Workflow tips on drums on mpc3000

Good day, Guys,
I'm new to mpc3000, although I was making beats for years. I come a long way from software trackers to fl to mpc2500, and now I got my hands on 3000. And now I stuck a little bit on the way I used to make it.
When it comes to drums I always did some layering from diff one shot snares, for example, so that's how I got my new one, that I use, so with software and mpc2500 it's easy to search for "layers" of the new drum sound, cause when you choose, you can play selected sound from the load dialog or whatever.
But now, with mpc3000 I can't do that... so just want to know is someone has any tips of choosing sounds for drums without using PC or smth. I know some heads here doing beats on this mpc for years, maybe you can share some tips of the workflow on this tip?
I got in mind some ways, like:
- make my own library of layers, name the files so I can understand it when will be searching for them,
- do it outside the mpc on the PC with any sort of pgmmaker and so - that's not the way I want, cause I like my PC been turned off while producing
- get some drum dedicated vinyl with only breaks to sample it

But really it's interesting to know how you aproach to this.

Ps I'm on 3.11 os and SCSI zip

I'm not on an MPC3000, but i use an MPC60 and SP1200 (where you can't preview sounds either).

The way i do it is kind of "freestyle". I sample what i need for every new beat, including drums. I usually start my beats with a sample, so after i got a few chops i'll put together a short sequence that i can play back. Then i play that, while playing/searching drums from records simultaneously until i find stuff that sounds good, then sample those drums. Same with layering drums (i rarely do this tho, i like it simple)... play back what you have, play drums over it from a record simultaneously to find something that fits, then sample it.

Sometimes after sampling and chopping the drums, you will notice it doesn't fit as good as you thought... delete, try next drumhit/break, rinse and repeat.

It depends if you always sample from scratch, or if you use your own drum library that you always load stuff from. In this case i would have this library ready on the 2500 (if you still have it), then you could have that running next to your mpc3000 and use it as a drum library "preview" station.
I did this with some of my drumkits for the SP1200. I replicated each floppy disk as a program on the MPC500. This way i could load up a program in the 500, preview the drums that are on the respected SP1200 floppy, and load them in the SP after i am sure it's the hits i want. It's time consuming to make those kits on the 500 tho. I stopped doing that after a few floppies.

As i said, depends on your workflow. I sample everything from scratch for every beat, so i just go with it, try stuff out, delete if it's not good, sample another drumbreak, etc.

Hope this helps a little.
Peace.

Assam99 wrote:I got in mind some ways, like:
- make my own library of layers, name the files so I can understand it when will be searching for them,

Of course you can do this. Check the manual.

- do it outside the mpc on the PC with any sort of pgmmaker and so - that's not the way I want, cause I like my PC been turned off while producing

Well this is prep. Might as well create your layered drums as you want them exactly in an audio editor / DAW, then load them into RS-16 (programme maker) then export them the the MPC. THEN switch off your PC and off you go.

- get some drum dedicated vinyl with only breaks to sample it

or you can use the sampler the way it was designed to be and just sample into it.

Here what I did to make chopping super fast.

You need to have a 3k (obviously) and any other mpc (preferably running jjos)

For my setup I have a mpc2500 and 3k

I record break into cool edit and trim fat making it and even bar
I transfer into 2500 and chop whatever I want it to be.
it in my master outs on my 2500 into record ins on 3k.
I set record on mpc3k at a threshold a tad lower on the the 3k then the 2500 and I set rec time to 1secon ..then I press rec it will say waiting on signal..I then press pad on 2500 of what pad I want and because threshold on 3k is set it will only record actual sound and no silence..the end tail will have a millisecond of air but in mono won't be much to worry about.
then I just keep file and repeat 16 times or however many chops you got. If you do this method right it should take about 1minute from start to finish to have 16 assigned chops onto your 3k imo.

Im not sure if my direction s make alot of sense but its worked nice for me to speed up workflow and because I only use 3k for drums measly 10mb of ram is plenty to do my thing:)

Gonna be the lamest answer ever but here it comes: just keep using the sampler.

I use my MPC3000 everyday and I dont feel the workflow being any problem, i cant imagine it being considerably faster on anything else.

I sample every drum seperately with like 0.5-0.9s each. REC ready > keep, repeat.

Then i just scroll start point til i hear the punch disapearing (its faster to get "close" to the true start point), then go back a lil bit.

After that i rename em to soemthing hinting where its from, for example footsteps in the dark drums are "FOOT_HH" & "FOOT_SNARE", that way i can easily reuse them later on.


No disrespect to answers above, if it works for you hey go ahead, but that seems to take forever.

i sample directly into the JJOS machine (either 1k or 2.5k). there i can nicely name and store the sample. then in NDC i chop the parts and record them over to the 3k. i never save the ndc stuff, i rather just save the recorded raw sample for later reference.

however, sometimes i cant be bothered to do all this clean archiving of my samples. then i just sample directly from the MK2 to the 3k.
to be honest, this is much more fun, because i dont have to worry about so many things. and it often sounds better when you chop with only using your ears and no waveform display.
and it keeps the artistic workflow up.

Thanx guys, sampling another MPC is good idea!

I've read a lot about ESX-1 for the last few days, and it looks good for drum storage with functions to edit them then sample it on 3k, although it doesn't do layering

Do someone using it this way?
Mainly interesting your views on filtering drums?

Just have thoughts that filtering on ESX can substitute layering in some ways.. but thats just thoughts, never seen ESX-1 by myself

to layer sounds, you can play up to three sounds at the same time. just check the manual. this is also possible with all mpcs...2k5, 2k etc.

what i do, when i want to have a drumloop to be chopped exacty, i sampled the loop into my 2k5, chopped it, an than sampled the chopped samples back into the 3k. this is some work, i know, but easy. i know that some dudes are chopping drumloops in the 3k, but it takes a lot of time.

but most of the time i only used the 3k for chopping. this machine is magic.

I do same as above^^^

Im not sure my directions came out right but basically the 2500 does all the work the 3000 just records each 1sec. Chop and then I assign to pads..no chopping editing in 3000..just playing and recording. Once drums are set to my liking I adjust all parameters and then I save that drumbreak and kit to its own individual zip disk. Then I label it and write bpm on it..when I go to make a song I just shuffle through my disks to the drums I feel match sample melody and load em..very easy and makes your workflow fun because im not starting from scratch all the time and I cut out all the technical stuff before hand so when it comes time to make the beat its smooth and un interrupted.

the tip with another sampler with chopping is nice.
will play with it.
thanx all!