Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By lucca Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:32 am
Well, I've been interested in the akai mpc's for a couple of years now, but no one really knew much about it. Now that I actually have purchased a used one for just under 400 dollars, I about to jump into it. But instead of reading the manual, I thought this would be more helpful to hear from people on here. Hopefully you will help me out.

I know the mpc's are primarily used to make drum beats, but I've never known anyone to use them just to make piano, bass, or guitar sounds from scratch on them. Is that even possible. Most people I know just take the piano from songs, change the tempo and thats it. Is that all I could do.
Basically with my 2MB standard mpc unit, I want to know if I could find piano samples, bass samples, etc instruments besides drums and then make my own song with them.
It may sound ridiculous to a lot of you, but from my stand point I am a little overwhelmed with the learning curve and a confused on what the specifics are it can exactly do, so don't be an douche please.
Also, as far as getting the sounds on my machine, would I need to purchase turntables? Is there other ways for me to take samples from songs with out turntables?
Would I be able to take specific sounds off a song, say a certain bass part, snag that from the song, upload it on the mpc, then tweak it to my liking and use it as I want?
Is the mpc able to perform live with just the unit itself and an amp or would you need more?

To paraphrase that absurd amount above: I am wondering if I can find disks with just piano sounds, bass sounds, guitar sounds, etc oddity instruments; upload them on my mpc and then use them however I want?
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By Lampdog Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:41 am
lucca wrote:find disks with just piano sounds, bass sounds, guitar sounds, etc oddity instruments; upload them on my mpc and then use them however I want?

It costs you nothing to try and do exactly that, so go and do that.

I will never understand why people opt to pass up the manual when all the functions of the machine are in there. :idea:
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By LunaticBastard Fri Oct 24, 2008 12:34 am
get em dog!!!
look you can load anything you want into it. its a sampler. if you want to sample static from the radio its all good. i turn everything into an instrument. hell yesterday i sampled myself shaking a glass of ice. but thats just how i get down.
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By Lampdog Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:12 am
Hook up some analog line outputs of gear to the mpc's sample ins and go for it.
The manual will show you the sampling functions.

Format your mpc media w/ fat/fat16. Save some 44/16 wavs on that media, load it back into the mpc.
That's the route you take w/ samples from pc.