No pattern change via MIDI because Roland.

The TR-08 and (gray) SH-01A seem to always be available.

The 08 sounds pretty different from the 06. They work very well together.

Yeah I wish they’d address that on all the boutiques. Can’t think of a reason why they didn’t include that. But I actually just end up recording the pattern(s) I want as MIDI into my DAW, at which point I can create transitions and variations too. I only use patterns on device while jamming.

Only the first three were officially labeled as limited editions, but yeah, most of them have eventually disappeared from stores. However, the SH-01A and TR-08 appear to be selling well enough that they keep making more of them.

Last I checked, the TB-03 said “discontinued” on the Roland Australia site (in place of the Buy button, because you can buy things directly on that particular site). Still seems to be easy to find though. Maybe the TD-3 crashed the party and left them with a bunch of unsold stock.

I’m sure they sound quite a bit different!!

Possibly cost although the software implementation of this feature should be trivial if the code is anything resembling sane (apparently not at all a guarantee from what I've heard/seen from Roland's software engineering division).

Also, it is worth noting that on the TR-09 you can changes tracks by MIDI. Not exactly the same, but could be useful.

Roland also has a weird marketing department - they might see this feature as "cannibalizing" the market for their upper-end gear although I don't personally see that argument. But I understand they're very aggressive about killing features in the lower end stuff to distinguish it from the pricier lines.

Same here. I usually use a hardware MIDI sequencer to drive my boutiques and that has mostly worked out pretty well. Typically, it is the QY100 because it is easy to record the output of the boutiques and then play it back and the QY100 has a great jamming mode with patterns/sections and has dead solid MIDI timing.

That sounds pretty good. I just record into Ableton Live. The MIDI timing is probably not as airtight as a hardware setup but it works pretty well. I don’t love Ableton’s handling of swing/shuffle/groove. I guess it’s flexible, but it’s a workflow killer that you have to manually select a template for every new clip and can’t just pick a default one for the whole project. Worse, it can’t be done with Push (which has its own, very dumb swing feature; I’ll spare you my rant about that).

I also have a drum rack set up to control the entire TR series and receive all the individual outputs over USB. Took me quite awhile to set it all up, so maybe I should share it on GS. With a Push 2, you can switch to 64-pad mode and see all the pads for all three TRs at the same time (room for one more, Roland!), or use the other modes to control and sequence them individually. All the pads are color coded — red for BD, orange for snare, light orange for clap, etc. One cool thing is I have 16 pads for the TR-08 because you can use all of the sounds simultaneously via MIDI. You only have to pick between, say, SD and MA when using its internal sequencer. The Roland plugin version doesn’t support that. I think the TR-08 is the only way to do this without samples.

Since Ableton Live still only allows 8 macros per track, I set up a MIDI template for Maschine mk3 with pages of knobs for all the controls, which also has pads for all the sounds (bigger, better pads at that).

Starting to suspect my real hobby is setting up MIDI controllers and sequencers, and “making music” is just an elaborate excuse to buy more gear and set it up. I’m probably only half joking. What I’m really doing is designing a UI for all this stuff, and that’s what I do for actual work.

and

You aren't the only one. I have multiple software projects in-flight now all in the goal of improving workflow in my studio. I actually think that setting up templates/controllers for gear is a good way to really learn the equipment inside and out.

and now you need an RM1x.

i love both, but there's a weighing up of redundancy somewhere. meh whatever, this is GS, have both.

I had one for a long time. It is a great hardware sequencer and has more pattern sections and has a much better interface than the QY100. My main problem with it was that it didn't support Sysex dumps so the only way to backup data was on a floppy. Now that floppy emulators are dirt cheap, I could see using an RM1x again.

Saw a good price, cracked and ordered one - will have the TR-trio. No more DMs after this (repeat to self).

Do you use Ableton Live? And are you on a Mac, using USB audio to combine all the individual outputs of the TRs into an aggregate? Was thinking of posting my drum rack, but it would only be useful to people who answered "yes" to all of the above.

