Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By marrelarre Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:45 pm
I love 16-levels and use it for all my basslines, so i've never experienced any strange sounding results.

What instruments are you using it with? have you played with the filters, maybe its a frequence problem ? (something with a lot of highs may loose that "feel" when you play it at like -80) :hmmm:
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By mr_debauch Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:57 pm
it will often sound cheap if you do several notes in a row so you really hear it.... you are better to use it to just figure out the pitch you want a sample to play in..

some sample types do sound fine though as mentioned bass notes.. or even sometimes a sample can sound good if you only use a couple of notes and not trying to play a whole melody.
By tonytorm Sat Jan 03, 2015 9:57 pm
actually i've already done some bass lines that do fit properly (i just bought my mpc 2000xl and i don't have floppy disk so i've been using only one bass sample) but you know the first thing i've done its to play a major scale and check the intervals between the tones and i found it a little bit strange, i dont have a very skilled ear so it could be an impression.
now i know that tune +10 = +1 semitone but it still sound strange to me, i have to say the bass sample was a shi**y one but i found some floppy disk today so i'll load more samples and have a check.
frankly i think that mpc 2000xl is NOT the definitive gear to get bass lines, i'll try to play it on my DAW than record the single notes (not much business though, my bass lines are often composed by 4-5 notes)

mr_debauch wrote:it will often sound cheap if you do several notes in a row so you really hear it.... you are better to use it to just figure out the pitch you want a sample to play in..

some sample types do sound fine though as mentioned bass notes.. or even sometimes a sample can sound good if you only use a couple of notes and not trying to play a whole melody.


true!! i found that playng notes not "too far" from the root note avoid this problem, its when i get real high or low that starts to sound strange but you know sometimes for create much tension you want high notes..
anyway many thanks:))
and sorry for my english im italian.
a pleasure to be on this forum :smoker: :smoker: :smoker:
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By peterpiper Sun Jan 04, 2015 3:42 am
mr_debauch wrote:i thought +-12 was +- a semitone...



depends on the instrument you use. On a MPC 2000 / 2000XL a semitone is 10, on an Emu E64 for example a semitone is 64.

peace
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By mr_debauch Sun Jan 04, 2015 5:36 am
****, so you can really get a specific exact pitch on that machine with that type of resolution
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By marrelarre Sun Jan 04, 2015 2:16 pm
tonytorm wrote:yeah kev is doing awesome basslines with his mpc and i love his beats but when it comes to this pro's i always think there are some secrets they dont want to show..



To be honest I dont tihnk thats the case with Kev, check this video out when he lays down a bassline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlrvM8y7FhI


I think my basslines sound fine aswell and all I do is 16-levels with a single bass note.
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By Wal Martian Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:49 pm
Make sure the note you're starting with is in an actual key and not in between semitones. If you're sampling records make sure your turntable is spinning at the right speed (no pitch change, loose belt on if its belt drive). Pitching a sound that's a weird in between note will just produce weird sounding results.
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By richie Mon Jan 05, 2015 11:39 pm
^ +1

Another good idea is to sample from gear that you 100% know is in tune and the note you're playing is correct.

And since we're on the internet, we have infinite resources to find a sample tone or generate a a tone that can be modulated down to an endless loop. Once we filter it down to what we want, it'll be virtually indistinguishable from that bass note you're sampling from vinyl

.. or you could sample a bunch of notes and create a program, avoiding the 16 levels option all together.
By auscience Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:08 pm
For the longest I believed that the MPC 2000/xl simply didn't play in true notes, then I learned that it does after playing it against a keyboard tuned at A440 (as most keyboards are tuned at A440). On 16 levels some of those pads are the actual notes. You just have to skip around to find those notes. Another way to get true notes out of an MPC is to use the autochromatic feature. If you don't wanna use the autochromatic feature, then remember that every 10 points up or down is 1 semitone (half tone). This way you can assign a sample to several different pads playing at different speeds so that you can tap those pads accordingly to make a melody

Let's say you have recorded into your MPC piano sample in middle C (C3), assuming it has indeed been sampled in original pitch, is gonna be on a pad programmed to play at "0". Well the next semitone/half note up would be C sharp (C#) which means played at 10 on the MPC. the up would be D (D3) or played at 20 on the MPC and so on. 120 up is one whole octave up which basically means C4. Since you can go 240 +/- with the same sample, you can basically have a range of two octaves for one sample. If you want to go higher or lower, take a wave editor and speed/slow the sample by 200 or 50 percent. This way you can put all MIDI notes from 36-98 to use.

Please excuse the long post BTW. This is some fairly recent and exciting information TO ME.
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By Wal Martian Mon Jan 12, 2015 8:35 pm
auscience wrote:For the longest I believed that the MPC 2000/xl simply didn't play in true notes,... On 16 levels some of those pads are the actual notes. You just have to skip around to find those notes...

Um... :hmmm:
MPC2000 manual pg 22 wrote:TUNING
This allows you to play the sound set in
Note:
at 16 levels of tuning. The
original tuning is assigned to the pad set in the
Original key pad:
field and the tuning changes by a semi-tone.

They are 'actual' notes, they are semitones (+10) just like the keys on a keyboard. If you sample a 440Hz sine wave you will be able to make a scale from A4 down to F#3 or a scale from A4 up to C6 depending if you place the A4 sample on pad 1 or pad 16. Just because a note sounds bad with the key of your song doesn't mean it's not an actual note. There's no mystery to how 16 levels set to tuning works. You could manually create the same program (-160 +160) but 16 levels is faster.