Creating LIFE:

Good things are often simple...

Sometimes you nail a beat in 5 minutes, but out of habit you keep messing with it for hours. Then your turn off a couple of tracks and go back to the original beat and it's still better. I have this all the time, and these are ussually the tracks i'm happy with.
If you need 24 tracks for a hiphop beat something's wrong. If you need 2 hours just to get a loop to sound right, it wasn't a very good loop in the first place was it? If you spend 4 hours making that synthpatch sound "right" you probably picked the wrong sound (or synth).

I usually start with sample. I listen thru a couple lps and record the usefull shiet to my pc. Now I have like 3 or 4 nice sounds and I'm ready to recycle them -> I flip those loops to my own and make it sound good. Next I do the drumseq and then bassline.
I allways add few instruments playin them myself.
I finalize my beat takin all the shit to my pc from mpc and mix it with cool edit pro.
Voila

Edit: hahah I went offtopic. So.... I never shut down my mpc and pc-softs before listening the beat again later. if it sounds empty or lame I can continue with it.

Yo i been telling my boys this ish all the time that's why i make fast beats
cause it's like you be making a track for 2hours and then it just goes flat
to me anyway so i try to make fast beats but hitting at the time of course
then come back and check it out if it's hot then it's hot (but still a newbie wit 4k it can be a itch but when i get i'll be with ya'll) one

if you're not satisfied with a track, dont bother... forget about it and begin a new track!