New here and looking to see if an MPC is right for me.

I Recently graduated college and now I don't have Bball, schoolwork, or family members holding me down. I want to know what exactly this machince does. What is the benifit of this machine. I have a pretty deccent collection of jazz, soul and funk records. I've been diggin for about 4 years until this time would come. I already have all kinds of samples located that I want to use. How do you go about getting drum sounds? Can you sample some in yourself, or do you have to get a disk with them? How do you cut what you sampled so that you get just the one hit you want and not the sounds proceeding or comming after the one you need. And another thing is how can you layer these things. Can you make a drum pattern and then add more to it while it is playing back. I read an article that RJD2 had the MPC 2000 and not the xl and he had to keep buring the cd and re entering it over and over till he got what he wanted.

I got some heat stashed away on these records. And I know what kind of drums I want to put over the sample but don't know how to get there.

Sorry if this is hard to understand and the content is going everywhere but I'm not down with the terminology and I'm just getting in so be patient with me. Thanks

the mpc is perfect for what you want to do !!!If you learned to listen and located what you want you have already done half of the work .For the drums you have to sample parts on a song where you can only hear a snare , a kick or whatever ...there no magic demix tool , if you have a drum rythm with a guitar you will have it when you isolate the element .OOOps i'm afraid that my english will confuse you more than the opposite .Now regarding the way of keeping your work , you can plug on the mpc a thing called zip ( it's like the hard drive of your computer except it's removable like a tape cassette).
regarding the way of recording you're right , that's all the power of the mpc's , you can recording a drum , make it playing looped and add add add add add ( each pad plays whatever sound you put on it )
hope it'll help you !

get an mpc. if you got extra cah get the one with the 8 out board. after that, dont leave your house for a month and you will be on your way. good luck.

check with your local guitar center or whatever and try it out there....

depends on what you want to use it for.

No let me get this straight. The Zip Drive is just used for extra storage space. And How do you go about getting the finished product to a CD.

Also how do you determine where your sample starts and end. Do you load into the MPC then once it's in determine where you want it to start and end or do you have to enter it perfectly.

the zip is for loading and saving samples. there is NO hard drive or ROM on the mpc. you can get a rom card but i wouldnt bother. so when you turn it on, there is nothing in the machine. you can sample your records in the mpc, edit them in the trim screen, filter them, tune them up/down, chop em, dice em, assign em to pads, basically a whole lot. you can make entire songs with the mpc alone, i do and a lot o other cats on this forum do too. .i only usew the moc to make beats right now. i have had other pieces of gear and have sold most of them but stuck with the mpc.
as far as getting it to cd, you have to have some type of recording device such as your computer or a stand alone workstation to track and mix. but i wouldnt worry about that part of the process just yet. i would get the mpc, make a few beats and get comfortable with it, then start looking at recording devices. get a catalog from guitar center or sweetwater or full compass and read the descriptions of the stuff in there, that will give you some idea of what everything does.
o yeah, make sure to get teh extra ram chips cuz you wont have much sampling time if you dont.

I have found different models but don't really see a difference. like here are two for an example. What is the difference between these models. And what does the extra option do.

http://www.pssl.com/bitemdetail.tpl?eqi ... 1011535948


http://www.pssl.com/bitemdetail.tpl?eqi ... 1011535948

the more expensive one has the flash rom. it may have 8 outs or the fx board too, but i dont think that one does. if youre tight on cash get the base model. you can add the other stuff later.

MAYBE you could wait and see if the MPC 1000 meets your needs, thats what Im telling all the peeps I know to do, since who knows, the 1000 may be super tight.

how much is that gonna cost. i keep forgetting its coming out cuz i dont think i will get one, but it does look good for the newbies.

I think the list price is 1000 dollars so it'll prolly retail for like 700-800 dollars. A good deal since the MPC costs close to 2 grand to get everything (memory, 8 outs efx, zip and cd rom drive)

Id just wait and see if it meets my needs and if it dont, you have had an extra month to save some $$$$ up.

Whats a flash rom for

I don't know of many people who own the flash rom option. Basically it stores sh!t that you save (samples, programs, sequences) that can be accessed as soon as the MPC is turned on, as opposed to a zip drive or external harddrive which you load sh!t from into the ram of the MPC. So for example, you have a certain drum program with samples that you like to use alot, you store it in flash rom so it's always accessible. It sounds very useful, but it seems like too much cash to spend when you could put that cash towards an 8 output board for the MPC and still have money left over for cables.

Personally if I were you I would go for the MPC2000XL over an MPC1000. The 2000 is a tried and true design that's been around for years. The MPC1000 hasn't even been released yet and lord knows how long it will take to find and fix all the bugs. For all we know the thing may be made of all plastic (correct me if I'm wrong). Plus the pads are smaller. Another reason I'd recommend the 2000 is that you have this forum here with people who are extremely knowledgable on the 2000 and could help with virtually any problem you have learning it (as long as you read the manual first and don't bust our balls with dumb a$$ questions [kidding]).

Here's another thing that Mesh said that I totally agree with, you should get the MPC first and get comfortable with it before you buy other stuff. You'll make much wiser equipment purchases that complement the MPC after you get to know the it.