Is it even possible to lay down drums as good as Can on an sp-404? "Bel Air" for example has the sickest drums, I'd die if I could do that shit

Yeah sure with a bit/lot of practice there's no reason why you couldn't do it. Jel did with an MPC & SP. But then there's hundreds of youtube vids of dudes tapping live beats with samplers, some better than others though.

Try to learn some drum theory & apply that to the sampler. Jeremy Ellis has a series of good tutorials explaining how to play a sampler with grid of pads like a drum kit. Just because the 404 doesn't have velocity doesn't mean you can't do something that gnarly with it.

yea but Jel actually plays the mpc, not the SPs..as far as I can tell the SP is set to ext source and is just an efx processor in his vids...you absolutely can't compare the 2 for laying drums. I have 3 SPs in my lab but I don't even think about doing the drums on those jawns, the playability and responsiveness of the mpc pads is on a diff level...I know that you can work around this, but in my experience creating great drum tracks is where the SPs really lack compared to the mpcs

kinda over-stated that a lil, i just made a few joints on vacation using only the 404 so even for me it's coming around but it's not the same kind of ease was with the mpc, were you can start playing amazing drums the first time you put hands on it (provided you got rhythm and swing)

Nah you've got a point there- the bigger pads on MPCs do make a big difference. He's pretty much using the 303 to trigger the guitar riffs as single samples there, probably using the 303 as an FX unit too.

I've tried copying Jeremy Ellis' techniques on my 606 (the pads are the same size as the 404's) & its not that easy to get drumming smoothly, even with the velocity response. Too many fingers banging into one another...

Still, practice makes perfect.

the thing about CAN is that the patterns that jaki leibzeit plays are pretty complex polyrythms that shift very subtly. even though they are very repetitious, its not something thats works as good on a sequencer clock because its still pretty live and improvised. even many experienced drummers cant really just sit down at a kit and play drums like that. the stuff jel does is cool, but its not really hitting the mark either on this stuff.
theres a certain swing on CAN drum patterns thats pretty sick, and the recording sound is also a factor. for instance pay really close attention to the cymbal hits in bel-air and how they decay quickly and youll know what i mean.
either way, complex finger drumming isnt really the 404's strong point.