MPC with live band - help for a newbie.

Hey guys

I have a live band, and I'd like to blend elements of electronic music with it in live performances. I currently have an MPC 500. I'm just very new to this and have no idea what I'm doing.

I'd like essentially a 'backing track', where I can trigger different sections of song, and throw in samples whenever I feel like it.

The band also has a drummer, so any tips on how to sync a MPC beat with a live drummer would be appreciated.

Cheers

I am planning on doing the same thing with my Band...just got an MPC 1000. I do know some about playing with backing tracks. There are two ways you can go about this. The dangerous fast and loose way, and the safe sure disciplined way...lol.

The dangerous way depending on how your tracks are written is to just play the tracks live over a PA, or have the sound guy send you a monitor mix over the house monitors and pray your drummer has a good ear and will play along and not miss a beat. Of course this only works if you have some sort of rhythmic part throughout the entire sequence such as a baseline or small drum part to count to.

The safe way is to have at the very lease the drummer (if not everybody) play to a click track with In ear monitors. You really only have one option with the MPC 500 since it has only one set of outs. Normally on the MPC 1000 or others MPCs with multiple outs you can set up a drum track or a click track and route it to one of the ALT outs (in effect keeping it from the main mix) and run it to a headphone amp everyone can plug into to. This is usually done with wireless in ears units ( you can research those yourself). However with the MPC 500 only having one set of outs you would have to midi sync (through one of the midi outs) with some external drum machine, synth unit anything that can send a click and feed that through the headphone amp. This would be the only way to have a separate click track mix that doesn't go to the house on a MPC 500. Once you get that set just play the sequence from the MPC and have everyone play along with that. It takes allot of practice (Practice which my drummer refuses to do or wear headphones or in ears for that matter) but it can be done.

If I have totally confused you even more hit me up with specific questions and I will try an answer them for you.

Laz