Message 8/10
Date: 25-Jul-01 @ 02:04 AM -
RE: Roland SPD6
Hello, would-be pad bashers. I bought an SPD-6 a couple of days ago so thought I’d share my initial impressions.
I got the unit as I wanted to try entering drum patterns in a more "natural" way. As I was not really interested in the internal sounds I have not been disappointed with them as some reviewers seem to have been. I view them as a nice bonus for practicing without having to hook up to anything else. This said, whatever wit decided that the wretched General-Midi SFX noises would endear anyone to this unit wants a good kick up the arse!
Physically, the SPD-6 is small! At first I was disappointed with this, but am now totally won over. It doesn’t take up much desktop and feels really comfortable played on the lap. I have had great fun bashing away with both percussion and standard sounds from my various synths and am already confident that the purchase was a good move. The whole experience of getting away from the keyboard, combined with the primitive buzz of hitting something really changes how you approach your music. The big surprise to me has been that using my hands to strike the pads has been far and away my favourite way to enter patterns, even conventional kick/snare ones. I suppose that using sticks is not as natural and I will have to put a bit of practice in (and lose about 4 stone) before I can attempt any Karl Bartos “Ubermensch-Maschine at Perkussion Workstation” impressions.
The only problem I have noted (other than the rather cheapskate omission of a mains adapter) is that striking pads 2-6 near the edges often causes Pad 1 to trigger! As this tends to be a crash cymbal on the basic presets this is most annoying (unless you want to sound like Keith Moon in a tumble-dryer. To be fair, the manual does say that you should strike the pads centrally - but I’m sure that I’m not the only uncoordinated thrashing retard who will find this irritating. I’ve noticed that even placing the unit on a desk will cause a spurious trigger, so perhaps Pad 1 is some kind of default setting for non-assignable hits? This problem is much more noticeable when using the sensitivity setting for hands, and I’m sure is a price worth paying for a responsive unit (see my Yamaha note below).
All in all, I’m well chuffed with the SPD-6. I hope to get a bit more into the setup side of things to remove any reference to crash cymbals when I get time to read the manual properly. I have had hours of good clean fun hitting it and feel that the pads fill a real hole in the marketplace for a cheap percussion trigger without unnecessary bells and whistles, except of course those in the bloody SFX kits!
N.B.
I did manage to buy one of the Yamaha units mentioned fairly cheaply but was very disappointed in the triggering aspects of it - anything subtle like holding the stick loosely after the initial strike to get those nice “secondary/echo/ghost” hits (there’s probably a proper term for these) just didn’t register as midi velocities, whatever adjustments I made. The SPD-6 has no problems with this.