**** it, here' the whole damn thing:
LAST EDITED ON Mar-05-05 AT 03:05 AM (EST)
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flashiusclay
Member since Mar-4-04
326 posts Mar-05-05, 03:02 AM (EST)
17. "RE: school me on the SP-1200"
In response to message #14
Okayplaya, read it like a novel.
>i'm not sure why it is so revered,
>>>>>Believe me. If you had one and bled a lil bit on it, you would know. Matterfact, you could just sample any snare off damn near any crusty piece of vinyl and you would geta good idea about why people talk about them with such reverance.
>how does it function and what are the advantages?
>>>>It's very simple. You start out with a clean canvas. There are no presets or sounds unless you have a disk that has drum sounds already on it, but I say make your own! You have 10 sample seconds broken into 4 2.5 second blocks. You cannot take a sample longer than 2.5 seconds. You have 8 drum pads, and four banks, ABCD, so you have 32 places to put shit for each floppy disk. You have 8 channels that correspond to a 1/4 inch out to place sounds in. One sound cuts another off in the same channel. There are simple filters on 6 of the outs, and 7 and 8 are unfiltered. The filters have the least high freqs in channel 1, and the highs get brighter in every channel all the way up to 6. The advantages? First and foremost, -drum roll, followed by tense dun dun dun!- THE SOUND! Ah, the sound that the SP gives your samples is pure beauty. It makes shit sound real, or just alive. People say it gives drums this... punch that other machines can't replicate. The thing is is that the SP handles bass frequency better than any other sampler I've ever used, and I've used many. Take a clean open note of bass and put in the Sp nice and loud, and voila, you're ready to get busy. Hi hats and horns also sound good in the SP, shit anything sounds good when you sample it with the SP. It has warmth and character. ANother advantage that some people would debate is really not an advantage, is the simplicity of it's layout. The 10 second rule forces you, FORCES YOU to be a crafty sample chopper. You can't really take too many loops per beat so you have to chop loops up, and you can often find a more suitable way to arrange notes you chopped than the way you found them on the record, and this promotes creativity and also helps to hide your tracks if you wanted to try to not clear a sample. Also the small sample second window makes you make for got damn sure that every sngle chop you have is hot, because with only 10 secs you simply have no room for bullshit. The weak is weeded from the strong. Your shit don't get too cluttered I find. My shit anyhoo. Uhhh... Also you can take like say a bass note, spread it out across the 8 drum pads, and then alter the pitch on each drum pad so you can play a bass melody with your one note. Pete Rock does this all the time, it's his signature burpy bass farts that everyone be biting now. That's an advanced trick, and I don't personally know anyone outside of my crew and myself who can flip this shit really ill. Also when you change the pitch of sounds, it gives it this really nasty effect, like **** up ring modulation, and it either sounds like shit, or it sounds like lo fi heaven. When you get hang of this shit, you're a sick puppy man. To compensate for your lo sample time, some cats are known to speed up the LP to 45 (or even 78 if you're a real sick ****) and then you slow it down on the SP and save some precious sample time. The old Casio FZ1 trick. I used to never pitch nothing down, and then one day I did, and I've been doing it steadily ever since, it's the signature SP tag.
>also, what is the difference between it and the mpc?
>>>>In theory they are pretty similar, in practice, ionobouthat. The MPC2000 is very powerful, you have more sample time, you have twice the drum pads, and the MPC has much better dynamic drum pad response. It is a better worksation for hooking up midi keyboards and sequencing on the drum machine. The MPC20000 has wave file editing, the SP, you can't even truncate super precise, when you edit samples it seems like the numbers that signify the sample move at strange intervals they have never figure it out. You know how a sample will be represented by #s, say a snare is like 9780 samples long. That represents like, a third of a second or so. Well say you don't like the attack of the snare and you want to move up the beginning a notch, it can be 0050 that you move up, or 0320, or 0078, or 0015, it's **** wierd. And that's the fine adjustment! At first I really didn't like that shit, because when I was learning to make beats, I learnd on the EPS and MPC before I used the SP, but now I'm used to it. Sometimes you cant help but have a click or a pop inna sound, and either you resample it and do it over or live with it. There are lots of differences between the two, I couldnt possibly list them all. But for me, the SP has balls and magic. The MPC makes me lazy and it sounds thin and puss to me. The same sounds that sound great in the SP, sound like bs in the MP. And I've known the MPC, and I'm talkin 2000xl type, to crimp a brotha's beat game. Too much sample time for some cats means too much meandering,a nd you get greedy, and when did greed ever do anyone any good. I swear to god, the SP-1200 has some kind of magic inside it. Ask Pete. Aske Gensu. Ask My SP-1200 is broken again. Somethign about that machine man. It's a funky lil tank. I be takin journeys on that thing, and the SP is my control panel in my flying saucer. That sounds corny maybe, but it's real as **** if you freak an SP man. I like the SP sequencer better too, it's real simple, and I can just slap sequences together like PBJ sandmitches. As soon as you press record you can throw notes down, so you don't have to wait. ANd I've known ideas and inspiration to be swallowed by the ardous task that is naming and assigning samples to MPC pads. that shit is for the birds. After all that work you don't even want to make a beat, and your samples sound weak anyway.
>why choose one over the other?
>>>>>Are you a beat digging drum break feen? Do you love boom bap? Are you not concerned with having drums that sound like Storch? Then the SP-1200 is for you. Are you a keyboard player that doesn't care how your drums sound? Would you get a preset disk full of industry patches? DO you wanna sample 20 bar loops? Do you not mind thin sounding samples? Then get an MPC. If you're gonna get one, get a MPC 60, 60ii or 3000 I'd say. I have no beef with those joints and I wil add them to my arsenal when the royalty checks start comin in. Stay away from the 2000, it's a piece of shit Akai made so they could have a cheaper lower quality drum machine than the Roger Linn (the **** Bill Gates of drum machine designers) sanctioned MPC 60 and 3000 boxes. I can't tell you about the 4000 other than than it was mad complicated and the first time I couldn't navigate an MPC was when I uffked with the 4000 at guitar center.
>finally, how many years before you feel comftorble with it?
>>>>I was comfortable with it in about 3-4 mos, and it would've been quicker if Ida had a few pointers from an older wiser me, if you know beat machines and you had me teaching you, I could show you what you need to know in a day. It would take a minnit for you to get used to the older technology, but these things take time. I think I got real nice on it about a year or two after I had it, and every year I get crazier with it, and now I pose a threat to a lotta kids who shit dont be knockin man. At the very least shit on the SP KNOCKS. I once put a beat from an Mp followed by a beat from the SP on a tape, and I was amazed at how much heavier and realistic the Sp jawn sounded.
I'm tired. Hope I gave you some insight.
P.ostive E.nergy A.ctivates C.onstant E.levation
