Problem slaving to MIDI while recording

I had a problem trying to slave the MPC1000 to an external drum machine and trying to capture (record) its MIDI output to a Track on the MPC. I could not find any mention (in the manual) of how to record while syncing to an external device... only how to PLAY the MPC1000 as a slave. I finally got it to work, but not without a problem.

The problem was... I always lost the first beat of the recording. Always. What I did was to set the Sync In parameter on the MIDI mode to the first MIDI input. At this point in the manual it says when you go back to the MAIN page you'll see (EXT) for the tempo, but this is not the case. It still shows 120.0, but... whatever.

In order to record the external drum machine (which is the Master) the only way I could make it work was to manually depress and hold the REC button on the MPC while pressing PLAY on the external machine. As soon as recording started, I could release the REC button. This works and everything is recorded in sync... except the downbeat of the first measure is never captured! Which is usually a bassdrum beat, which I always have to manually go back in and insert in step edit mode.

Is there another procedure for recording while syncing? Anyone else have this problem? Thanks.

It sounds like you're doing exactly the right thing by holding the Rec button down, since the Start command is coming from the other machine.

But to lose the first beat makes me wonder if the MPC1000 is not entering Rec mode quickly enough. The workaround I suggest is to add an empty bar or two at the start of the song in the other machine.

Rec means "overwrite on the first pass", which may take a little time to set up... so could it help to hold Overdub down instead? Hmmm...