I'm considering getting a 404, but need to know if this is possible with this machine (I am new to sampling).

Say I have a song that has an isolated keyboard riff at the beginning (like J. Geil's "Centerfold"). Can I sample a single note out of the riff and set it up in the SP-404 so that a MIDI keyboard will then play the notes, using the SP-404, as if it were the original vintage keyboard used in the song?

I don't know what the terminology is, but does it have the ability to take that note and automatically transpose it for surrounding keys/MIDI commands and build out the keyboard?

I'm trying to duplicate some older sounds. Our keyboard is somewhat close but not quite there.

No way, not on a $300 sampler. You want something like an asr-10 not an sp if you want to do that. The best you could do is sample a few notes of the keyboard sound and then pitch shift them to different octaves, then arrange them in logical order to be played back with your midi controller.

ya, this is the primary downfall of the SP series. The only budget sampler I know of that does this is the akai S-20. A couple others like the zoom sampletrak will do it, but only over a single octave. Oh, and the SP-505 will also do it over an octave. And it does it with a time stretch that works really well. But ya, your best bet will probably be an Ensoniq EPS. I would go with a 16+. The are more relieable.

All the old rack samplers do that.

Akai s-2800 would be my suggestion, it goes for about 100 bucks but you can't sequence on it. You could play on that machine and record that in the 404. Or get a mpc or something like that.

We're not going to record anything, really... I don't think I need a sequencer. We either need to play individual sound effects (one-shots) or provide a tone to a midi keyboard that will be manually played.