[Request] Cut, copy and paste in audio tracks

Thanks for providing a way to do this bliprock. You have to agree though that it would be a lot easier just to press a button which splits the audio track in two. We're not trying to recreate Ableton live here, just what happens when you press Ctrl-e. Reaper and Sonar do it by pressing 5. On the MPC we have to solo the track, create a new audio track, insert a mute message, record from the outputs. Stop recording, go to trim, cut the end off the sample, go back to Main, scroll back to the start of the desired bar, go to Bar, scroll through all samples to get the new sample. Lastly, we delete the spare audio track and unsolo the track.

Since you are already doing all of the above every time you want to split the audio track, you should no doubt understand that this functionality would be useful and needs to be available in a quick and easy manner.

innovine wrote:Thanks for providing a way to do this bliprock. You have to agree though that it would be a lot easier just to press a button which splits the audio track in two. We're not trying to recreate Ableton live here, just what happens when you press Ctrl-e. Reaper and Sonar do it by pressing 5. On the MPC we have to solo the track, create a new audio track, insert a mute message, record from the outputs. Stop recording, go to trim, cut the end off the sample, go back to Main, scroll back to the start of the desired bar, go to Bar, scroll through all samples to get the new sample. Lastly, we delete the spare audio track and unsolo the track.

Since you are already doing all of the above every time you want to split the audio track, you should no doubt understand that this functionality would be useful and needs to be available in a quick and easy manner.

Yeah i so dig what your saying and hey you know i think making stuff easier is good. Just cant seeing it happen because of tempo shift in most music meaning its average and will not be accurate enough.
I use mutes and start on on bar when resampling and i find this makes trimming easy, like almost down to 30 seconds to trim, cos you can see the end and start real easy. Just the easiest way I found to make time. And with DAWs you still have to import track and do similar things right? I do not know, no DAW user myself. But know what you mean, if tempo is shifting your DAW has to extrapolate it and make tempo map right, then it instantly cuts it up and you can extract sure, I understand. If this is the case then yeah I thin k a average of tempo would make it not very accurate and therefore kinda not work the way we want it to. ie give you exactly a bar or whatever you are looking for. Like for instance the Mandrill track for the MPC-Forums Official Beat Battle track goes from 102BPM to 104.5BPM at least. Like a lot of music, so kinda defeats the process, and means you would have to make tempo changes inserted every bar or so. Would take a fair bit of power and cant see it being very stable or useful for this reason. And I really think its not that much work I mean in an hour I cut heaps of differnent bars. Its the lining up the bars with sequence that can be a pain. But yeah like i said its the nature of the beast. Do some work and reap the benefits. MPC is not a DAW, and I know you are not saying it is but to me its like a DAW feature and as an old school sampler user i see no reason to side step fun and useful skill. I mean I am very surprised no one has worked out this method. Its just how ya do it. Like we chop

innovine wrote:Since you are already doing all of the above every time you want to split the audio track, you should no doubt understand that this functionality would be useful and needs to be available in a quick and easy manner.

Exactly!

@bliprock

I do use a re-sampling method to get exact samples according to bar length, but as innovine said it is a time consuming process.

Is it? really? I do not think so. So you think it takes too long? To be honest I think lift your game ! BUT vv

There is a strong reason for this method of bar cutting. And it is that we can get the exact BPM from this method and then change it accordingly of the bar chopped out. As no song has same tempo through it. So every bar or bars in a song has its own different BPM. and if thats what you chopping out you want it in time. ie do not rely on MPC to try and find BPM, you have to do it your self. So I only use audio track to get bars and BPM and then dump that after I got the bars I want. So think its just like trimming a loop, stay with me I am getting there.... So BPM accuracy is important factor here.

If you want Auto bar chop then thats to me means you need an AUTO BPM thing happening. IMHO I do not see how you address BPM change. And you know BPM detection in MPC wont be accurate enough for stuff like this ?? Its demonstrated in the BPM detection in the MPC right now, so its good but not very accurate sometimes and you would have to have it separately determine every bars separate BPM and then put a tempo change in a track for the sequence to match up. I do not think it could do that IMHO,not accurately. Sure crazy good if he did but the BPM accuracy is so not there now, so very much doubt it will be any better in the future.

