well, i am getting to the point where my samples seem to loop alright, nice and much smoother;

but as i am trying to build rhythm sequences, i get stuck with so so, oh hum bars, thats probably cause the SP404 rhythm building is wholly by ear, no graphic sequencing like i am used to.

i mean how would you go about doing a simple 4X4 house bar with kick, snare, claps, and hats ????

i seem to get to some point with q= 4 or 8, then when i get to quantize16 or 32, at some point i mess up, so i try to erase the messed up part, and end up erasing too much, not enough, or at the wrong part !!!

any idea or technique to go past that ??

start a pattern with 4 bars
put quantize to 8 and tap your hats out...any mistakes, delete them now before adding drums
put quantize to 4, lay down your snares
then try quantize 16 for kcisk, or if you want your kicks precise, use quantize 4 for four-to-the-floor

you can change the quantize setting while the pattern loops

it's all about practice. before i had the 404 i relied on visual sequencing too, and it took awhile to get the hang of doing it all by ear

but it is well worth it

Even on the 606, which has a screen, I make house beats exactly as Drewzle has described

Visual sequencing is the devil.
Music is what you listen to you don't watch it.

It's true!! That's why I think that most current music is wack now...There's a cool interview on Redbull Academy with Dego of 4hero and it's quite interesting and he advises young producers to trust their ears instead of watching the screen.

I agree, I like that real feel to it. I only quantize some kick drums and snares occasionally.

Might be too obvious but try slowing the tempo down while recording,

i run into that problem sometimes too.. you record a drum on quantize 8, then switch to 16/32 and make a mistake and it fucks your whole thing up trying to delete the little part where you flub. so heres my tip, resample the drum to another pad and use that pad for the double hits or whatever you want, then if you mess up its all on one pad, no messing with the original drumming.

if you run alot of samples in each pattern this will probably be a waste of a sample, but if not its good

while i agree that relying on your ears is very important for music. i still think that step sequencing is seriously dope. i just found out that the linndrum will also have step sequencing capabilities which has just made it about 10 times more attractive to me.