keyboard sampling suggestions

Well, after a few weeks of struggling with the MPC i have fiqured most of it out. Now i have a question for any of you that would answer this question or give a suggestion.
I have been working on a bunch of "skeleton" tracks, i have beats (drums) layed down and a couple of guitar and vocal samples...now i wanna lay down some keyboard tracks..would it be easier if i recorded a minute or two of my tracks on to my 16 track studio and layed down some keyboard parts to the beats and just sampled them from the 16 track? how do most of you get your keyboard sounds (melodies)? From what im learning this may be the easiest but i am open to suggestions

First of all do what works for you, even though what u mentioned sounded long winded.

Now what do you mean by keyboard sounds?
Do you mean piano breaks? (samples) or stuff you have composed your self? If so composed then I would play via midi the keyboard sounds let the mpc record the midi triggerd events (NOT THE SOUNDS) then just always allow the mpc to play the keyboard back into the mixer and then mess with it from there.

the studio route allows you to play around wth effects and stuff to get it to sound a particular way before you run it in to the MPC, then have the mpc play it is self as a sample. This can be ok if u got them memory for it. but if u want to change something you have to do the whole process again, which is long, so I use midi and do all I have to do. and never use the raw sound from the source incase i need to change it or edit a melody.

It's really just one of three ways maybe that'll work best for ya. 1.If you are rockin a DAW like Protools or Cubase, use the MIDI editor and plot the notes you want and record the different sections and sample or record them. 2.You could sample each note of the parts you are playing, trigger them with pads on the MPC and then record it. 3.Play the parts by hand on the keys and sample or record it. I could elaborate a little, but I am not familiar with your particular recording or pre-pro. setup. A little more info would help. Off top though, if you don't have a computer I'd put everything in the MPC first to get the sequencing tight.

well, i just have a triton, fostex vf16 (hard disk multitracker) and my 2000xl, the thing with midi is honestly....its too damn confusing, ive tried to mess with midi for about 5 years and its just not happening....if i cant hear the keyboard sounds it makes it kinda pointless....everyone says that midi just records note info, well i want the keyboard sounds right then so midi doesnt really help me. but i guess what it boils down to is whatever works best for the individual...

thanks

Gotcha..aiight..MIDI is out(except for locking the Triton and MPC in sync)...MIDI is great when you got Protools or sum'n like that because you can plot out the notes and change the duration, quant, etc. Using the setup you have as-is I would just play the keyboard parts in the Triton and save them to floppy. You should maybe look into getting a MIDI or SMPTE sync-box, so you can play your machines live on two or four tracks and use the other ones for vox or whatever(I'll break that down later if you want). That's what I used to do with ADATs. I would sync the machines up live and run them through the board. Off top main, get a MIDI chain going with your Triton running the show. Be glad to clarify anything I mentioned just holla. But the bottomline: Just run your equipment live, I don't think you'll benefit from tracking to the 16 track hard disk recorder. Sonically the Triton and MPC2000xl playback sound better stand-alone than recorded to a multitrack machine.

You can always just skip the midi route and record from the out of the keyboard(phone jack)straight into one of the ins on the mpc.It's not as complex because it's just raw data.

yeah, but if you want the melodies to sync up with the beat it helps to record them to the 16 track and thats the only way i can think of, since you cant hear your sequences while sampling

You can record the raw data and chop it up if you can play the melody out.Then just replay it on the mpc and add the drums.

thanks stryke...good idea, i'll try it out....ive fallen in love with my mpc

No prob man.And believe me, alot of us feel the same way as you about this beautiful machine.