Just got an sp808 looking for tips and worflow advice

[Rhinox evil]

Hello every one. I just acquired an sp808 so I'm looking to get some direction. What's your preferred way of constructing your track? When do you add effects for what? Whatre your favourite effects? How do you chop samples? That's a big one I've seen like 5 different methods so far. Which record works best and why. What are some cool tricks that seem 808 specific?

[TGN]

Hello Rhinox,

welcome to the forum. A classic way of using the sp-808 will be matching recorded loops in pitch and bpm/timestretch and then recording a track into the multitrack sequencer. But the sp-808 is a very versatile machine and you can do a lot more stuff with it. Check out the sp-808 Tipps and Tricks section here. A good starter guide is this one: https://sp-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=21688

[Danswift]

Resample...resample..resample...

If you're unfamiliar with the workflow of any SP, the best thing you can do is absorb yourself in the manual...and especially with the SP 808 as it's a different beast to the other samplers in the series.

Editing your chops is a piece of cake...you can set start and end points of a sample incrementally, unlike other SP's.

You also have Vari Pitch control which makes sample pitching and BPM's easy to match...the Vari Pitch also uses increments for this function.

Effects are killer ..again ,vastly superior to other SP's in the series in how these effects can be controlled using the onboard FX parameters.
You can also create your own custom patches...I've just created a Vinyl Sim FX for example that's as good if not better than the SP 303's and the OG SP 404 's in my opinion.

Obviously I'm not sure what your history of sampling is.
If you're a novice you'll need to take a deep dive with the SP-808.
I can't stress enough that you really will need to absorb the manual as much as possible if you're new to this ..and as @TGN mentioned above check out the tips and tricks section here on the forum.

Here's the Instructional video that came with the sampler on its original release which you may find helpful ,it's around 2 hours in length and very informative .

https://youtu.be/L_k29lu8N2I

Welcome to the site Rhinox.

[TGN]

I've just created a Vinyl Sim FX for example that's as good if not better than the SP 303's and the OG SP 404 's in my opinion.

Wow Danswift, would you tell how you've done that? Wanted to create a vinyl sim myself sometime, but did not manage to find a comp + vinyl sim chain...

[Danswift]

I've just created a Vinyl Sim FX for example that's as good if not better than the SP 303's and the OG SP 404 's in my opinion.

Wow Danswift, would you tell how you've done that? Wanted to create a vinyl sim myself sometime, but did not manage to find a comp + vinyl sim chain...

It's a work in progress...Ive actually discovered how to do this accidentally by initially combining 2 separate EFX I never would have thought of using, then really tweaking the parameters.

It certainly took me by surprise...the first thing I thought was Whoa! ..this definitely sounds a lot like the vinyl sim from the 404 but with more options to really manipulate the effect with the extra parameters on the 808.

Its sounding very dope but needs just a little more refinement..I did however show this to another member of the forum pretty recently who was very impressed..even though they've been sworn to secrecy and who doesn't actually own the SP 808.

It's something I may choose to reveal a little later down the line ..so keep your eyes and ears open hehe! ..

[SP-USER]

I think I know what Danswift is referring to regards the extra parameters, but I had no idea you could combine more than one EFX (unless he means within a preset algorithm or by resampling).

Very powerful piece of kit for sure, and the effects are professionally oriented. I don't think the overall sound and effect quality is better than the SP-404 though. I think the SP-404 (OG, SX, A) are the best-sounding SPs out there (possibly the SP-555 too which I believe is the same in that regard).

My biggest SP-808 tip is to learn how to customise the effects, and to bear in mind that although your custom effects are saved to disk and not flash, you can copy them between disks, so you can even build-up a library of custom effects to pull from at any time, to bring over to your current music project.

Anyway, enjoy that beast bro, and don't let any initial frustration deter you!

[Rhinox evil]

I've noticed my chops aren't saving do I need to resample them to save ?

[Danswift]

When you eject the Zip Disk you'll see a screen message reading 'Save Current Song Overwrite Only?'

You then need to press the Enter/Yes switch in order to save your progress.

The screen message will then read 'Saving ..Keep Power On '

It'll take a few moments then it's saved and done .

Don't ever leave any disk in the drive with the sampler turned off as this will corrupt the disk and seriously fuck up the drive basically.