Last Updated on April 3, 2022 by Andrew Culture
The Roland TR6s is rocking our world. This fantastic little drum machine packs (almost) the same punch as the larger TR8s but at a price point that is a total bargain. Sure there are fewer tracks and a few of the TR8 features are missing, but for a lot of people, the TR6s will bring untold beat-driven joy.
Integrating the Roland TR6s into your DAW
One of the appealing features of the TR6s is how well it integrates with your DAW. I’m an Ableton Live user and the fact that each channel on the TR6s can be sent to a separate track in Ableton was part of the reason I bought the TR6s. This plucky drum machine works just fine with the two outputs (Left/Mono and Right), and is particularly at home in a DAWless setup, but when it comes to recording having each channel on a dedicated track is a godsend.
The purpose of this post isn’t to review the Roland TR6s, there are already tons of great TR6s reviews elsewhere. We’re here to make it super simple for Ableton Live users to integrate as simply as possible. We have created an incredibly simple Roland TR6s Ableton Template.
We decided to create this template because as far as we can tell nobody else has created a Live template specifically for the TR6s. There are some great templates for the Roland TR8s, but none have been created for it’s little brother. The TR8s Ableton templates are great, but might be challenging for anyone who isn’t already an advanced user of either the TR8s or Ableton Live. The examples we looked at had some quite complex routing set-up. But if you just want the basics, so you can weave your own magic over the template there was nothing out there.
Download the Roland TR6s Ableton Template
So there’s why we’ve made this template for Live, here’s how to get started with integrating your TR6s with Ableton:
- Download and install the TR6s driver from Roland (you might need to log in first)
- If you are a Mac user have a read of this helpful troubleshooting guide
- Download the Roland TR6s Ableton Template
- Have fun
When you open the template project in Ableton you’ll see each track has been labelled and grouped in a TR6s group. All tracks are primed to record and all channels are set to ‘Auto’ for monitoring. You’re good to go!
We have made the template using Ableton 10, so if you’re using Ableton 11 you should be able to use this template without any issue.
If you would like a bit more guidance on getting your TR6s configured as an audio source in Ableton then have a watch of the video below.
