Alright so id love some info from everyone who checks this out, I'm sure everybody has something to share here

I picked up an sp303 when they were new and never really had the ability to "upgrade" until recently when I picked up a 404 and most recently an mpc2kxl

As for software, I've only ever used cubase for the purpose of tracking out my beats before they're used in songs. Basically all of my stuff is created for use on hip hop albums and thus I like to use the sequencer on the sampler so when the song is sent to the audio engeneer, he can really have full range to polish up my sounds and even sometimes drop sounds in and out (usually ill do this part myself)

I also prefer to get 100 percent of my sounds off of vinyl. OG pressings no reissues or drum break records, I feel more accomplished tracking down a break or certain samples, and if a producer wants to test me on what sounds I flipped boom I got em in the crate.

Never learned how to make beats in a daw, and can't feel comfortable using downloaded drum kits for the same reason I don't fuck w break records. I also feel like the majority of local producers would really look down on it (except the younger cats maybe) I like the challenge of slicing the drum sounds up off my record and workin w effects and layering to get my sound. I feel like I've made some trademark sounds tthis way and thus am able to have a bit of a signiture style like some of my favorite producers also do.

Anyway the point of this post is this, id like to step out side some of my comfort zones, and maybe learn about diferent techniques I could progress with and incorperate into my work

Take a listen to some examples here: www.reverbnation.com/prolificfunkproductions
Some of these were recorded in as a stereo two track but most were tracked out in a daw by instrument/sound
Once in the daw ill do some editing like cutting sounds out here an there, last minute eq and levels and occasionally reverb

These were all made on my 303 and are fairly old but should show you where I'm coming from

Would like to learn more about compression, midi, using the daw and hardware togther, and why my drum tracks seem to come out so much nicer on my mpc (by nicer I mean I like them to sound like a drum break ideally)

Also, most of the time my drum patterns are created all at once as if I'm playing them live, not much "building" of the drum track via multi tracking, unless its layers.

Hopefuly this all makes sense I'm half asleep right now, and I realize this is entirly too long and all over the place. Help me out, make some suggestions!

I think you sort of answered this yourself, just step out of your comfort zone and experiment with new things. I don't really have any suggestions, it's all in your imagination. Maybe you could improve on things where you think you lack skills? Try to produce a different genre just to get to know elements from other genres and use that to progress.

I know where your coming from.

I normally make beats with Ableton and the 404sx. Make a drum beat in ableton and do all my chops on the 404 and jam over the beat. I did this for my last beat tape, but I'm wanting to try something different myself.

I've been using Reaper exclusively atm and loving it. I've been chopping up samples in completely different ways to on the 404. Also, I'm using a lot of filtering to take out certain parts. So I'll use a low pass filter to take the bass notes out and arrange a bassline from the sample. Then I'll apply a high pass filter on a different sound from the song and chop that up and keep on layering.

I'm loving it at the moment so we'll see how it goes.

I'm still looking to get the 404 involved, probably using the FX, using it to arrange and obviously play live.

This fits right in with my sampling mentality, know exactly what you mean.