Hi, Just picked up my sp-404sx and so far am loving it. I have a few newb questions and was wondering if you guys would be able to help me at all? firstly is there a way for a sample to cutoff when you press the next sample? and is there a way to undo the last bit of a pattern you recorded(say if i messed up a snare etc)?

like i said newbie questions but any help would be appriciated.

no cutoff/mute targeting... just play it on gate
no undo -programming pattern is a pain at first but you get used to it...

still a dope machine!

thanks

there is a way to delete parts of a pattern on the fly, i believe while the pattern is playing in rec mode you hit del and hold the pad containing the sample you want to delete from the pattern down during the time that it sounds..

this is correct, while in pattern rec mode, it just loops the pattern over and over the same way it does when you just play it, and you hit del once, which will put you into what i will refer to as delete mode, and then you press and hold the pad you want to delete so its held down while the sound you want to delete is being triggered in your pattern, be careful though because if you don't want to delete other instances of that pad playing you need to let off before those sounds would be triggered, then hit delete again to exit delete mode and be back in rec mode, then you can place it in again, and delete it again if you'd like, over and over until your happy with it, so you hit delete again to be able to rec things into the pattern again, it acts as a toggle switch for turning delete mode on and off, just be careful to not be holding a pad down when you turn off delete mode, this causes any instances of that pad being triggered to be deleted when you go back into delete mode after that, it treats it as if you are holding that pad down the entire time you are in delete mode, if you notice this happening, cancel the pattern record and go right back in and it will be safe to delete like normal.....i'll also note that you are allowed to go back in and edit any pattern you've made as many times as you want, just choose it the same way you did as when you created it, it just won't start flashing when you hit record to choose a pattern

also, gate is a great option for having a pad turn off when you want it, but another option is to resample the same pad multiple times and mark each one to have a different end point to fit your needs, then when you want to use the one that cuts off at a certain point you just choose the corresponding pad, this sometimes can be more helpful for having everything be precise and tight when creating patterns, where as i find gate to be helpful when playing the pads live, like if you have a drum pattern looping and are playing some chops over it live

Don't know if many people do this-but I've done it for awhile after being tired of both having no mute groups and putting the same sample on a pad with different end points-- once I have all my sepperate chops/pieces on different pads and figure out how I wanna play them- all on gate with no real end points..I'll start by playing my first chop all the way through-holding the pad down till I hit the next one and so on-then I'll go back to that first chop, and hit it again where I want it to repeat-and hold it down till that next one comes in and it'll automatically cut off..etc,etc,etc- this might not be making very much sense. ..kinda hard to explain in words,lol-but if you get what I'm saying it actually is really effective and saves a lot of time. You might wanna try to always have the very last piece of your sequence not on gate though-if that last part is on gate it tends to play back(at least on my 404) with a slight pause before going back to the first bar.

definitely get what your sayin a.d., i've noticed that creating patterns with pads on gate, if you try to play a pad while it is already being triggered and you had held down the gate all the way through, it will cut off as soon as you had let off it the first time, and this has resulted in some frustrated pattern work where i have to go back through and replace all instances of a pad because i let off of it to early in the pattern, so like, say i have a 1 bar loop on gate, just for the sake of making it easy, but its actually got the 1 bar plus an extra beat, and i wanna play this twice in a row, what i would do is hold it down for the entire two bars, even though it stops playing after the extra beat in the second bar, because if you go and try to place that second hit and there was any overspill into the second bar, its gonna cut off your pad super quick, or where ever you let off the first gate.......confused yet?? hahha and you are totally right about having a gated pad at the end of a pattern, no matter how long you hold it down its gonna create an annoying pause right as it loops back, but i've noticed sometimes that this can sound good in some beats, i wish i had an example to show, but sometimes a raw loop sounds good with that little pause before going back to the beginning

Very good to know

@DR.-It is tough expaining some of this stuff in words isn't it?lol.. But yea man- it was actually by making mistakes and having my samples cut off when I didn't want,etc.. that I learned to use it to my advantage eventually.but as an easy example-on my battle 79 beat- on the first 2 bars there's 4 sepperate chops,each played 2 times-so for that first bar I'd hold the first pad down all the way till the second chop/pad-hold that down till the 3rd,etc...and the way I do things I dont trim the end points at all for he most part-so theres usually the rest of the sample playing all the way through on all my chops after the first run through. Then I go back to the beginning and play the same pads again..just holding them down till the next sample cuts them off. This is a really easy way to be able to keep most of your samples on one pad even when doing complicate chopping, and also avoids unwanted little pauses or gaps-even though,like you said, sometimes a little pause here and there can be dope- that's when you wanna not have something on gate with the end point adjusted.I also now always play all my chops unquantized (still quantize most my drums w/air though) which to me makes things much more fluid and easy to knock out right away without having to time everything precisely. Roland should just put out a beat machine called "The Workaround".

i get what you guys are saying but why not just hook up a quick little video tutorial? seems like that would be less confusing for the noobs, and easier than writing a whole novel