Sunwarper

I held off on buying the Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. II for a long time. When it first came out, I wasn't convinced it offered enough that was different from the samplers I already owned. Between the SP404 MK2, Roland P-6, and even the much simpler PO-33, I already had plenty of ways to sample, sequence, and make beats without a computer. A few recent updates finally changed my mind.

When the MPC Sample launched, it felt like exactly what I had been waiting for. I had wanted an MPC for years, but the more DAW like workflow of the MPC Live never really appealed to me. The Sample looked different. It promised a simpler, more focused approach that felt closer to the older MPCs I had always admired. After spending more time with it, though, there are quite a few parts of the workflow that don't click with me. Even so, there's one thing it does so well that I keep using it.

The SP404 MK2 is known as a powerful sampler. But when Roland added the Sound Generator a couple of years ago, I think a lot of people, including myself, treated it more like a bonus feature than something you could build an entire track around. Recently, I challenged myself to make a complete beat without loading a single sample into the SP404 MK2. Every synth, every drum, every sound would come from the internal Sound Generator. I expected the melodic sounds to be fairly straightforward...