a the pitch function is garbage but there are MANY MANY workarounds for usable but maybe not perfect pitch functions.. i think thats one of the harder things for me to get past compared to other gear ive worked on... time stretching isnt awesome but you can work with it... this topic is ALL OVER the board if you want more youll have to search it out..
b what he does making his voice go to the pad going "test test sp 404sx test test" is sampling... and thats what the 404 does... connect your turntable press play find the spot you want back it up hit record press play press record to stop.. its easy JUST like he did there... OLBY has a good video of this on this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIKpNJM2sA4 the process is the same on the 404.. its not a stupid question but you should research gear more before you buy so you kind of have an idea of what stuff does.. i didnt like the 404 for my first piece of gear.. i got an esx and love it and came back to the 404 and like it more the second time around..
b2 truncating is trimming the sound.. if its a LONG or longish sample i HATE trimming and digging in to find the right spots.. its a lot easier to sample out to a ton of pads and do clean up later than it is for me to sample a long sample to one pad then keep copying and pasting it on to other pads.. (the longer the sample the longer the load time).. then again if you resample rather than pad copy (awesome SX function) it would be faster... you use the MARK button to do the trim.. the sample is 123456 and you only want to keep 2345 so you play the sample and hit the mark right at the end of 1 and right at the end of 4.. you can then hit START/END/LEVEL and use knobs cntrl 1 and 2 to adjust the start and end points.. i like turning on the loop mode so i can hear when the sample starts to loop perfect with no gaps...
c yea the swing is similar.. i havent messed with the settings but it has a 8th and 16th notes setting with swing adjustment.. you set the adjustment before you play (it wont adjust an already recorded pattern from what i can tell).. i like the way the swing works but i havent adjusted it much at this point..
d in the sequencer you can play live with no quantize and turn the metronome down or off... you can also do this in resample mode but the metronome wont turn on unless youre working in the pattern sequencer.. it also doesnt let you resample in bars you just play till you want to stop or till the memory card is full.. saying you wanna play without quantize like dilla is like saying i wanna have style, just like the guy sitting next to me.. theres bad beats with and without quantizing.. finding your own sound to me is more important than using any one specific technique.. i use quantize in some stuff and not in others i use it for some sounds and not for others in the same beats....
its a simple yet extremely complex machine... its simple to get some basic boring stuff out but i honestly think the 404 has a steep learning curve.. the sx is a bit easier to work with because of both pattern copy and pad copy but its still harder for me to get stuff how i like it..
nevermind Tim, it's valuable info and will help others out as well
