Hi there,
I bought a 404SX the other week and I am amazed with all the possibilites in making music on a sampler. Not very good at it yet, but this forum has already turned out to be a goldmine. So I'm a busy student.

Anyway, I hear a lot of cool, inspiring hiphop-beats here. Just curious if there is any classic singer/songwriters like me, playing guitar that has made the SP a piece of either the songwriting process or arrangement/production?

For now, I'm just happy playing around and learning the box. But I'm a bit unsure if the SP as a tool will be best at getting my written songs recorded and produced, or rather if I should let it take my songwriting where I wouldn't go on the guitar.

Not that I couldn't do both.

Just interested to hear what others are doing/thinking.

Cheers/C


EDIT: Sorry, forgive a newbie. I intended to post in Freedom of speech.

You can def. arrange full songs and other stuff that's not beat oriented music.
The main thing with the sp's is getting creative with your workflow and just trying dif. ways to build your song.

You can record your whole song in one take on one pad. Or you could record in parts and set them on dif pads. Or you could record and sample each note on separate pads and play them on your sp. Or you could use a separate program to record stuff and then sample that into your sp and add fx. Or you could sample each part in the Sp then send it out to another program and then send it back for fx and then send it out again to mix and master and then send it back to the sp for more fx. Or you could use the pattern seq. Or you could resample. OOORRR you could....

get my point? It's a simple machine that can make any type of music you want with no single way of doing so.

...for what it's Worth...
...personally i have (had?) a weird project equally and strangely influenced by Boards of Canada, Tom Waits, The Fall, italian folk and cLOUDDEAD called ill piccolo canzoniere...
https://myspace.com/illpiccolocanzoniere
pay attention, i didnt upgrade songs since 2009...

hi new here also, in fact 1st post but yes am hoping to record my acoustic playing via and old ribbon mic straight in to 404, chop and get some looped sections to mix and match and play over to develop with a folk flavour, i have just transferred some 4 and 2 bar sections of an old tune i did to the OG 404 and pretty soon i had an ambient loop that was so far from what i started with and a new starting point for something new..
but i was drawn to the unit as you can use it in so many ways, even a straight 4 track recorder i guess..
i do have some confusion with sample loading a si seems to load every sample on the card but once i get that little work around figured out..maybe just choose last pad?
and best bit is most serious types label it a toy or so it seems, i guess they say that because its fun, maybe it shouldn't be fun i spose
*edit* couldn't see a way to play (monitor what you played last) the previous pad while sample new loop from mic input?
ok back to manual then
JJ

Hi Andy,
Thanks for your reply! Yes, lots of possibilities - in fact almost overwhelming! So, I just figured it'd be interesting to hear what other guitarplayers/singers do. The weakness in my homestudio setup has always been getting drums recorded. So, using the SP for that is one part of my plan. Other ideas include recording a fingerpicked folk song, chopping it up and playing it from the pads. Making my own samples from playing instruments etc.

I have Ableton as a DAW, cassette 4-track, tube amps, guitar pedals etc.
So really, the possibilities are endless. Cheers/C

Hi there,
Sounds interesting! I'm a big fan of Tom Waits and recently started listening to BoC.

Digger65 - ribbon mics are cool. Do you get a strong enough signal going straight to the SP or do you use a preamp/mixer inbetween.

I like the idea of having loops of old songs leading up to new starting points for new projects.

/C

thanks
where is possible to hear your music?

http://farnesworth.bandcamp.com/

lil soul in farnesworth haha

I have been bouncing the idea to cover a few folky songs with my 202 and Moog Satellite

I'm not a singer/songwriter though

Well, I haven't put out any new music in recent years. So my style and chops have both changed and improved since then, I hope. But here are some livingroom recordings from 2003
https://soundcloud.com/unpop1/sets/shad ... der-inside

@janglesoul
hey that is fine folk music!
@ritchrd
i like this weird lofi folk sounds, i checked also another one album, it is cool. thos sounds remember me 90s bands like Mule and Country Teasers...this crooked evil folk/blues ...

Thanks, glad you like it. These days I try to do some kind of acoustic soul in the vein of Bill Withers, Terry Callier or Michael Kiwanuka. But what turned me into buying a sampler was people like Bibio, James Blake, the XX - well in fact just realizing how much great music that relies on samplers. I just wasn't aware of it, til last month.

Lofi certainly has its charm! Freeing yourself from perfection and just embracing creativity is liberating.

wow, that sounds great

Let's hope it will! Took a listen to some stuff on your Bandcamp site. Cool! It's still a mystery to me how you blend all these magical sounds together. I guess I just have to start chopping and get my feet wet.

well, it took a mistery to me too!
i think it's just practice and ears, i don't even know musical notes