Marx wrote: I feel like it's a lot of time and money for a glorified Trigger Finger.....
Well, it may be a little more money than a trigger finger, but on the topic of time...
You aren't emulating a Monome, per se, but you are trying to emulate the function of the program MLR. Now, what took you a couple of minutes to do to a single 2 bar sample happens instantaneously with MLR, and it happens simultaneously to up to 16 samples loaded at once, and you can load an absolute crapload into the program and swap them out on the fly.
So yes, you may be saving yourself a couple hundred dollars by not buying a Monome, but you aren't saving yourself much time if you are wanting to emulate the programs available to it's users. Which are all free, by the way. The only price of entry in the Monome. All apps are open source and widely shared.