Roland P-6

“Instructions for Guitarists”

As a guitarist you might find his thing completely fucking incomprehensible but it does have the power to do some truly amazing things if you can you can get past the complexity and drill down to the core functions that you might need.

Step 1. Power on

When it powers on it will look like this. It doesn’t have an internal speaker so you’ll need to use headphones or plug it into your amp or a powered speaker.

Press [Play] to start the first “PATTERN”.

“PATTERN” is the name given to the Loop/Song/Sequences (or BEAT as the kids call em) that are recorded and saved in to the P-6’s memory.

There are 16 Pre recorded “PATTERNS” and another 3 Banks of 16 empty Pattern Slots

1 1-16 Pre Programmed Factory Patterns
2 1-16 Empty
3 1-16 Empty
4 1-16 Empty

The digital display shows the tempo of the current pattern and the big (TEMPO/VALUE) knob controls the BPM

If you press the [PATTERN] Button … the (TEMPO/VALUE) knob now cycles through the pattern Banks and the 16 buttons across the bottom quick select slots in each of the 4 Banks .

A1 – BASS DRUM (poly)
A2 – SNARE DRUM (poly)
A3 – SYNTH SUSTAINING BASS NOTE (poly)
A4 – [SAMPLE] wobbly guitar chords (6s)
A5 – CYMBAL damped? (Not poly)
A6 -[SAMPLE] Horn Blast/trumpet/”Come on”/cymbal (Stepped Sample)

E1 – BASS KICK DRUM (poly)
E2 – SNARE RIM [Sample] Snare/Bass Drum (Stepped Sample)
E3 – CYMBAL CRASH (poly)
E4 – SYNTH BASS (poly)
E5 – KEYS (spacey ping pong piano)
E6 – [SAMPLE] GATED TREMELOD TONE w/ randomised volume trigger (Stepped Sample)

B1 – KICK DRUM (poly)
B2 – TOM [Sample] tom /vocal (Stepped Sample)
B3 – SNARE RIM [Sample]
B4 – BOUNCY SYNTH BASS (poly)
B5 – [SAMPLE] Long (GATED) PIANO MELODY (poly)
B6 – [SAMPLE] longish VOCAL MELODY (poly)

F1 – TIGHT KICK DRUM (poly)
F2 – HI HAT CYMBAL [Lo-Fi] (poly)
F3 – MARIMBA/COWBELL (poly)
F4 – [SAMPLE] short (GATED) BONGO RUN (poly)
F5 – MUTED BASS (poly)
F6 – [SAMPLE] (GATED) HARP CHORD (poly)

C1 – ORGAN SOUND Long/rising (poly)
C2 – [SAMPLE] Long RAINFOREST SINGING (poly)
C3 – PULSING SYNTH BASS (poly)
C4 – [SAMPLE] Short RAINFOREST YODEL (poly)
C5 – THUMPING TECHNO BASS DRUM
C6 – TIGHT TOM (poly)

G1 – KICK DRUM (poly)
G2 – CLAP (poly)
G3 – [SAMPLE] BREAKBEAT (poly)
G4 – JAZZ CYMBAL (poly)
G5 – PADDLE & DRAINPIPE/AXLE F KEYS /(poly)
G6 – [SAMPLE] short INDUSTRIAL NOISE/BIN BASHING (poly)

D1 – [SAMPLE] RAINFOREST PAN PIPES TRILL (poly)
D2 – BAMBOO TUBE (poly)
D3 – BAMBOO TUBE – HIGHER PITCH (poly)
D4 – [SAMPLE] NATIVE “Hu” (poly)
D5 – RIM SHOT/HIGH CLAP (poly)
D6 – [SAMPLE] JUNGLE DRUMS (poly)

H1 – WORD UP DRUM CRASH (Stepped Sample)
H2 – DOUBLE CYMBLE TAP (Stepped Sample)
H3 – DOUBLE JUNGLE DRAIN PIPE PADDLE (Stepped Sample)
H4 – [SAMPLE] WALK THIS LAND BASS MELODIE (poly)
H5 – [SAMPLE] 50’S SWIRL (poly)
H6 – [SAMPLE] DREAMY “Mmm Ahh ahh” (poly)