If you are using the audio track in a different way, say you are using at as a backing track or using stems that are layered in many audio tracks then yeah you have to make sure that the BPM does not shift. And if the BPM does not change then you have just halved the work load in this method I wrote about. Thats half the work gone. no worrying about BPM its known... Most stem stuff from DAWs will not need to be worked on to match up BPM, unlike an song from a band, which will shift BPM all the time, all over the place. And when i cut my chop i want it exact.
See what I am saying. Its an art to chop. Dont expect computer to do your art.
I mean I thought it was art when i saw a bar chopped out in trim. Very obvious where to cut it for me and it seemed to me seeing it, that it was pretty as a picture to see just a bar cut out from the method above. thats the art there.

Which makes me think you are so thinking about it the wrong way. What you should request is a Punch in/out record function tied to loop setting. obviously it disregards the actual looping in this mode of recording MAINS OUT. So toggles recording on for start of loop, and then stops recording on end of loop. Would solve a lot of your lazyitis. you would still have to work out exact BPM and line up the bar start of audio sample with sequence to match. But yeah makes your trim idiot proof. if it could do it exactly that is. Cant see why not as it seems very accurate in the method being discussed here, just that you have to trim it. See what I am saying. I had an idea writing this. Ask JJ to put BPM and LOOP settings from your active sequence in the resulting sample name. LMAO double idiot proof. and still less work So it gets named something like [email protected] cos it just gets that information in the sequence that you have set up. Ya gotta be happy with that. I mean you cant expect MPC to do everything.

So to end my rant.. I think if he did do it with auto BPM and it even wrote tempo changes through the sequence I will probably find the BPM accuracy not good enough and the result would be sloppy and out of time chops and would continue doing the way I am doing it now, so i dont have sloppy out of time chops. So if BPM detection was improved and could determine bar start, BPM of every bar and then right it all out I would very impressed but really do not think its at all possible as BPM detection is never going to be that accurate ever in the MPC I think. That and I do not agree that it takes to long. I am old enough to be saying stuff like Kids today and all that, but its kinda true. You have no idea how good you got it now. I am going to retire to the lounge to have my pipe and cuppa tea. Good day gentlemen.

@bliprock

well, I use the MPC as a composing tool, i.e. I play guitar or whatever instrument according to the BPM of the sequence, so there is no need for BPM matching.

e.g. I record a few minutes of some chord progression, or a combination of riffs or maybe a percussion rhythm, into an audio track. Then I listen to the track and when I find a part I like I extract it (for now by using MAIN OUT re-sampling and if needed some trimming - a time consuming method). Now, it would be much easier and intuitive to do it according to the position of the playback cursor in the audio track, I would just highlight the time I want to extract in the audio track and hit a button and extract it and assign it to a pad.

If I have 5 minute audio track recorded and I find a few parts that I want to extract, then the MAINS OUT re-sampling method is very time consuming and requires a lot of button pushing, scrolling, you can forget about the flow.

p.s.

I'm gonna play around with the mpc, see if I can come up with a better method. Maybe by using the RECORD PAD5 Mode

I don't know if this does the same thing that you guys are trying to do, maybe I'm totally wrong but when I've wanted to extract a part of a long sample that I already have recorded I just go into sample edit/trim screen and do it there. I highlight the area that I want extracted, I go to the menu where you chose discard, extract, etc. and then extract it as a new sample (I think you can even assign to a pad when you extract, not sure though not infront of my mpc). Then if I wan to use the extracted sample as an audio track, I go back to the track where I want my audio track to be and I select the new sample that was extracted (I just scroll throught the sample names til I find it). I'm not sure if this is what you guys are trying to do but I never really resample part of a sample that is already in my list of samples (unless I've applied some type of effect to it, layered it, etc.), I just extract the exact part that I want in the sample edit/trim screen so there is no further trimming needed. Maybe this isn't what you're trying to do though or maybe the way I'm doing it takes even longer.

@B.A.

