Thinking of buying an MPC 1000 and other equipment...

Ayo whassup MPC'az... Russ from FL... first post. I'm a music lover and hip hop head... Im getting into production and have a filthy ear for music. I know that I want an MPC... I used to own an ensoniq asr-x pro... (I know the two can't compare) but I wasn't happy with it. I want to know what I will need along side of the MPC to make hot shit. I want to purchase a keyboard mos def... could I hook it up directly to the MPC? or would I need some other equipment that will make it work?? Also... a mixing board, digital workstation... what good would these do me?? I want to make quality recordings... if I have all of this... would a computer with proggies like CueBase and Sound Forge still do me any favors?

Thanks.

Russ

It seems to me that all your suggestions would work, you gotta decide what kinda tracks you want to make, if you just doing sampling/chopping/looping/programming you just need an mpc. You said you'd like to get a keyboard so you got more options there, you want like a triton or motif ES or Fantom, or maybe some analog syth like a MS2000 or a microkorg or whatever... go to a music store and play with some gear and decide what is easy for you to use and also what has sounds you like. Only you know what will be right for you. You need either a mixer and a multitrack recorder, or a stand alone digital multitrack recorder that has a built in mixer, or possibly if you have a computer you just need a good recording soundcard/interface and some software. You can do everything on software that you can do with hardware and external gear, but the limitations of your computer can hinder the performance... ask questions and see what floats your boat.

Absolutely - it works v nicely with an external keyboard, I made sure of that before I spent cash. I hook up a Kawai K5000S to MIDI Ins & Out, use a "MIDI Track" to record my (crappy) playing, then play it back to the keyboard in tandem with drum tracks in the same sequence.

It also works great when setting up multisamples, one sample per key: hit a key on the K5000 selects the MPC Pad matching that incoming MIDI note. Assign a sample per key, set Note On (instead of One Shot), use detuning to fill in the gaps, and he results can be pretty good. I have the MPC sounding like a Mellotron, playing live, using some free samples off the 'Net, for my King Crimson impressions..!

Another K5000 user!!! Sweet!!

It's my main controller and best kept secret...until now..