haha thanks but, i was unaware how many people actually post there when i first started and made an ass of myself

made up for it with some ableton tutorials

and i try to steer every hardware thread there towards roland sp's

haha what did you do lol?

don't ever bring up piracy.

I just don't use quantize on some of the sounds and use velocity to give me the swing. I always try to get a more cohesive live swing/sound out of my drums. Basically I just experiment until it starts sounding right. No real method.

pardon my bumpy, but i didnt want to just start a new thread.

i'm sorta sick of my drums not being well, good. do you guys have a set of drums you use again and again or what? i hate having pads taken up by drums on the 404 so i usually just sample whatever i can find, but that's not really cutting it. i'll even admit most of the time i don't lay the drums down in the 404. anyway, i don't know what i'm getting at here...uhh....oh yeah, how would you guys recommend learning and doing more interesting rhythms?

^ actively break your habits

if you always do hats first - don't
try putting snares somewhere other than 2 and 4
listen to your tune, and match the rhythm to it

fight the patterns you're used to doing. lay really quiet snares under some softer kicks. go nuts !

Same here, except I probably have more like hundred(s) and not thousands of samples, but this is the way to go.

The tweaking of your samples, also to dirty them up, usually happens after I've decided what kind of beat it's going to be. Most of my samples are therefore pretty clean, depending a bit on the source.

People shouldn't sleep on all the layering of multiple samples (!!!), FX, EQ tricks and all that though, there's so much you can do. Using just one sample, I've already made like a dozen different tracks and while you might recognize them as being brothers or sister samples, they are different enough to not pop out as being the same deal.

Layer, add FX, change up using EQ, do the Mastering... your beats will be phat!