TR-08 memory questions

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cloudburst
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Joined: 20:00, 11 November 2015
Location: Northern Ireland
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TR-08 memory questions

Post by cloudburst »

I've a few questions. Help much appreciated as always:

Firstly, is it possible to have multiple tempos stored in a track? In other words have certain rhythm patterms in the track which are at one tempo and other rhythm patterns at another tempo, with the tempo switching automatically as the track is played? I've been able to store the tempo by keeping 'bank' held whilst long-pressing 'tap', however, regardless of which step this is done on, it stores the tempo globally for the track.

Secondly, it seems that switching the unit off and on again, the tempo will revert to the nearest course-grained setting, losing any fine tuning in the tempo. For example, If I have the unit set at 137bpm and turn it off, when I turn it on again, it will be set to 135bpm or 140bpm (depending on where I started fine tuning the tempo from). Is this a bug?

Lastly, when turning the unit off and on, it always reverts to bank 1. Is there any way to have the unit switch on at the last selected bank instead?

CB
CitizenJ
Posts: 2
Joined: 08:02, 9 December 2017

Re: TR-08 memory questions

Post by CitizenJ »

1) Unsure, haven't started building Tracks. Haven't read anything that suggests multi-tempo tracks are possible, though.

2) Yes, the revert-to-coarsest TEMPO value is how the two TR-08s I've tried behaved (as at the latest firmware v1.03).

3) I agree, this is non-intuitive and wastes time hunting for the rhythm you were last working on (if, like me, you frequently have to stop noodling in order to wrangle children) given the huge number rhythms it can store. Surely there's a spare byte or two in there to record the last active BANK + RHYTHM and a couple of instructions to automatically switch to that on start-up. :)

I don't know how you do this yet (new to the Roland universe) but suggest you raise all three of these as separate enhancement requests. I'll do the same when I find out how since it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease!

Good luck.
great-bear
Posts: 4
Joined: 18:12, 21 January 2018

Re: TR-08 memory questions

Post by great-bear »

Actually I like it resetting to bank 1 on power-up as I can leave bank 1 as my "scratch" bank and know it's safe to erase/re-record anything.

I have a workaround for the power-up issue by the way. Take an unused song (song 12?) and program just one bar - the rhythm you're currently working on. If you turn on the TR-08 with that song selected it will (obviously) automatically set the TR-08 to that bank/rhythm on power-up - and set the tempo too!

If you forget to turn it on with that song selected, just select it manually after power-up and rotate the switch back to pattern write. More convenient than selecting the bank/rhythm and the tempo manually.

Hope that's a useful idea - it works well for me...
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