Ya, we are trying to do extracting but in an audio track without having to go to trim mode. TRIM mode uses some weird units (samples?), not bars/steps.

yeah astro use the mute at the end when you find a part you like and it helps you trim it.
I understand it interrupts your particular work flow and seems like a lot of work. I get that and if your in time with BPM and it does not change then it could seem a simple thing that would work.
Those values in the trim window is the actual sample
Its a sampler so it means its very normal you have to trim something you sample. Its what you do. Its like driving a car but saying I dont want to use the steering wheel, thats what it seems like to me. This is where particular workflows differ, and I have friends I think that would so sympathize with you, but if they said that to me I would laugh at em and say thats why your a bass guitarist. I would not say that to you astro, i would say yeh in this case toggling the record to loop setting in sequence might be a better way to do it dont you think? and easier to do as well, it would give you the bar you want and no trimming.
I also thought that if you use NDC and keep sequence to limit of 64 then you could try that way ie if sequence is 32 bars audio track sample would be NDC of 32 chops. I have not really tried that though. Means no audio track though.

astronaut: based on what you describe, it sounds like you would be much better off doing what you do in a daw instead of the mpc (recording multiple takes, extracting the parts you like, etc...). daws are designed for exactly that sort of thing.

astronaut wrote:@B.A.

Ya, we are trying to do extracting but in an audio track without having to go to trim mode. TRIM mode uses some weird units (samples?), not bars/steps.

Ok, I see what's up now, my bad. In that case, adding an option in TRIM mode that shows how long a chop is in bars/steps would also be useful in addition to the feature that you guys are suggesting for audio tracks, I mean all the other functions to extract, discard, add silence are already there, the only thing missing is the option to work in bars/steps instead of samples.

I do the same as astronaut: record myself jamming on a guitar into the MPC, and I am looking for a quick way to arrange and rearrange the best parts. Unfortunately it totally sucks at the moment since there isn't a way t do this (and I don't count bliprocks workaround as a reasonable solution).

Bliprock, the tempo drift issues you are describing are due to the way YOU are using the audio tracks, and doesn't affect other people with other workflows. If you don't see the need for cutting, copying, splitting and pasting audio in bar or beat related sizes, then you don't need to contribute to the request thread. At the moment, you are just ranting about one particular way of doing things, which is hijacking the thread.

And I already requested punch-in and -out recording..

Sooty_G wrote:astronaut: based on what you describe, it sounds like you would be much better off doing what you do in a daw instead of the mpc (recording multiple takes, extracting the parts you like, etc...). daws are designed for exactly that sort of thing.

The patterns mode does exactly all of this for MIDI already.. it lets you copy out bar sized pieces and gives support for easily arranging them. You can lay em out on a grid or trigger them from pads. I'd like to see the audio track support head in the same direction, since at the moment you can't do very much with it besides record (and that without punch in and out)

Imo there's no harm in requesting this/these (if someone still hasn't). Ultimately it's JJs call to do things or not based on if they're feasible or even possible with current HW & SW limitations.

I'd love to see audio tracks developed further.

B.A. wrote:Ok, I see what's up now, my bad. In that case, adding an option in TRIM mode that shows how long a chop is in bars/steps would also be useful in addition to the feature that you guys are suggesting for audio tracks, I mean all the other functions to extract, discard, add silence are already there, the only thing missing is the option to work in bars/steps instead of samples.

THIS! would be awesome. I'm picturing it so that you could have vertical step/tick markers in TRIM mode so you could still work your sample in the same way, but with additional information.

this is kinda offtopic stuff, so should we dedicate own thread to this?

m:t:c wrote:

B.A. wrote:Ok, I see what's up now, my bad. In that case, adding an option in TRIM mode that shows how long a chop is in bars/steps would also be useful in addition to the feature that you guys are suggesting for audio tracks, I mean all the other functions to extract, discard, add silence are already there, the only thing missing is the option to work in bars/steps instead of samples.

THIS! would be awesome. I'm picturing it so that you could have vertical step/tick markers in TRIM mode so you could still work your sample in the same way, but with additional information.

this is kinda offtopic stuff, so should we dedicate own thread to this?

I created it's own tread so if anyone wants to talk about this request they can go there.