I've been doing a project with a friend which keeps us heavily in a DAW so recently I've not been doing so much of that on my own, and instead been trying to delve deeper into the SP404 using the resample method. It's kinda nice to learn more about that little beast and also to speed up my workflow on it. It's fast becoming my process of choice for hiphop stuff as it gives a nice natural feel to the beats, but i dunno if i'll be able to get further that the 90 second mark on a track as shit starts to get complex!

What process is your favorite? Do you mix em up or stick to one method? Discuss!!

sample/compose/try stuff out in 404... export multi-track to DAW, mix if needed (but music is more important than the mix yo)... so actually use the tools for what theyre good at

What I do is play live without resampling a lot of things to get an idea of what I want to do overall in the tune.

Next I think of how the track will flow...will the drums start it off? Will the music kick it off? Just the bass? I think about this before I proceed.

Next, if I have several sections to the tune, I build them up individually. For instance, I'll resample first, maybe, 16 bar drums. Next, I'll resample the drums again but this time, with effects, like cutting them out, maybe a pinch of delay, extra snare hits, etc. The entire time, I'm playing out the song in my head, how it will flow musically.

Next I add some musical elements based on how I want the song to flow, which I was keeping in my head the whole time. I'll do this until I complete this section.

Next, I do the same thing but for the next section.

Rinse and repeat until I've got all the sections built.

Finally, I resample by playing in order all the sections with some effect I want to use over the whole track.

If there's any need for movie samples, sound effects or something, I add these last in the final resample.

So I'm not necessarily building a full song with each resample, I'm putting together just small sections of it.

If I'm confident, I'll lay out the drums completely first for all sections. This can lead to some dicey situations as well as happy accidents later.

This.

Or just make a beat on my 303 alone and then just only add EQ and all the jazz on the master of my DAW, with the beat in it of course.

hseiken, your method sounds dope, i may give it a try if you don't mind! got a mate coming over tonight with a tape walkman for me, gonna hit up the charity shops on the weekend for tapes, total portable beat making fury!

HS doesn't use a standard cheapo "everyday" Walkman. He uses a Sony wm-dc6. These sell for around $100-$200 because they are considered a "professional" model. The major selling point is obviously the line in and the input meters. To achieve similar results for a fraction of the cost buy an old mini disc recorder/player. I see them go for around $20 with discs. You will not be able to overdrive it like a tape, but it provides it's own warm crunchy sound due to the compression format.

Good luck.

whats the point of caring about the walkman vs pro tape deck quality if he's gonna fuck it up with the sp afterwards? am i missing something?

You're missing the point that his Walkman has a line-in so he can use it to bounce his live 404 play into instead of being stuck with the 4 poly limit on the resample method. Consumer Walkmans only play tapes and do not have the ability to record.

I'd love to find a cheaper portable cassette recorder that doesn't just record in mono (like most shoebox style cassette recorders or voice/memo recorders).

Sometimes I start off with an idea for a drum break or a song to sample, but most times I just turn on the sampler and see what happens.

I load random drum samples to the memory card, sample some from youtube maybe, play around with them, record a drum break and loop it for 1-2 minutes while adding effects. Then I add more effects and sounds, until i feel it's a solid basis for my track. Then I go on a youtube spree for music to sample, chop it, play it with the drums, add effects to the whole thing.

This is my main procedure, but it varies and I like to try out something completely different sometimes.

these days every time i make a beat on the 404 i end up thinking that its too good to waste it by constructing the track inside it

i play around as i chop each sample and work out what kind of sound or chord i need next until all my pads are full and ive got a few alternate loops i can play out

then i just record each pad into ableton, export as wav then put it in my maschine and chop everything up so i have the same pads as i did in the 404

then i i sequence it all out

i just dont really see the point in limiting myself when i know i can use those sounds to make a much better beat elsewhere

i make the envelope and pad settings the same as the 404 too so it keeps the sound

Lately, since I've been more focused on writing, I get most of my samples from beat battles, but once this album is finished I plan on getting back to my old beloved ritual of skating to one of the local thriftshops and picking up a record for a couple bucks, usually based on the cover art. Take it home, fire it up, and listen for samples. Its always a great feeling to find some good, bare drums on some obscure record. Whatever I find, I like to chop up the choice sounds, clean and usually short, and its all trial and error from there. Good question.

