syncing breaks, time stretch, and the different options

Brute force is the best option for stretching beats. Sometimes if I get a particularly tough one I will clamp one end to my desk and use both hands to stretch it.

i've been working on a max/msp patch that acts as a looper, but you can do live phase vocoding, slicing up, reversing, resampling, etc. on the loop and stuff. gonna control it with either a wireless guitar controller or a joystick. probably joystick.

It depends on the break. If there is harmonic content in a break, my first priority is to keep it in key with the song. I can then stretch them to fit. Usually a warp marker on trouble spots helps. You need to look specifically at what you want to use, they might have triplets or something that is throwing it off if you are on beat at the right tempo. I can do this with Ableton. I used to add or take away swing with ReCycle too. Most of the time, I would add one shots to a break rather than two breaks, mostly because of keeping it in tune and everything else is a pain.