live performance and the mpc1000?

greetings!

first of all, some background info: i'm a laptop based performer who has become jaded with the idea of computer production and wants a more "hands on" approach to music. for the last couple of weeks i've been scouring the internet for info on samplers, and it seems like the mpc1000 is the one for me.

i'm curious if any one can share some info on how they go about using their mpc in live situations? i'm particularly concerned about how many songs can be stored on the mpc. from what i can tell, since there are 4 pad banks, (assuming that a song can be held on 16 pads) does that mean that it can hold only 4 songs at a time? is the trick having multiple CF cards?

(i'm probably way off and i'm lucky if i'm making any sense to you guys, so please be gentle on me!)

The sample banks (A,B,C,D) are merely extensions of the 16 pads. They are PAD banks, basically allowing the MPC to effectively have 64 pads, although it only has 16 physical pads. That means that you can have 64 pads to assign samples/drums/sounds/or any 16 bit 44.1 mHz .wav files to. And each of those 64 pads can have a total of 4 layers (different samples or variations of the same sample) assigned to it. To complicate issues more, that is only the limitation per program. Any particular project can contain multiple programs... each utilizing 64 pads. So basically, you will not run out of "spots" to put your samples/sounds/drums, etc.

Personally, I do not use my 1000 for live performace, so maybe others will be able to help you more, but I can say that from what I know about the 1000, I think it is versitile enough to handle pretty much any live performance situation that you can imagine.

It is not suited for playing back long stereo files because of its limited memory.

But for sample based, loop based, drum based live mangling, it is perfect.

This is what I do. Basically I use the flash memory in the mpc to hold my best drum samples. The drum samples that I use in all of my tunes and also all of my percussion. That way when I load up it instantly loads my drum sounds. I then connect via midi 'in' my keyboard. From midi out I then connect to logic where I load up BFD (drum programme) and then 15 of my fave synths.
Using channel splitter in Logic I can then use my mac as a straight sound module that is being contolled by the MPC. This is how I do it anyway.
Hope this helps.

i'd suggest using the internet to learn the 1k before you even consider buying one. get a really good idea of a lot of its functions and stuff. go to the store, try some simple stuff. fall in love. and then i'm sure by then you can answer any vague question you have right now. word.

you can play back entire samples in 'mode' 'load'. just click play/start while the sample is highlighted and it will play right through it..

Yeah but there is a limit no the number of samples you can have up on the mpc because of the RAM limit, however using it a the control for your computer means that you retain the cool functions but have unlimited sounds and RAM etc..... for samples

your workflow is going to change a bit in using the MPC. even with the 128MB memory upgrade, you can't have tons and tons of long samples sitting in memory to be played back. so if you're used to just triggering a long sample on a laptop, this really isn't going to work that great on the MPC after a couple songs.

what you can do with the MPC is you can easily have hundreds of short samples, like a snare sound or something, and have the whole thing sequenced. the sequence is just a MIDI file that triggers all the small samples. chain a bunch of sequences together in SONG mode and you have a song. the sequences take up less memory than a large audio chunk would, and that's the best way to trigger long samples or loops for your song.

read page 5 or the manual, which is downloadable at the Akai website, to get a better idea of how the MPC handles sample playback and song structuring....

also there are a ton of videos on YouTube of people using the MPC, so you can get a good idea of what the machine is cabable of....

My songs are pretty basic, so that means just a couple of tracks for each song. So for example pad 1 is bassline, 2=string, 3=bassline2, 4=pad1,
5=pad2, etc. By mute/unmuting those sounds I build my songs.
Most of my percussion comes from drummachines which are synct to the mpc which I can program live aswell.

For tempo changes I use next sequence or manually change the tempo.