how do i change what the CURRENT PAD is without stopping or starting any new samples? this is extremely frustrating...

Hold "remain" and press the pad numbers you want. I'm not sure if that's the whole deal on what you're asking but at least that way you can apply FX to pads without playing them.

what i mean is, when i'm playing, say, 4 samples at once, 1-4, and the last sample i pushed was 4, how do i make the current pad 1 again without stopping it from looping? is this not possible?

what plexx said will do that