Chris Laps Unleashes the Roland P-6: Pocket-Sized Sampling Mayhem

The Roland P-6 lands on the desk looking like a toy, but don’t be fooled – this thing is a street weapon in disguise. Chris Laps wastes no time showing how the P-6 packs a ridiculous amount of sampling muscle into a frame you could slip into a coat pocket. It’s the kind of kit that makes you wonder why you ever bothered lugging around a full-size sampler for quick ideas or travel jams.

What’s immediately clear is that the P-6 isn’t just about portability for the sake of it. Chris hammers home that there’s real depth here, with features that demand a bit of learning but pay off in creative firepower. If you’re after a sampler that’s all surface and no substance, look elsewhere – this one’s got layers, and Chris is itching to peel them back.

Sampling on the P-6 is fast, dirty, and full of character. Chris grabs a vocal straight from his phone, slams the sample rate down to 14kHz, and instantly gets that lo-fi crunch we all secretly crave. The P-6 doesn’t just let you sample – it lets you abuse your audio in all the right ways, with pitch shifting, start point chopping, and enough lo-fi grime to make any beatmaker grin.

Drum layering is a breeze, thanks to the keyboard mode that lets you stack kicks, snares, and hats across pads like you’re loading up ammo for a sonic shootout. Chris points out how easy it is to build a full kit and get straight to sequencing, skipping the menu-diving nightmare that plagues lesser machines. The workflow is sharp, and the creative options are wide open.

This is where the P-6 goes from handy to absolutely wild. Chris gets stuck into the effects section, showing off global reverb and delay sends that can be dialled in per sample. Want a snare that sounds like it’s in a cathedral, or a synth line that bounces around your headphones? Easy. But that’s just the warm-up – the multi-effects (MFX) button opens up a whole rave bunker of sonic destruction, from scatter and tape stop to isolators, ring mods, and a vinyl sim that’ll make your tracks sound like they’ve been dragged through a warehouse floor.

The real kicker is the granular engine, tucked away as a bonus. Chris demonstrates how you can mangle samples into shimmering clouds or glitchy textures, tweaking grain size and parameters until your original sound is unrecognisable. This isn’t just a sampler – it’s a chaos module waiting to be unleashed.

With about 20 effects on tap and the ability to resample through them, the P-6 is a playground for anyone who likes their beats a bit weird and their textures unpredictable. Chris makes it clear: if you want safe and polite, look elsewhere. If you want to melt faces, step right up.

Chris Laps doesn’t just talk about the P-6 – he puts it through its paces, with every feature demoed in real time. Watching him chop, sequence, and mangle sounds is a reminder that some things just don’t translate to text. If you want to hear the full filth of the granular engine or see how quickly you can go from sample to finished beat, you’ll need to watch the video. Trust me, your speakers will thank you.