Power Muting on the Roland MC505

You may have already mastered the concept of muting individual Parts of a pattern. But what if you need to mute out several Parts (or all Parts) of a pattern at the same time? Use the following procedure (called “All Mute”) to mute all the Parts simultaneously:

0. Select Pattern P:049 and press PLAY.
1. While holding PART MUTE, press RHYTHM MUTE. All Parts are muted.
2. Hold PART MUTE and press RHYTHM MUTE again to toggle between All Mute and All Play.
Now, use “Solo Mute” to break down the pattern to just one Part:

4. While holding PART MUTE, press the Part R select button to solo the Rhythm Part.
Suppose we want to hear everything except the drums. Since we currently are hearing only the Rhythm Part, we can use “Mute Exchange” to quickly invert the status of our mutes:

5. While holding PART MUTE, press PART SELECT. The Rhythm Part will be muted, but all other Parts will play.
Note: This technique also works well for inverting multiple combinations of Parts. For instance, we might begin by muting tracks R, 2, 4, and 7 and by using Mute Exchange we can instantly mute out tracks 1, 3, 5, and 6 instead.

Another feature of the MC-505 allows the mute status of the current pattern to be held over for the next pattern. This technique is referred to as “Mute Remain:”

6. Continue to play back Pattern P:049 and mute out everything except for Parts R and 2.
7. While the pattern is playing back, press PLAY again (so it begins to flash).
8. Press the INC button to select the next consecutive pattern. The next pattern will play back using the mute status of the previous pattern.
As you can see, the MC-505 allows you to alter patterns in several ways quickly and easily in realtime.

Knowledge Base