Patched Phrase JJOS

Hi,

So wanting to get deeper into the world of hardware samplers, I recently went from the Korg Electribe Sampler 2 to an MPC1000 with JJOS. I bought the MPC-Stuff JJOS Bible and read through it, but I am still struggling with the patched phrase function on JJOS.

On the Korg if you want to patch a sample the you tell it how many crotchets (or 1/16's if you prefer) the sample represents and then the OS automatically chops it and then you can (very basically) fine tune it until you have X number of slices with each slice having only one hit. It is a bit finicky as you have no visual representation of the wave-form, but if you get it right, it works perfectly and the patched sample when played sounds exactly like the original except now you can adjust the BPM and retain the beat.

So I was trying to recreate this on my MPC and I am struggling to do it. The beat sounds all wrong after I patch it. The section in the MPC Stuff book does not really cover this very well. Should I only have as many slices as there are hits or should I include slices for silent sections? Should I include hits that are very close together as one slice? This old YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXfClhI9aNw (horrible quality but good info) guy only used 8 slices and his patched phrase worked perfectly. But it is hard to make out in his video exactly how he chopped his sample.

Thanks

I actually wrote the book you are referring to With patch phrase you need to create a chop point wherever there is a rhythmical element so you effectively remove any 'hard coded' tempo elements. In the book I refer to initially chopping the break using the previously discussed auto threshold chopping settings (that were used to create a program of individual hits from a break in the previous chapter). I'll look at adding a bit more to that section to underline that a patch phrase needs to be chopped right down to the individual hits first.

Regarding the video, unfortunately that is not a perfect patched phrase at all, and to be fair he does admit it isn't although I'm not sure why he would use such an example when trying to show the true benefits of patch phrase. Only three of the chop regions are chopped correctly, the other five all contain two hits.



As he changes tempo you can hear that those chops with two hits sound disjointed, that's because the space between those hits never adapt to the tempo change. This is why you must chop every single individual drum hit, that way any tempo changes are applied to each and every hit in your break:



A patched phrase should usually be chopped using threshold chopping (AUTO) or manually chopped and tweaked as required. Using equally spaced regions is only going to work when you are chopping a break that this perfectly quantised to 1/16ths or 1/8ths of a beat (which is rarely the case with a live break).

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I don't mean any disrespect regarding your book. It is excellent really, just that particular chapter section caught me out a bit as I am not that familiar with the inner workings of chopping.

Yeah I know that old YouTube video is not great, but there was only one other video on YouTube showing an older MPC doing a patched phrase and that was poor quality too and also in Spanish (which I do not speak).

The break I was working on as a test of the patching ability of my MPC Vs my Korg Sampler is the opening beat from Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones. When I originally chopped this on my Korg 6 months ago, despite the lack of a visual waveform, I seemed to be able to get it to work perfectly and the beat would play back identically to how the original beat sounded and could be sped up or slowed down without a problem.

So I wanted to see if I could do just as well on my MPC. I assumed it would be easy because of the superior OS.
But I have been messing around with it all day and every time I convert it to a patched phrase it never quite sounds like the original (nor like the version from my Korg). It sounds disjointed and slower and does not loop properly (it seems to cut the end of the loop off).

Before I chopped it I loaded it into a sequence of one bar and adjusted the BPM until it looped perfectly so that I could discern the BPM. This gave me that the BPM was 112. So below you can see my chop of the sample. It looks more accurately chopped when you zoom in, I find that at the maximum zoom out, the chops look less accurate than when zoomed in.
I converted this chop to a PP telling the OS it was at a BPM of 112 and leaving the release at 10. I got probably the best result I got so far, but still not right.

Am I doing something wrong or is JJOS nor able to patch this beat for some reason? I moved to an MPC as the Korg is good but with a limited PPQ it is incapable of making old-school style Hip-Hop. Seems a shame if the MPC is able to do those beats I want, but cannot patch as well as the Korg.

Thanks

Quick additional note: in your book where you say to set the patched phrase sample in the programme as 'NOTE ON' and then enter it in the step editor; this does not work at all for me and I just get the first beat.