It's a sine wave and a saw wave together.

Easy to do in Operator (or any synth)

as Phase Ghost says, low pass, short decay, short sustain.

Don't think you'll need distortion.

The second one it the same just with a bit of percussion playing at the same time.

A loop can become boring because in the composition process you listen to it hundreds of times. Remember when you play it to someone they will be hearing it for the first time. I think it's important to not over complicate things, subtle changes. I tend to write a one bar loop, then add something in...

Ok.. think I may have answers my own question. i think it's all quantized to SP1200 16 Swing 58. Or a swing very similar.

Next question.. how do you get percussion to sound that aggressive.. the big tom/snare hits mainly!

Thanks for your helps guys. Had a go with the Ableton groove extract... comes out very strange, think there's too much going on for it to work accurately. Defiantly the groove is in the toms, but there's also a rolling bass and pop percussion. Can't work out whether they're swinging or not. Will hav...

Looking for a bit of help. love the grove in this tune, just trying to workout whether it's got a swing (groove template) or not. Is it just the percussion and velocities that make it groove or maybe some percussion is pushed ahead of the beat.. can't work it out? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhCl...

Using out board gear to create distortion is nearly always going to sound best. However staying in the box the sound toys decapitator is great.. very musical for a software distortion. The vinyl distortion you mentioned is possibly the vinyl distortion plugin that comes with Ableton, which is great ...

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To be honest I don't think I have the prerogative to decide how someone learns. If someone asks for a few tips or how a sound is made I'm happy to help out as fully as possible. To come on here with an attitude of 'I could tell you how it''s done but then you won't learn' seams pretty patronising.