Interfacing the MPC

Hello Everyone,

I just got my new MPC and am looking forward to upgrading it; I guess the standard is RAM, HD space, and the JJOS OS?

Anyway, I have kinda a noob question here...

Basically I will be living out of the country for awhile and need to make sure I have everything with me that I am gonna need. I'm trying to bring a small portable studio--we'll see how that goes!

Now next week I am going to have Ableton Live and I wanted to know if there is a way to control sounds on my Mac with the MPC as the midi controller? Or do I have to sample the sounds I want to use with the MPC 1000 and just use my laptop to record?

Again I am very new to all this, so if I sound foolish it's because I am!

Thanks in advance.

kalibhakta wrote:Again I am very new to all this, so if I sound foolish it's because I am!

Thanks in advance.

We all need to start someplace right?

I have both live and an MPC, and personally I'd say you should focus on one at a time, even if you only spend a week or two on each. You're quite likely to get frustrated trying to learn both and how to hook them up together right away and use both to their fullest.

To answer your question though, yes you can hook them both up together over midi and have the MPC control live, or have live control the MPC. The choice is yours, but getting it to work properly is in the details of how you have to configure them. If you try it, I would suggest you have Live be the slave to the MPC, as every time I've tried to run Live as the midi clock I haven't been too thrilled with how it works. Again though, doing this there are a host of things you'll need to learn such as audio latency, midi signal delays and a host of other issues that make it nearly impossible for anybody to give you a correct answer since it is really trial and error and depends on multiple specs for your computer.

It's a tough call to say which one to suggest to start with and to use for what purpose. Ableton Live wins hands down for most things such as the great manual, ability to use plug ins, visualizing sequences and arrangements, wonderful time stretching, sweet included effects... etc.

However the MPC is just so much more hands on and simpler. I've been able to do quite a few things I need to on the MPC that I normally would have done in Live but sometimes you need to be more creative about it. For me at least, limiting myself has allowed me to focus a lot more on things that are important for crafting a sound instead of digging through hundreds of plugins and presets.

The MPC can be 100% self contained and will really force you to focus on how to use it and get the most out of it. Live gives you so many options that it is easy to become lost in a sea of what ifs. Again, I'm not trying to say one is better than the other, but if you find yourself getting distracted easily then the MPC is pretty great to stay focused, if you want to explore and experience lots of fascinating things then go for Live.

Maybe that helps... hopefully it doesn't confuse you more ...