Let's share some knowledge!


Post every tip you have, even if you've posted it before (we collect, yay!).


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Easy SubSonic Basslines:
If you use a simple loop sample, you can create a bassline on the fly without doing ish.
First get your beat ready.
Take the 'main' sample and apply the subsonic effect to it.
Turn the the CTRL3 knob all the way to the right. Then adjust the pitch of your bass with the CTRL1 knob.
Now here comes the magic:
Use the CTRL2 knob and adjust the threshold. The more you turn it to the
left the more often the bass will hit and vice versa.
When you have what you wanted resample it, take the effect off and play the bass at the same time as your 'main' sample.
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Turn one clap into a lot of claps:
If you have a single hand clap sample, apply the chromatic PS effect.
Play with the knobs and you will see that you now have more than one clap.
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Give a weak clap some power:
Apply the Distortion effect to a clap. It will boost any weak clap and
make it sound like a hard knocking snare-clap.









Help me to fill this list!

to precisely place chopps like step edit.

-sample a couple seconds of silence before your sample.
-then trim out the silence.
-then intentionally hit the pad a little too early in the sequence.
-then trim the desired amount of silence back in to move the sample foward.

Don't listen to people complaining about the 303/404 sequencer If you just bought an sp-404. It takes a while to get your head around it, perseverance does pay of.

You will not become Madlib overnight (if that is what you want ) unless you bought the Madlib expansion pack.

Practice.

Read the manual, it's not much but it really helps.

Ditch the crappy copyrighted factory sounds that come with the sp-404, they suck and are everything but inspiring.

It is wiser to buy a batch of 128Mb cf cards than one big 1Gb cf card,

Did I mention practice?

You are reading this thread, that means that you found the prime source for sp-404 info on the net, wade through all the threads, a lot of classic questions have been answered before.

Let's not bitch about how Roland should make a new os that gives your 404 extra functionalities, like making coffee, rolling spliffs and giving head. It won't happen, you knew what the machine was capable of b4 you bought it, now get on with it, and go make some ill beats.

I totally disagree.

Anyway, this thread is supposed to be about 'real tricks'. Stuff about effects
and workarounds.

A 128 MB card can contain exactly the same amount of samples as a 1 gig card, the only difference s that the samples can't be as big, then again 128 Mb bytes of sample time gives you plenty of sample time per sample and cost only a fraction of what a 1gig card costs. Hence my tip but since it was not good enough as a tip I'll leave your thread.

No offence man, but your tips arent really workarounds or "tricks" for that matter. I mean like what else is the sub effect for besides beefing up the bass in a sample? same with the distortion tip, isnt the purpose of a distortion effect to boost a signal, dirty it up and make it "hard knocking"?

plus, isnt the whole purpose of this part of the forum to provide "SP-404 Tips 'n Tricks"?

mostblunted - calm down man, this forum's refreshing due to the lack of fascism. let's leave the negativity out. i found everyone's tips worth reading

If you do want 128MB cards - get em quick!
I saw on Amazon Fuji 128 CF cards for next to nothing a piece.
Most dealers have stopped stocking less than 512MB cards. This time next year you may find 1GB cards hard to get!

ps - thats a tip not a trick.


Jim

You got that wrong man, I'm not mad at all! I think I just have issues to say what I mean 'cause english ain't my mothertongue.

Anyway, what I meant with the 'I disagree' is, that it really depends on what you do as an artist. 128 mb cards are great to sort and stuff, but I'm what you might wanna' call a 'loop-digger' I sometimes take 8 bar loops. Then I have 3 projects and my 128 mb card is full. I just love the huge ram and storage (that's the reason I bought the joint).

And what I mean by tips and tricks is, with my mpc60, I never had any effects. So when I say 'tips', I mean tips how and on what to use the filters.

Thanks to all of you though.

one of the more galling ommisions of my beloved 404 is the inability to fast forward through long samples. this might be common knowledge but i figured out a way to get around this if you're willing to deal with some minor degradation.

1. put the sample on reverse
2. resample however much you want to another pad
3. play the resampled pad back in reverse

voila!

p3tr, don't take away my dream of a 404 that gives head... btw i agree with you about using smaller cards, especially making hip hop. i bought a 1G and it's cool to have 6 hrs of time but with all my pads full i still usually have like 4 hrs left, which is a waste. i guess it depends what you're doing but since you can't fast forward through your samples having them super long is a pain in the ass.

ah, sorry man. misunderstood your intentions. your English seems good though, nuff respect.



now this tip isn't mine (i think Juxt posted it here recently) but it fits in with the current discussion of card storage:

load a bunch of drum hits in a row onto a pad, ie record a bunch of kicks with a second or so of silence between them on one pad, a bunch of snares on another pad, etc
then Trim the startpoint of that pad to the sound you currently want to use

like i said, not my original tip but when i read it i thought it was genius.
it works well, because if you're not digging the snare you started with, you can quickly Trim it to a different sound to see if it works better

You can of course also do a simple pad exchange if you want to try out different samples in an existing pattern.

1.remember that you can sample from anything thats got a line out..that includes DVD's, TV's, CD's, Mp3's, Computers, Old school toys like Speak N spell, keyboards and other instruments, plus much more!

2.when recording to a multitracker as a 2 track stereo file, using a mixer can help you with panning esp when you mute the drums, making the samples move from left to right at the start of the track, which can be interesting.

3. combine all sorts of drum samples and bit rates of drums together in patterns. i.e use lofi snares with a high quality kicks or bass drums. you can also layer your drums so they sound different even if you have a limited amount of drum samples.

4. To make complicated drum patterns, you can re-program drum loops by first sampling it to your sp404 adding efx and so on, then exporting it as a wav and loading it up on recycle. Once in recylce you can export it as a rex file once you've created your slices and put in the correct bpm of the loop. Next, you can load it up in a program like Reason and re-program the drums using dr rex or redrum. Once you've finished you can then record the loop/s into your sp404 dry or with some more efx. And then you can record your musical sampes over the top in the pattern sequencer

This might seem obvious,but for off time drums leave some air space for your snares or other drums.Now set the mark point so theres no air and when you make your pattern use the quantize!now go back and set your mark point so theres a little space before your drum hits.

Heres on I love. Record ne thing with the mic and then add the subsonic effect. Set it at the highest pitch and turn ctrl3 (I think) all the way to the right to completely replace the sound with the sine wave. You now have a raw sine wave that can mangled in different ways using FX...effectively turning your 404 into a synth. To get different note out of it I think the chromatic PS works best.