Well sit down son-son and I'll tell ya how I produced my whole album on the little MPC500.
After finishing the GasMask Tortures using strictly the MV8800, I realized that the whole time I was recording, I was really just sampling and resampling. I could've done it on any sampler I thought. My vocals were practically long samples that were trimmed and chopped to play along the sequence and they were on the pads to trigger any time.
Thats when I decided to try to produce an album on the MPC500.
First thing I did was to test a recording. I made a beat as usual in the sequencer and pressed Play so I can sample one verse. Btw, I have connected a mic preamp into the left input of the 500 for quality vocals. As I recorded I made sure to peep the recording meter that its not too low and not clipping far right. Because for the best sampling sound on the 500, the meter bar should be at least 65% to 75% erected across the screen with its tail slapping occasionally to the far right. Thats how I call them the big fish samples
Here, the method of sampling must apply to recording vocals. You are just sampling a long sample.
Of course, I don't sequence beats by chaining a bunch of sequences together. I set only one sequence to 99 bars, turn off quantize and the metronome and record like a tape recorder. So thats how I kept the vocals tightly woven into the beat and that way prevented drifting of vocals.
Every song I made on THE GRUN REAPER HEADSTONES was done that way and were recorded to a 2GB CF card. When I was satisfied with every song, I simply recorded them into a CD recorder one by one and then uploaded the disc on the net.
There were other factors like smoking good weed and forgetting to press record to record your greatest freestyle and a crazed barking chihuahua that would **** up a few sessions or how about that lady that was holding me up for a kiss when all I wanted was a dope sample from her record cabinet. She slapped my face then slipped her tongue. But thats another tale to tell in Readers Digest.
