Kicks, Subs and other low end samples hard L, and claps, perc, snaps, hats and all your other tops hard R makes the sound engineer’s job a lot easier when it comes to mixing your electronics. By doing this you’re passing on a lot more control to FOH, giving them the ability to run your low EQ samples through a sub and your high EQ samples through tops, avoiding muddying up the mix. It’s better for everyone!
Do keep in mind though that if you’re on a gig where the engineer only has space for a mono line for samples, you will need to either have a duplicate kit with the samples centred, or you will need to pan everything back to centre for that gig, save the risk of hearing half the parts!!
SPD-SX internal click Vs click from a daw
I recently got an email endorsing the practicalities of using the SPD-SX’s internal click as opposed to bouncing your own as I suggest to do in my other blog post ‘Running Tracks On An SPD-SX’.
The advantages of using the SPD’s internal click are as follows:
Clear and sonicly pleasing click tones that cut through effectively
Easier to programme onboard, time sensetive effects on the fly (Delays etc)
Dedicated hardware volume control on UI
The advantages of using a seperate, bounced down click are as follows:
Ability to change tempos within songs
Ability to bounce vocal cues, guide tones and performance instructions onto the click track
Choice of metronome tone (use anything you want!)
Faultless synchronisation between track and click using Padlink
Ultimately for me, I will always choose to bounce a separate click file. IMO the advantages of using a click made in a DAW far outweigh the advantages of using the internal click. While it would be ideal to have a dedicated physical volume control specifically for the click (or even a user-asssignable control…Roland….please…), when put beside the ability to include vocal cues, and to flex tempos within one song, there’s a clear winner for me.
——————
I wrote this up in March 2019 but delayed posting to wait for a response from Roland about the signal bleed from subout to phones out. Never received an answer to this so I’m posting now at the end of 2020…. better late than never!