I DJ at a club been doing it for about 7 years now. I got the sp404 about 4 years ago for adding in drops. I have made some sick drops of my own that I am very proud of and that my listeners recognize me by. That is all I have used this thing for. At the same time I got a korg kaoss pad. Both of these things I bought used em for what I needed and then let them collect dust. This spring I bought my first key controller an akai mpk49. It came with ableton live lite 7 and now I am addicted to making my own music. Then a cuople of weeks ago I got a lil baby oxygen 25. I have went into ableton and taken beats from their rack like the 808s and acoustic racks and recorded the sounds to the sp404. I know djing all day but I am completely lost as to how to make beats on this 404. I can bang buttons and make patterns i know how this machine works but I dont know how to perfect the beats like loops too short and got a skip in them. I have practiced with it but i get a lil frustrated. Can i make a nice pattern and then copy it to another pad and add effects...ppl are saying no. Most of the videos I see on youtube people are just recording samples and chopping them is that the main deal this thing is for. Should I just make my beats in ableton first then record them into the 404. I dunno what this thing is capable of obviously a lil guidance would be nice. I have read the manuals and have done research but a lil lost on how people are composing these phat beats. Thanks.

404 beat making is all about thinking outside of the box, rather than concentrating on the specs of the machine. jus experiment is all i can say. others here will probaly be more helpfull, and make better ish on the machine aswell. im all about 404 resample now, but i guess it depends on what stlye you got, i like my ish raw and experimental.




its nearly christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5q90OmW7EQ pattern copy.

Also you might want to bounce your pattern into ableton and then back to the 404 onto a single pad so it's easier to apply FX to your pattern.

Making loops fit together is all about trial and error. Don't use the BPM the 404 tells you, just adjust the tempo manually until it fits. You might need to use fx (delay/reverb) to make it fit too.

And yes, samplers are about sampling and chopping

I appreciate the input man. I can sample like crazy and produce some of the most wicked drops with horns and my voice I have cut on my technics and played through with the kaoss pad and now moved some beats that I made in Ableton. I mean I got the basics and then some I know the machine. I have difficulties making my loops precise and making a decent pattern without f*ng something up! I want to be able to make a simple beat then use it over and over again with different samples without making the beat again and again. And I still dont get the whole quantize thing and what exactly its doing...hehehe thats where the BUT in Im not a noob BUT comes from. I have made some sick beats in ableton house and hip hop. I need to get a audio interface so I can record from the 404 to ableton but times are tight so....

bouncin between live and the 404 is a good move. when making loops make sure the shit your chopping loops nicely before you chop. google quantize, i will only confuse you!! when you say beats with different samples, you mean making drum loops yeh??

@ nothingless, what I am saying is like making a simple beat bass and snare for instance. After I have made that beat can I copy it to all 12 pads then say on pad 2 I add a synth sound. Then copy the first beat to pad 3 and do a different synth sound or do I have to create that simple beat for each pad?

What you just descrbed is doable. You have to make different pattern on each pad containing the beat. I'm not sure if you are saying you have that simple beat as a single audio loop or If you are talking about making a beat from separate bass and snare samples already on the SP on different pads. Either way I think the pattern copy trick will help you:

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a big part of gettin solid drum patterns from single hits might also include some resampling work, sometimes to get a hi hat pattern the way i like it, i loop a hi hat sample so that it loops at the basic speed i want the 8th notes, and then resample that looping a few times, and then cut it into 4 note pieces, which would be like half note sections if we were using an 8th note pattern, then i can just lay those in as half notes........quantized or unquantized, i think that it sounds a lot more natural, although i think taking a few wacks a laying it in unquantized will result in the most "natural" sounding timing, also, using the timestretch in conjunction with this can make a huuuge difference without really having an affect on the audio quality, esp after it's layered in with other sounds......

and you can get much more complicated with this idea of looping sounds and remarking them......like say you wanted a swinging 16th note hi hat pattern, you can loop the hi hat so your swinging sound is right with the dotted 8th/16th notes, resample that, then mark that so it contains two hits, but the space after the second one is much shorter, so when looped it results in that sort of ba-boom ba boom ba boom sorta thing (but with hi hat sounds instead of kick drum, couldn't figure out what the hi hat sound would be?? maybe tss-ts-t-tss-ts-t??), then you could even resample that loop into half note chunks to lay in.......using the loop function in conjunction with marking and resampling can accomplish alot of things that are super obnoxious to try and sequence, and can be much easier to get the timing that you want........hopefully some of this information isn't too confusing

just my suggestion.. if you were to make some tight loops in ableton and import them to the 404 like each sound for your beat as its own loop, you should be able to play around with them on the 404. as long as you only export out just the loop from ableton

there's no right way to use it, there's no wrong way to use it.

When it comes to copying patterns to it from ableton, you could do that if you wished. Its not the best way, but if it works for you, so much the better. Learning to sequence the 404 from ableton could be a good idea, however, learning how to make loops and patterns with the sequencer or overdubbing would be my recommendation and using those in a daw like ableton to finish up the tracks.

Learning to be a good beat maker is a three step cycle.

1) Experiment: Start learning music and learning how tracks go together
2) Troubleshoot: find what parts of the music making process give you a hard time or don't work out the way you want
3) Problem Solve: ask questions, research, and experiment with new approaches until you find a solution.
(return to step 1)

Its a climb, but if you follow this pattern, you can become as good as anyone.

Thanks for all the info. I have started making my loops in ableton then recording them to separate pads so they can flow together in a pattern. So far so good. I ave also taken different loops from my synth as well and its is incredible. Now I am trying to get the loops perfect so there is no skip in between the looped sound. Again thanks for the input.