How good is the 16 levels on MPC 1000?

I am thinking about buying an MPC 1000 to use playing live. My basic idea is to dump all my parts out of ableton and have the base of the track on my octatrack. I want to use the mpc to sequence my mopho synth and also to use it to launch one shot samples.

I also want sample some of the soft synth parts (I'm trying to not use a computer live) and was wondering if I could do this by sampling the middle note in the range of a riff and porting it over to the mpc and then using the 16 levels feature to play the riffs? What is the pitch shifting like? Does it warp the sample badly I.e. will it sound decent?

Am I asking too much of the mpc with all oF this?

that depends on the sample usually... it doesn't pitch the sample using any time stretch... it pitches it the same way a sound gets pitched if you piano roll a one shot (if that makes sense) ... the lower the pitch the longer the sound plays, and the higher it is pitched it makes it shorter.


Each pad is like a key on the keyboard... so pad 13 is exactly an octave up from pad 1.

pitch shifting sounds wack in the mpcs. you can use it to achieve some lofi sounds and such.

but you want to sample whole phrases? you have to use the patched phrase functionality in order to keep the sample length th esame regardless of how much you pitch it.

on the 1000 you´ll need jjos for that afaik.

however, jjos is the most sophisticated os for your mpc!

**** wrote:pitch shifting sounds wack in the mpcs. you can use it to achieve some lofi sounds and such.

yeah that is what I find sometimes... the only way I find it good most of the time is if you find a key on 16 levels and you only trigger that key.. dont try and do a melody... the only time I find a melody sounds okay is if you are using a bass note (sine wave style..)

and for whatever it's worth... just so you know in advance... 16 levels does not send MIDI data... so it can only be used to modify the sample within the MPC itself.

16 levels should not be the selling point of an mpc

i think you could get better results if yous sampled each note into your mpc instead of using 16 levels.

damien907 wrote:i think you could get better results if yous sampled each note into your mpc instead of using 16 levels.

+10 on this. I really only use 16 levels to see how a melody would sound with that sample, if it sounds good I'll put the pad across a few pads and adjust the decay so a lower note won't go on for quite so long or hypersample the notes if I can like Damien suggested. But if you pitch up/down at all you gotta already be into the lofi sampler sound it gives, definitely not gonna pass it off as anything else.