hey i know how dumb ur gonna think i am, but i'm probably the biggest newbie on the site. the question is, is there anywhere where i can learn how to get good at the sp-404 in general from literally the bottom and up. i got my sp-404 back in february and have just been slacking off with it since and now i think its time to get serious with production.

yeah, all you need to do is just do it. fill up your 404 with drum breaks or 2-second motown bits or horns or whatever and make music. there's really nothing more to be said besides "go make music."

one of the first things i did when i got reason in '03 was to try and recreate 'ny state of mind' using the stock sounds in there. of course failed pretty bad but trying to recreate some of your favorite tracks will show you what elements are needed. if you're really super noob then try chopping a kick, snare & hat from a record and making you're own pattern w it...

Read the manual. I know its been said too many times, but there are so many combo moves like Mortal Kombat for commands that aren't intuitive. Like truncate is "delete, mark, delete". What? How would you just know that? You wouldn't. The more you screw around and get good with the combo commands, the better you will be because your workflow will get fast as hell.

Watch youtube videos on how to chop samples and practice it over and over. I can chop samples like a mofo now without even thinking.

^^What he said, if you want to get good at using any machine then the manual is the first place to start, read it cover to cover, then read it again and keep it next to you when you're working.

Learn about all the different building blocks of a basic beat, and depending on what kind of music you want to make start at the bottom and work your way up, don't expect to be making crazy tracks when you're only a beginner. You want to make Hip Hop? Listen to some old boom bap, most of it is really stripped down and easy to analyse, you've got the percussion which almost always goes boom-boom-bap-boom-boom-bap, a simple bassline which can consist of just one or two notes if you want it to, and a melody made up of a simple loop or a few horn stabs or whatever. Once you've got that figured out you can try making your own, if you don't have much source material check out websites like freesound.org, or sample off youtube, there's a lot of good stuff on there.

THANKS

one thing i tried doing was remaking the beat of "any man" by eminem, which was prod. by da beatminerz. i sampled it here: http://www.whosampled.com/sample/view/1 ... 0Paradise/

i tried editing the beat by changing notes on the chromatic ps effect and it still didn't sound right.

The chromatic effect, as with pretty much everything on the 404, is pretty quirky. A lot of the effects don't really do what they people expect them to. Coming from MPC Land I found this extremely frustrating for the first few weeks but the payoff comes when you figure out how/when to use them and your beats start sounding completely different to everyone elses.

If you're interested in reproducing beats as a means of learning I would say start simple, some of Premier's early stuff might be good to look at. Alternatively, CREAM. The main sample is of course the intro from As Long As I've Got You but I bet you could find a different piano loop to use pretty easily. Just do some research on what kind of sounds you're looking for, then go out and find it. Like I said, you can find pretty much anything on youtube if you don't have anywhere to buy records.