I got a maschine. it's all I use with my lpk25. for me I started the same. I think everybody does. everything sounds a little robotic at first. even if the beat is nasty it can sound too simple. I like to fukk with everything. reverb, beat delay. if I come up with a sick melody. i'll switch to a different channel and try to flip something else out of my sample. and keep doing it. I might have 5-6 different melodies. then I come up with ways how I can blend em in with eachother in an organic way.
for me. I come up with my drum loop first before anything. I might use the BPM from the original sample or just do it manually myself and adjust it later. it's usually a very simple loop. kick, snare, hi hat. for me, it's just a guide. something I can use to see how my chops are coming together. i'll make one chop, keep going. make another one. I usually make 3, then I will start my drum loop and play the chops on the pads and see how it sounds. if they blend in nicely with eachother. if one note sounds out of place. I'll just keep it moving and find another one. after every single chop I make I play em on the pads over my drum loop to see if they sound right together. If I find a sick piece that doesn't fit well but I know it can be used elswhere...maybe for a nasty beat switch...I'll put it another group. and I keep doing that. maybe piano keys. small voice samples. guitar riffs. anything that sounds good. i'll try to save em to a different group. that way I can add little things here and there throughout my beat and keep it fresh. I also fukk with the pitch a million times while i'm choppin my shyt. sometimes you can come across a fukkin gem with a simple turn of the pitch knob.
I like to chop my shyt that way because before I would just start choppin all kinds of shyt. I would chop a sample into 70 different pieces. then after i'm done I might use 7 of them chops to make my beat. thats why I like to make my beat as I go along in my choppin. improved my workflow greatly. not exactly a huge pointer...I think a lot of people work like this. but fukk it.
also...sometimes keeping it simple is the best way to go. once you start over thinking shyt, and trying to add all types of shyt over your beat, it takes away from your main melody. it's too fukkin much and just starts to sound like a bunch of noise. if you find yourself spending too much time on one beat move to something else. chop another sample. come back to it later and most likely you'll hear something else you didn't before. that's my 2 cents on the shyt.
