Pitching/Tuning Samples

Hi Folks,

So I'm still pretty new to the whole production thing. I've messed around with my 500 for a few years and made a handful of beats, but one thing I'm really struggling with is taking samples from various different sources and pitching/tuning them to sound "right" when chopped up and played together in the same beat. Do you guys have any tips/tricks on how to do this - What should I learn/understand to make this easier? Do I just go by ear and use the "pitch" feature to go up and down until things sound nice? I think that timestretching also somehow comes into play here? Again, I'm pretty new and just don't know a lot about the specific concepts that I see thrown around on this forum. Specifically, I usually start with a chopped up piano sample that I'll loop with some drums, then I'll want to add strings or a sax or something else overtop. Thanks so much in advance, any help is greatly appreciated!

I bought one of these for the purpose of determining the pitch of my samples but I still end up using my ears more than anything.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ ... Ap9R8P8HAQ

yep, you pretty much need to use your ears if you don't have enough musical training to know what is "right"

sometimes i use a frequency spectrogram app on my phone to tune samples, it helps when i'm feeling confused, because i know more about the physics of sound than i do about musical theory. but in the end you really do need to trust your ears.

lots of fantastic music is out of key and off beat anyway.
musical "correctness" is secondary to sounding dope.