What up everybody at SP-forums!


I got my sp-404 this week and have already been making some beats (and pretty impressed of its beat making/effects capabilities) However while using the sp 404 I have noticed that when I replaced the internal presets with my own EQ'ed drums, it replaced the preset drums (padbanks A/B) on the beat I made saved on a pad bank.

My only real worry about this is if I erase the pad banks from A/B with the drums used for the pattern, will my drums be intact on the pattern saved onto the card? or will it erase the drums I put on the beat in the pattern?

If thats the case, should I keep my drum kit onto the card and just use the A/B banks for resampling or editing space or just keep the drum kit on the internal banks?

hey man, welcome aboard

the Patterns you save only remember which pads (and the order) were hit, so in that sense they are quite separate from the actual samples saved to those pads


if you delete the samples, the pattern still remains
re-record different samples and they will play back in the same sequence
(so if you replace a kick drum with another kick drum , etc etc the groove will remain but the individual drum sounds will have changed tone)

i think this is what you are asking but i am not sure
hope that helps, ask more questions if i have missed your point

So if I delete the drum samples from the internal memory, the drums will still be on the patterns saved onto the cf card? (I guess thats my actual question haha)

no
the drum samples and pattern sequences are totally separate
same for card and internal memory


the pattern sequence that is saved references only the pad positions, not the actual sample saved to the pad

so if you delete the drums in Banks A/B, those sounds won't be saved anywhere despite still having patterns using those sounds

hope that makes sense

ok that makes more sense now

damn I guess I might just save specific drums for specific projects on the card then