ok, bare with me here, im trying to figure out how all these pad modes behave by watching youtube vidoes without having a sp in front of me. im trying to decide between the 404sx or the 555.

at 1 minute of this video, on pad 3 and 4, is the guy using a mute group worakround trick? do you think he made those pads "patterns" and they are muting each other out when he pushes the next pad? it seems like after he pushes 3, then when he pushes pad 4, then the previous pad is cut off... or is he just using "one shot mode" and timing it correctly so right when pad 3 is done playing though, he just pushes pad 4.

and also, do you suppose pad 5 a pattern that he recorded and is playing back the whole time? if he was using the "pattern" mute group trick, wouldnt pad 5 get muted out when he pushed pad 3 or 4?
maybe pad 5 is just set to loop playback?

is pad 1 set to gate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL9K700 ... re=related

im really trying to wrap my head around the different playback modes and how people use them, an im most interested in the "patterns" mode trick to create mute groups. i would love to just be able to tap a pad, then tap another pad and have that cancel the previous one out, whle being able to record this in the sequencer. ala mpc 1000, or the "delete" mode mute group trick.

can i just set all my chops (that i chopped in a recycle for example) and lay them across pads a1 through 12, to b 1 through 12, ect ect. and save them all as "patterns" instead of just regular samples to get a mute group effect.
then if i have all the patterns muting each other like i want, can i make a seperate pattern out of the other patterns, or do they have to be regular samples that you make patterns from?

if i do the patterns thing to workaround no mute groups, can i mute someting on pad bank a with something on pad bank b (or any other pad bank for that matter?)

another question, on the 404sx, can i effect the incoming audio from line ins without recording it (ie put an 8 bar loop thats being looped continuously with my mpc 1k) and practice the djfx looper stuff i want to do without actaully recording it to a sample, then when i get comfortable with my live playing of the djfx looper, click record and record the sample.

thanks alot in advance for your replies!

The dudes just got the samples on pads 3 and 4 cut correctly in one shot mode. If you look carefully at 1:10 you can see that both pads are on at the same time for a split second.

Not sure about the pattern mute group thing. Never tried that. My man Synpho just presses two pads at a time, effectively turning one pad off and the next one on.

The fx can be used without sampling like an fx box too

thanks for your reply man! i have a similar question in the 555 forum that hasnt been answered yet, but i thought i should probbly post it in the 404 forum as well so i know that both machines work the same way like i suspect they do.

what do you mean he pushes 2 pads at the same time? you mean when its closer to the end of the sample on say pad 1, then he pushes pad 1 and 2, and it will have a polyphony issue and only allow one at a time?

the lack of mute groups really kills me, id love to just tap the pad and tap another one to have it cut off the pads instead of having to hold it, then switch to holding it again.

i guess ive been too used to my mpc in that respect, im super stoked about the djfx looper though, im going to be running audio from the mp to the 404 or 555 and effecting it, then resampling it back to the mpc, so i guess the mute groups dont matter so much, but it would still be a nice feature.

from what ive come across, only the 404, 404sx, and 555 have the djfx looper feature correct?

Say you have pad 1 looped and you want to seamlessly go to pad 2, all you do is press pad 1 and 2, turning off pad 1 and turning on pad 2. Quite basic but effective!

Alternatively, just use the gate mode so you hold the pad to play. Then when you let go of that pad, it automatically turns off.

It's nice to have mute groups, but its not the end all. You sharp get used to not having them and just adapt how you use the sampler. And like you said, you'll still be using the mpc anyway. I'd look sequencing loops on the mpc and use the 404 to record and play the loops in realtime to arrange the song with the use of FX

The DJFX looper is pretty sweet. That's one of the reasons I went back to a 404. Had a 606, but missed that effect too much!

ok, so in loop playback, i can just tap my pad (instead of holding it down) and it will loop continuously forever right?

so say i had a 1/4 note chop, if i had loop mode on, i would tap the pad and it would repeat my 1/4 note chop, but if i had 2 or more samples on loop mode, i would tap my pad and when its about done with the 1/4 note chop, i would push that pad again as well as the new pad, and it would mute the first one and start to loop the second one, then i would repeat the process till i have my 4 or 8 bar sequence correct?

i guess now my question would be, that would work all fine and great until the very last 1/4 note chop, wouldnt the loop mode just repeat forever when the pattern went from the end back to the begenning, so i would then have all my chops with the very last quarter note of the song repeating under them the whole time. i guess a workaround for this could be make the last chop a gate playback, or would the end of the pattern cut off the loop anyway and i wouldnt have to worry about that?

thanks your posts have been really helpful.



