For the coarse tune, you can use the Pitch knob instead. Regarding start slice, you indeed need to patch the sample multiple time.
yeah I worked it out with the pitch knob last night. Is there some way for me to set steps on it so I can get exact pitch amounts? Like say I want to set a range of +/- 12 semitones, and I want to change the pitch in semitone increments using host automation. How would I do that?