I find myself really working with audio channels most of the time these days for percussion. There's a key feature I take advantage of though which has become a staple technique and one that I don't often see people use, simply because it doesn't exist in other DAW's. That's the ability to shift the waveform left and right within a static audio clip, meaning that I can place a sequence of parts and shift the audio on the fly to get vastly different results. It's the sort of thing you'd be able to do in a sampler anyway of course, but I do like being able to see the waveform as I work with it chopping and messing with the fades and overlaps.
I do find midi to be useful though as well, so usually I'll add an instance of Battery and load up a bunch of one shots so that I can still come up with some sort of Midi controllable sequence which can be switched about at any time. There are pro's and cons with both methods really and so I just try to use both.
I find myself really working with audio channels most of the time these days for percussion. There's a key feature I take advantage of though which has become a staple technique and one that I don't often see people use, simply because it doesn't exist in other DAW's. That's the ability to shift the waveform left and right within a static audio clip, meaning that I can place a sequence of parts and shift the audio on the fly to get vastly different results. It's the sort of thing you'd be able to do in a sampler anyway of course, but I do like being able to see the waveform as I work with it chopping and messing with the fades and overlaps.
I do find midi to be useful though as well, so usually I'll add an instance of Battery and load up a bunch of one shots so that I can still come up with some sort of Midi controllable sequence which can be switched about at any time. There are pro's and cons with both methods really and so I just try to use both.
One way is to replicate a motive of a break sample, i.e assigning your drum hits on exact same spots as in the break. Then tune your hits and to add extra flawa so to speak try using riff machine for your percussion. Basically the more original your percussion work the more original the whole drum pattern will sound. Usually I find it hard to design my own drum pattern and so I rip ideas from other samples which will serve me as a backbone. And I also work mostly with audio but if I knew more about drum machines and synthesized kicks/snares I would definitely give them a shot.