Adding variety to a sequence

Just wondering if you could give me some tips on how to change up your beats. I usually go witha nice four bar loop as the main part of the mix...but I want to start getting better at changing things up without going overboard. Do you guys save your sequence and then add or subract thing from it to make the changes or what. I like the simple beats.....I'm not into making things complicated just to say it's an "advanced" beat......I like things simple. Right now I'm working on a beat with a nice piano sample as the backbone....I've thrown in some horns and some light strings to ad depth.....but I need tips on what I can do to mix it up.

Season

Pimp your sequences and use what you got. I am a big fan of using drum fills and drum tricks to stop things from getting boring. Most of the time I wont use the same lead for the verse and the hook, and I will have my lead progress thru the first 16 bars, with a flip in the 8th bar and a change up in the 9th. It could be as simple as just a different phrasing of my chops, or introducing a new backing instrument. I will always have something consistant going on in the background that makes the track have continuity and blend thru the flips.

genious at work^^^^^^^^^^^

do y'all use 2 bar's or 4 bar's...? my sample is usually 2 bars long, so that's how i work my drums. just a 2 bar drum loop.

i usually do 4 bars with drum rolls on another track to bring in once in a while so it changes the feel a little bit.

I ususally use 8 bars for drums. The copy bar feature is a great way to do it fast and accurately. Here is my method
2 bar loop, program dynamics, swing, and slips.
copy bars to 4 and program a fill
copy bars to 8 program a more aggresive fill.

whats a slip?

shifting a hit in the sequence. I usually shift my snares. before the quantize will you an aggresive feel, after the the quantize will give you a lazy feel, you can do it in the swing screen, but it will effect the whole track by the value selected, ill usually do it in step and put one snare a like 3 or 4 clicks after and the other with a differnt value so it doesn't sound too repetitive. Programming tempo changes in seqences will make your drums sound more real too.

yea definately a good point on the varying tempo changes. how much do you vary the tempo by normally?

Usually a half of a bpm inserted at the end of the first bar of a 2 bar loop so it would average out, and you will still be able to beat match a track to it. First bar 90, second 90.5, will match perfect with a track at 90.25. hope it makes sense.

yea man perfect sense. so then youd just track out and sync at 90.25?

yeah, but check it, if you aren't droping the temp change right in the middle, the you gotta start **** with fractions. Do the math and your straight

change the velocity on your hats.

4 bar loop copied 16 times with attention to the swing.

for instance, high hat on the 1/5/9/13 as a simple metronome but the velocity on part A looks like

1 : 95 / 2 : 92 / 3 : 94 / 4 : 93

Part B

1 : 89 / 2 : 93 / 3 : 92 / 4 : 95

etc.

if you work up a few bars that have different accents you can keep with some pretty straight 4/4 beats without sounding stale. Tom Ze is a great example of sparse done right.

you can accomplish the same thing with pad sensitivity but i like working with the numbers so if you're stepping the bass you know where your drum tones are as well.

good luck!