**********edit, i think i found out what it does by reading the manual further, so when in loop playback, you just tap it (instead of holding it) then when you tap it again the loop stops. so when you press it again to stop it, you just press the next pad at the same time correct?

but still, how do you stop the very last chop from not clicking at the end of the loop. will it just cut itself off when the pattern goes back to 1?

thanks again!

and finally the last question about the patterns mute groups ive been trying to explain. i think this video will help me explain it better. i also read the manual and that cleared up something for me too, i just need confirmation about this.

at around 3 mins of this video, he says the 404 has a new feature, and says you can push a pattern, then push another one and it will wait until the previous one is done to play the next one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLKGmCBh ... watch-vrec

then i read in the manual that you can switch immideately to the other pattern by holding sub pad and pushing the next pattern.

id be using each pattern to have quarter note chop on it and thats it, so i was wondering if i could record a new pattern out of switching these patterns with wih the sub pad method to get a mute group effect.

i assume i can have the first note playing( which is actually a pattern), then i can push sub pad, and tap the next note(pattern) and so on and so on until i have these patterns laid across all the pads then i could record these small patterns to a new one that had a sort of mute group effect.

sorry if im being kind of repetitive, but it would be aweseom if someone could confirm for me that you can record an entirely new pattern out of snippets of existing patterns like this.

thanks

Ah I get it, never thought of doing it that way but I suspect there will be a little bit of a lag, maybe not so much if you use a smaller/faster card. I'm gonna try it with my OG... but still you won't be able to resample it within the SP... but if you have the MPC you could just sample into that and export from CPU to SP.

By the way, MPC1k and OG404 can read each other's cards (interchangeable) if they are 64mb or smaller, but I don't know if 555 will do it. That might be a good reason to think about maybe getting a used OG ..........not to mention the (cough cough) chopping trick (cough cough)

edit: Tried it, and it works surprising well, although there is a little lag. I'd probably just use the delete mode trick instead, much more fluid and you don't need to program anything, but you could get interesting results by layering kicks or snares underneath in the patterns...

I have never used a 404sx, but if the sequencer is as tedious as og I probably wouldn't be using it too much

by i couldnt resample it, do you mean that i cant make a pattern/sequence out of it?

the live kicks and snares trick sounds cool.

i think i could just do this all in my mpc easier though, and just use the 404 or 555 as an fx box. i was just wondering if i could do it on the sp, because it would be more fun to do standalone sometimes.

thanks for trying that out btw, i appreciate it.

You can't resample a pattern unfortunately, so you would have to sample back into your mpc.

On the pattern sequencer, I assume you could just turn the pad off right before the start of the loop. Just don't use quantise.

The 404 are really basic compared to the mpc, so don't expect extensive sequencing etc. But what the 404 makes up in is the fx and the super easy work flow. Takes minutes to chop up a sample just by listening to it and assigning mark points. Seconds if you have the sx version, allowing you to copy the same sample across the pads instead of re-sampling in realtime.

I used to be an mpc user, and the 404 is so strange in comparison. But give it time and you'll be able to do some awesome things that the mpc cannot!

cool thanks you guys.


one more thing, on the 404, or sx, is it easy enough to change the velocity settings after the fact of the samples?

ie can you change the volume of each snare hit it from 0 to 127?

i would probably just want to do this on the hihats, kick and snare mostly, and other drums mostly, but there would be quite a few of them that i would want to edit after the fact so my sequence doesnt sound so robotic.

is this easy to do? how many button pushes ect does it take?
i have also read in the manual that you can record different velocity settings if i use a velocity sensitive midi controller to trigger the 404 samples, is this correct or did i read it wrong?

thanks

forget your mpc workflow , it's a different thing to make beat with an sp