Name: Beginner's guide to organising SP404-MK2 Projects!
Uploaded: 2025-03-18T09:54:32.000Z
Duration: 9 min 12 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

What is up guys and welcome to my latest video here on SPVids.

Today I am on the SP404 MKII and I wanted to get into the kind of organization of this device in terms of projects, in terms of making beats and I think this is really kind of aimed at beginner users of this device because I think this is quite a sort of confusing aspect of the device when you first pick it up.

It's a bit of a challenge to work out exactly how to organize things, what you should put where and how everything works on this device so that's what I want to go through today.

I really hope that it helps some of you out that are just getting hold of this device or maybe looking for a better workflow.

What I will just state before I start this video is that obviously these are kind of my interpretations, these are the ways that I see people using this device.

As we say here in the UK and maybe other countries as well, there are many ways to skin a cat which is a bit of a strange expression but it basically means there's lots of different ways to do the same thing on this device so if you've got your own methods and it works for you there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So what I want to start with in this video is showing you the three main ways that I would recommend you organize your beats and projects on this device and they kind of go up in terms of how many pads become available.

So to start off with and admittedly this is the main way which I do things, I tend to use one bank for one beat.

So here I'm inside a container of what is called a project and we have available 10 separate banks and they have 16 samples on each so we have access to 160 sample slots per project.

If I go into A here like you can see, this is going to be everything that I need for one beat.

So at the top here I've got some chops okay and then I've got some drums lower down here.

So I would use this 16 by 16 grid to gather everything that I need for a beat and then once that was done I would go to F for example and you can hear here I've got another set of chops, some drums as well and that's going to be another beat etc etc so on throughout all these banks in this particular project.

So that gives me a total of 10 beats per project and then I'll get into this a little bit later in more detail we have 16 projects so that gives me up to 160 beats on this machine at any one time.

So that is basically how I work, that is how you would probably get the most out of this device in terms of banks, sample spaces and beats.

I think that's the most efficient way to do it.

It's a little bit limiting in some respects but we'll get into that a little bit later in the video.

So the next method which you could do if you're someone that craves a little bit more space you want a little bit more storage for each beat.

A good way of approaching beat making on this device is per project using the bank pairs as a space for one beat so both A and F would be one beat, B and G, C and H, D and I, E and J.

So for example you might use A for all your sample chops so that gives you space for 16 sample chops and then you might switch to F and have all your drums in there as well so you could have four kicks, four snares, four hi-hats, some open hats, some effects, some one shots maybe.

So this is going to give you obviously double the space but half the beats per project so you're 32 sample slots but you're only going to get five beats per project using this method but that is just a way of expanding the way that you use the SP a little bit but it's still pretty organized because you've got one beat per button here at the top with the bank so that is the next step up I would say is to use these pairs or a single bank button per beat that'll give you a little bit more space.

Now the final way that you can do this is by using projects.

Now shift and subpad will get you to project you can see here it says underneath.

If you press that you get access to 16 projects as I mentioned earlier.

If you're someone that likes using a lot of samples and likes being very organized with things you could go ahead and use one project per beat.

So what that would do say if I went into seven and it was completely blank that would give me the full 160 spots for every single beat.

Now I think this is a little bit overkill I never really need that much that's why I tend to stick to the one bank per beat formula but that is an option you don't have to use all the samples in each project obviously but putting each individual beat in a project is going to make things very organized on this device.

The only thing I would say with this is that obviously you're only going to get 16 beats on the entire device at any one time so it's a little bit limiting in that respect and like I said it might be a bit overkill but yeah it'll give you a hell of a lot of sample slots to be able to make a beat with.

So if you're someone that likes using a lot of intricate different samples and different percussive hits and things like that then maybe that would be the way to go for you.

And then inside those projects you know you could really organize things you could have one bank for just kicks you could have one for just snares one for just hi-hats you could have one for chops or maybe two for chops you could have one for effects and one shots and things like that.

So working in that way having one beat per project is a good way to go if that's the way you want to do things.

So I think really that's the three main ways that you can kind of approach beat making on this device in terms of the organization side of things and I wanted to get a little bit more detailed about how I lay out individual things in the way that I work.

So you can see here on this bank it's not great under my studio lights but I've got my chops at the top here and I tend to only have about eight chops when I make a beat.

That's usually enough to get an idea down and then I have a free row across the bottom here which I can put in one shots, effects, stabs, things like that and then along the bottom I usually have my drums.

So 13 is always my kick, 14 always my snare and 15 always my hi-hat.

You might be able to see that that's why these three pads at the bottom here are the most warm because I'm constantly drumming on those.

So per bank I'll lay my beats out in exactly the same way as I showed you before.

Got some chops there, some drums and then moving into F.

I've got another idea there, some more drums and so on.

I'll go through all the banks and make a beat on each one and then when that's full I'll move to a completely new project and be able to do that all over again.

Now there's a few more things off the back of this which means that it works pretty well.

So if I go back to A and then go to shift and 8 which is mute groups, you can see that on A I have the sample chops from A so I use the specific mute group for the bank that I'm working in.

That keeps things nice and organized, it makes them really easy to find.

So you can see there they're all flashing.

If I come out of here and go to F and I go to shift and mute groups I'm going to go across and scroll to F and all the samples for that are in that mute group.

So that makes it very very easy and organized when it comes to my mute groups.

And just a final note as well, this works really well with patterns.

So if I want to make some patterns for this beat I'll go ahead and go into pattern select and it's no surprise here that A, this is obviously completely by design, they're the patterns for the samples that I have in bank A.

So when you hit pattern select you move into an area where you're saving patterns and not samples and I just think it's really good to keep these kind of married up.

So I want to use only the samples from bank A in the patterns in bank A.

It just makes things a lot more easy to understand and if you start doing patterns in different banks than the samples are in it's going to get really confusing very quickly.

So that's another way that I'm keeping things very organized with my way of working.

I'm keeping things all in the same banks so that I know everything in bank A, the mute groups are going to be in bank A, the patterns are going to be in pattern bank A etc etc.

All nice and organized and that works pretty well for me.

In the past I have done the idea of doing 16 sample chops and then having the drums in the second partnering bank and that's worked very well for me as well so I would highly recommend that method too.

But yeah essentially that's how I work with the SP and that gives me the most bang for my buck in terms of project space and sample space.

I'm able to put a hell of a lot of beat ideas into this machine using this one bank per beat method that I use.

It's entirely up to you how you use this obviously I'm just putting my ideas out there and my concepts out there to try and help you guys find the right one for you.

So definitely experiment with those ideas and figure out which one is the most sort of simple and easy for you to understand as an individual.

So I hope that helps guys that's just a little bit of information about organizing things on the SP.

That's my main method of doing it and I mentioned some of the other methods as well.

Like I say leave it in the comments below if you've got your own way of doing things and you think it's an improvement to any of this I'd love to hear that.

Don't forget to check out all links in the description with my drum packs and merch etc that really helps me to keep the channel funded here and keep me making these videos.

Big shout out to my members that support me monthly and I will be back with another video very very soon.