This is a pretty interesting thread. Usually i will start by finding a melodic sample i want to use, then chop some drums off a mixture of dj break records and world music drum records i keep out and ready. Record a few bars of drums into the sequencer, and then do a quick mixdown of the drums. Sample the sequence into the kp3 then sample back into the 404 with some effects. Then i put my drum loop on a pad in gate/loop and keep one or two individual hits. Then chop up the melodic material. Then i leave it on the sampler a while. Usually jam with whatever is on there daily and when i feel like ive tried all the arrngement possibilities ill record it live to tape.

On the 404, I sit down with some records and sample a bunch of phrases and single note/percussive sounds, then mess with their pitches on djlooper and find out which ones harmonize well with others. then resample everything into oblivion until i have a solid main part and transition (and maybe an extra melody to break the monotony once in a while).

90% of the time I do the drums very last, (unless jamming with somebody else) because to me it's much easier to match a drum sound to the main sample instead of the other way around. By the time I have all the musical parts together, I can hear in my head exactly what kind of drum sound I'm looking for, and if it ends up working the way I intended, there is some added confidence that I know where I'm going with it, and more likely to damn finish it!

Just rearranged my setup & split it in 2. Trialling a new approach for a potential gig or 2 later this year. Be warned, this is gonna get nerdy...

Basically my point here is that I know exactly what I want to do with each bit of gear & I know how to use it. Everything's got a place & a purpose.

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First half is the SP plus synths (Minibrute, SH-32 & Europa sequencer). Synths get sampled into the SP. Been building some basic tracks with them. When I've got a few nice 2 & 4 bar patterns I'll export the samples, clean them up in my laptop (Recycle).

Second half is ESX plus KP3 & mixer (a basic Soundcraft deal). KP3's running as a looper in the mixer's FX out & back into the board. So there's a total of 5 input channels used on the mixer (1x stereo channel + 3x mono channels). Samples from the first combo go into the ESX for jamming out.

The ESX has a few skeletal starts tracks arranged with no samples assigned. So on the fly I can arrange drums, drop in a melodic sample or two & play the ESX's fake wavetable synth. Once I feel a loop's done & it's time to alter the track, a channel or 2 gets sampled & looped in the KP3 while I start altering what I just made. Pretty confident with the results so far. With practice I'll be unstoppable.

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Before that I had a bit of a complex arrangement, but I loved it. Will def go back to this when it's time. Hope this makes sense.

Sampling phase
laptop (via USB) into SP
SH-32 (via headphone out) into SP
Minibrute into ESX
KP3 (as FX loop) into ESX
+ samples loaded via memory card into SP & ESX

Midi phase
SP out to ESX
ESX out to KP3
ESX thru to Europa
Europa out to SH-32
Europa thru to Minibrute

mixer phase
SH-32 (via L+R out) into mixer
SP into mixer
ESX into mixer (split over 4 channels- 1x stereo ganged channel & 2x individual mono channels)

Recording phase
mixer into compressor (DBX266xs) into maximiser (BBE 382i) into recorder (BR-600)
^once a song's multitracked into the BR, export to PC for rendering to a single sound file in Audacity. Been also meaning to try bouncing tracks out of the BR into my backup SP for shits & giggles.

This way I could control everything off the SP with start/stop messages & tempo lock. The laptop was simply for sample organising & Recycle. Pretty much everything I could imagine & want to do I could acheive with that set up. A bonus was all the blinking little lights when everything's turned on. When I put all that back together I'll snap a pic of it for the studio pics thread.

The Europa+SH-32 is beastly, with the Europa I can sequence 4 synth patches (or 3 + 1 drum set) in the SH-32. Or stack up patches for thick tones. It's like having an old copy of Fruity Loops in real life. Or a whole bunch of Analog 4s.

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Then there's the portable set up: OP-1 + DS-10 + ipod... But this post's long enough already.

*EDIT* Ahhh... Didn't mean to be a threadkiller with all that. Bugger.