http://www.techtv.com/audiofile/sto...3308290,00.html
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^seriously... my first 3 days... i didn't have a clue on the correct way to do until i watched those 2 videos... on that site...
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its best to record one pad to a track at time.. unless your doing something like two or more pad variations of the same kick... or unless your doing some melody stuff with chopped samples...
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i woulnt' recommend tapping the kick and snare on the same track... it wouldn't be good if you took it to a mastering engineer like that....
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i feel you on the two hands thing... this is what i do... one hand hits the kick pad... while the other taps a metal part of the mpc covering(basically that hand is pretending to tap the snare)... like that metal space area close to the circular data wheel... or i'll tap close to the akai....

^^^i do that a lot on slight complex patterns where i put my rhythmic soul into the beat... and iam usually dancing... while tapping that shit out....lol
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decay on the sequence... iam not fully understanding what you mean... do you mean like a fading effect ....

example.....

at 1:13 of this http://www.xkwest.com/xbeatm3us/kiss_me_xkwest.m3u

that's nothing more than decreasing the velocity.... basically i just turned the 16levels for velocity on... on the last bar i just tapped pads 16 then 12, then 8, then pad 4...

^there's other ways to do it.. but iam most comfortable doing it this way...