sensible ways to compose

I know it all comes down to a matter of personal preference and trying all the options available but I'm wondering what people's choices are regarding composing on the mpc1000 for live situations or when you are just at home having fun writing music vs tracking it out.

1. There's song mode where you chain sequences
2. You could sequence an entire song on one long sequence by adding many bars and play a keyboard or sing over it (then use song mode to lay out the order of songs for the show)
3. There's sequence to pad (vs next sequence with the scroll wheel)
4. There's pad track muting - an archaic way but works well if you know what all the pads are mapped to
5. others I have missed

I have only seen the mpc1000 in action a couple times, once at a Why? show and it looked like he was just hitting pads to play some background sound/accompaniment.

Probably a rudimentary question that comes up often and if you don't want to divulge your mind-blowing secrets then you don't have to.

also, there's using a live looper like ableton or a hardware looper and playing pads in realtime.
at home, i build sequence by sequence and then finally convert the song to a single sequence

a good way to shake off some writers block is to compose a beat or melody/chord change on top of something prexisting such as a sample from a song you have been listening to at the moment.. make a perfect loop lets say four bars in 4/4 at 90bpm, compose a beat on top of your sample that grooves with the sample perfectly, then the challenge is to see if you can come up with your own arrangemet to the "feel of the groove" you just created for your sample.. when you have created a solid bed(i.e. a melody or bassline to go with your beat), erase the original sample and just play around with your new sequence until youve created something worthy of your listening pleasure. this will not only improve your arranging chops but also your sense of timing hitting the pads.. also its pretty fun.