I’m evaluating Live, usually Logic user.
I have an aggregate device set-up on the Mac for my audio interfaces and TRs (actually a mix of FireWire and USB) will add the 06 when it arrives.

Would be great to see your drum set-up, I can try it in Live here. I like to MIDI the drum parts having composed elements on the boxes initially.

I also have a Logic template for these, but it uses a bunch of environment routing that will probably be a hassle to reconfigure for your setup. It does have the advantage of being able to record the individual outputs to audio, since Logic lets you group MIDI and audio tracks, and passes MIDI input to the MIDI track when it's collapsed.

Ableton Live doesn't let you add audio tracks to a drum rack (or instrument rack), and track groups don't handle MIDI like Logic does, so you'd have to always have the group expanded and the MIDI track selected to trigger it with pads. What I could do is have a separate drum rack for the pads and MIDI, and a group of audio tracks for the incoming audio, but that takes up two tracks, which wastes one of the precious 8 tracks you can see at once on Push 2 (and Maschine mk3's mixer view).

Logic handles this stuff better (with the caveat that I had to spend many hours figuring out the environment to get it all working nicely), but ultimately Push 2 was what convinced me to switch to Ableton Live. After 20 years using Logic and Reason I wanted to move to a tactile interface. As of Live 10, it's now good enough to switch. It's still missing a lot of functionality I had in Logic, but with Max For Live the opposite is true too.

Anyway, I'll strip down my Ableton Live template to only include the TR trio and post it here when I get a chance. Or perhaps I'll leave all the boutiques in and you can just delete the ones you don't use. You will probably have to reconfigure the inputs, since yours are probably not in the same order as mine. I attached a screenshot of what my aggregate looks like in Audio MIDI Setup.

Can you elaborate a little on this? Is this using summing stacks containing a MIDI track and an audio track? Naively perhaps I have been using Software Instrument tracks with the external instrument plugin for external MIDI synths, and bussing these to auxiliaries for recording, or using real-time bounce.

That would be great, thanks. If you leave the other boutiques in I think that definitely counts as enabling.

Exactly. When a summing stack is closed and selected, you can play the MIDI track inside it. Your approach works fine too. I just wanted to have the MIDI and audio for each track grouped. But I switched to Live about a year ago and don't remember all the details about why I set everything up the way I did.

In Ableton Live, when you group tracks, the containing track is an audio track, which cannot be enabled for MIDI input. You have to open the group and record-enable the actual MIDI track.

I realized I should be able to share just the actual tracks and not the entire project. That way you can import the ones you want into the project template you already have. I'll find some time for that today.

Me too, I’ve been looking for neater solution, this is a handy tip, I’ve only used summing stacks for audio in the past, so will try this.

So mine arrived today - had very quick play. Can't say how accurate it is, but certainly reminds me of the sounds I heard back in the day - gives me that feeling of the OG anyway (but better made!). The distortion and delay controls are fun, and I've patched all the triggers in for fun with SQ1s.

Will rig up with computer later, but so far this is a really fun box

Here's my TR-series drum rack for Ableton Live, which includes the TR-08, TR-09, and TR-06. The zip file has two files — the .als (entire track), and .adg (drum rack). The full track includes a Glue Compressor after the drum rack to avoid clipping while keeping them at a reasonable default level.

This uses the individual USB outputs from all the TRs. It doesn't include the full stereo mix for the TR-08, because all the sounds are available separately. It does include the TR-09 mix (since all the sounds you don't send to one of the four outputs go to the mix). The TR-06 works like the TR-08 — all the sounds are available as separate outputs — but in this case I also included the stereo mix (muted by default) as that's the only way to hear the built-in send effect.

