Woah I haven't made a post in a while I keep finding myself working within the confines of the SP, even with all the pro toolery I have in my disposal.
I have reason and recycle but its a little "too Much"
*too much - http://www.djshadow.com/news/article/111
he explains the confine theory

"Compositionally, the inherent limitations of the MPC force you to stay grounded to the feel of the track rather than tinker endlessly with plug-ins and the like, and I find that having boundaries does tend to produce faster results."
How I use my SP with computer. I have a laptop computer and some "questionable" programs,

Editing
I will just ring it through recycle and use the preview while recording onto to the SP,

THis lets me quickly put fx while recording to the sp, while having the visual editing ability, ohh also I dont have to put the flash card, and go through all that other shit. Quicker people.

If you have WINAMP, is the shit for this especially since it has ways to slow the pitch and everything, also it is the only program I found that you can use the arrows button on you keyboard to move back 5 seconds,(RECORD ON SP GET IT.)

Pro TOols MIDI
I am not gonna explain the "connection" shit search it, pretty easy. Your going to need a MIDI keyboard or Drum Pad, I have an MPK 49 and if you want pm me I have made a Vyzx preset for it.

Well use pro tools and open an instrumental/midi track on the instrument tab to the left, bring it down to the correspodning midi channel. Now instead of recording on the SP and being stuck with 7 quantization you have the more variable quantization options of your DAW.
Pro Tools - just keep it a certain length usually 2 bars like sp and keep midi merge on and have it on "Normal Record" and "loop Playback" it is easier to edit. Than pattering copy or duplicating

and instead of "look up youtube sp404 pattern copy,

or

click on "My Computer" and open removable drive that appears when you insert cf card into your card reader.

2) then open ROLAND folder and there will be all your pattern files currently saved on cf card (in the root of ROLAND folder). they are named like this: DCOPTN[pattern_number].BIN.

this is real simple. if you record your pattern to BANK C pad number 1 then the pattern file should be named like this - DCOPTN024.BIN because it is 24th pattern in SP.

(Note: Patterns from 0 to 24 are stored in SP's internal memory so you don't have access to them.)

3) so if you want to copy pattern 1 from bank C to pattern 2 bank c. simply copy DCOPTN024.BIN and rename it to DCOPTN025.BIN so when you start 404 if everything was done correctly it should appear next to the first pattern.

real simple. just remember that pattern numbering goes like this:

BANK C: Patterns 24-35
BANK D: Patterns 36-47
BANK E: Patterns 48-59
BANK F: Patterns 60-71
BANK G: Patterns 72-83
BANK H: Patterns 84-95
BANK I: Patterns 96-107
BANK J: Patterns 108-119

so as you can see players can have up to 96 patterns stored on SP's cf card.

(another example. pattern 1 and pattern 2 in bank G are named like this: DCOPTN072.BIN and DCOPTN073.BIN.)


Quantization with you DAW and SP
I will sometimes separate the different instrumental/midi tracks for one sample pad each ie kick, snare, hat. or just do the whole beat in one channel than separate all the individual MIDI message ie, kick is one snare other, Than just adjust the Quant options via event operation in pro tool, this is really "Drum Programming."

You can also be more precise by putting gate on the sp.

Anyway I use the SP like a battery or a reason, it shows me the approx bpm, it doesn't stall like many plugins,

Also which is cool I can just record a pattern on the sp itself, I can play the notes during Erase in making a pattern instead of rehearsing, so i can rehearse while erasing. also the volume sensitivity of your accompanying drum pad.

You can also sync tempo with your DAW.

Damn dude i took a while making this post, i wish i had this post when I just got DA 404, I keep missing arena battles. ANyway if people can make posts to use 404 in other programs let me know.