so i have owned an akai xr 20 drum machine for about a year now and recently bought an sp 404 so i can sample and thus have more flexibility with production. i am wondering what else i should get in order to utilize both machines. some kind of midi sequencer perhaps? if this is the case the entire concept of sequencing/or midi is completely foreign to me and the more i read up on it the more confused i get.

any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

please dont post the same thing twice...

If you want to learn about midi, Look up MIDI basic tutorials / lessons / guides online... I highly recommend you make sure you understand it before you jump in and buy midi gear.. or else you will find yourself frustrated!


As for what you need... You need to get your goals more refined it sounds like you're just buying gear because you think you need more gear...

You need to think like "I want to be able to do X, but my current gear can't do X, so I am looking for a piece of gear that can do X.. If you're just thinking 'what will make my gear better' - there is no answer without knowing specifics about what you want to end up being able to do.

Cartesia said it fair.

Explore.

Basic MIDI is not complicated but you need to know what you want to do with your gear and how.

You will need midi interface sooner or later. For your needs M-audio midisport 2X2 will be okay... anyway I'd suggest midisport 4X4
if you have plans on buying more gear. This way you can wire all up and jam with all at once in sync and sequence/record MIDI with computer, (cubase, sonar)... you will need that too.
I have midisport 4X4 USB and I use Sonar LE as my sequencer
(came with SP-555) and I can controll all my gear with old IBM laptop.

i donno....i sorta think if you have a solid drum machine and a sampler for longer phrases, you're set.

Midi is a signal message that is either on or off, 0 or 1 like binary. This signal enables you to trigger sounds in the simplest way of viewing it. When one machine is being controlled or slaved by another machines midi time clock you can trigger events in both machines in perfect time.

first off my apologies i was unaware that i posted the same thing twice, and i appreciate the feedback.

im trying to utilize my xr 20 and my sp 404 together. as in take some of the patterns i've made on my xr-20 and use them with samples from my 404 but when i simply sample them into the 404 they sound awful.

once agian thank you

heres my input.. make your drum beats on the xr 20, have your melodies/phrases/bass/etc sequenced on the 404 and just make sure they share start/stop messages between the 2 boxes... if the xr 20 has a midi out connect it to sp 404 midi in - read the manuals of each machine about midi to make sure you're on the same channel and set the xr as master
this is a very simple way to utilize midi without getting into working midi notes into the fold
i dont think you need any more gear unless you have limited sound creation devices like keyboards or something, you can get one of those to go along with your rig to make samples from

so dman what your saying is just a midi chord and i should be solid?

yeah man..

a midi cable to connect the two.. then you have the fun of learning how midi works....! You might need to mess with note filters or midi channels for each thing etc, if you get problems of the xr-20 and the sp-404 both playing sounds from the same bits of pattern.

awesome thank you for the help all