Since you probably don't have your aggregate devices in the same order as me, you'll most likely have to reconfigure the audio inputs. You can expand the mixer channel and select each track to see its External Instrument at the bottom, then choose the correct input for each one. It's really helpful to go into Preferences > Audio > Input Config and label all the channels first so you know which is which. When you have everything working, save the drum rack (or entire track) as a preset.

The drum rack includes a third-party send effect — Native Instruments RC 24 (a Lexicon 224 emulation). If you don't have it, Live will probably complain, but you can replace it with any reverb. I suggest a small room or plate reverb. Nothing is sent to it by default; it's just there because I almost always want reverb on snares and claps.

There's also a second empty send effect (within the rack), which you can either add effects to or use as a pipe to send individual sounds from the rack to your master sends (just resize the "B" track at the end of the expanded rack until you can see the audio output and send it to one of your main return channels).

You can add more return chains in the drum rack (click the list icon on the rack to show the instrument and effect chains).

Pads are mapped for Push 2, and are color coded by drum type. If you switch to the 64-pad layout you can see and play all three TRs at the same time. You can also use the pads on Novation LaunchKey/LaunchPad controllers (though my basic LaunchKey Mini mk3 only shows the color of the track for all the pads, even though it supports individual colors for clips).

Note that because I had to map all the sounds to pads, they don't correspond to the actual notes on each device (they all overlap, so it would be impossible to combine them into one device like this). If you want to record MIDI from the devices into Live, I suggest doing that to separate MIDI tracks, because they won't work correctly on the drum rack track.

Cool, thanks a lot. Will try it out once I've got everything working in Logic which is still my default DAW at the moment.

Anyone found the built in panning of the toms a bit weird? They seem on mine to be panned left and right (LT HT) even when centred (unlike the hats). This is OK guess, but it means when you hard pan they don't go all the way to the opposite side - i.e. LT can only be hard panned left - if you try right there is still some coming from the left. Similarly with HT, you can hard pan right but left always has some right still. Been through the settings and can't see anything that would change this. Is this the same for others?

Not a problem when using the individual USB outs, a bit odd on the stereo out.

Forget it - usual user error nonsense! Caused by sleeping Mac which switched to using the 06 as audio interface (main interface was off) and was still monitoring from the 06 individual inputs (panned) through Logic! Thought I was getting a very slight delay in there also...

Was hearing on 'phones on 06 also, since the 06 was the audio out, which it why I thought it was on the 06 causing the issue!

Doh and double doh!

Hi folks,

Enjoying the TR-06 here, a lot packed into a little package.

Does anyone know if the TR-06 could connect to the Roland MX-1 (audio and midi) over usb?

I've read here that other boutiques and the Jupiter Xm and MC707 can, so it might be possible?

Cheers.

My TR-06 showed up today, and like some other folks in this thread have mentioned, one of its main uses will be as a trigger sequencer for my modular gear. The trigger in/out capability alone is why I grabbed it over the Behringer or the 6S. I've never played with a vintage 606, but I gotta say that this sounds pretty dang good to me, and the triggers/modular interaction is exactly what I needed. I need to dig into it some more, but the sequencer looks like a pretty good time as well. Thumbs up from this dude.

Looking forward one of these myself. Also interested in the triggering, although from the comparos I think this sounds better than the Behringer as well. Not by much mind you. Splitting hairs really. Just something in its character I like more.

No idea whether it’s closer to the original or not (I don’t know the 606 that well), but the TR-06 does sound really good. You can also swap out most of the sounds, which was one of the reasons why I went for it. That, along with the extra trigger outputs and per-step probability & velocity makes it much more interesting than the original, IMO. Plus you can tweak the tuning, decay, and pan of every sound, add compression to the bass drum and snare, use substeps (32nd notes), and it has effects too.

Can someone post the alt sounds please

I haven’t tried them all yet, but I think:

Snare and kick alts: 808 and 909 based.
Cymbal - gated cymbal, clap (909?), rimshot
Toms- synth perc., noise tom, clap, rimshot.
Hats - no alt.

The cymbal clap is from the 808.