Looping a drum sequence

Hi

SO, I bought an MPC500 a few days ago and arrived in the post. Everything has been going swimmingly apart from the fact that I cant understand the bloody instruction manual! I basically want to know how i can loop a drum sequence i have made, so I can then record the rest of the sequence, if you get my drift....
please hit me back
cheers

Yo record all your drums on a different track. Then it will loop depending on how long you set the pattern... so 4 bars, 8 bars, etc.

Then you start building on top of that. It is like a multi track music program on your computer kind of....

Half of understanding the MPC is getting the lingo down. A pattern is all the samples and tracks combined that you record for that section of the song. A program contains all the samples you load, you can have multiple programs... so a drum program, bass program, synth program, mixed program with all of these, etc...

A track can utilizes programs to record seperately from other instruments (or whatever you want). You can use ONE program on multiple tracks though. So if you have a drum program with a hi hat, snare, and kick... you can use that one program on multiple tracks to seperate all of the instruments....

Does this make sense? Hopefully this helps somewhat.

I also recommend buying the tutorial from this site. It is $40 but is worth it to learn your instrument quickly, and it is written in normal English. So if you aren't familiar with terminology or the lingo of these machines it will help more.

Good luck.

Hey,

Thank you Objek
Can you explain to me the first point you made about recording the beat onto a different track. just a little bit confused

Universal Magnetic wrote:Hey,

Thank you Objek
Can you explain to me the first point you made about recording the beat onto a different track. just a little bit confused

Yes, tracks are performances you play that are layered on top of each other to make a sequence. So say you play a drum beat for 4 bars on one track and then a bass line on another track... you can then mute the drum track and the bass track will still play...

Have you ever used a 4 track? Or Ableton? Or Pro Tools? Tracks that are similar to this.
The purpose of tracks is so you can mute other recorded performances. This keep certain performances separate so mixing later on can be achieved better, and editing is also simpler.

This is the workflow in a flow chart

[Sequence]
|
|
[Tracks]
|
[Bass] -- [Snare] -- [Kick] -- [Sample] -- [Whatever You Want]
| | | | |
[Prog. 1] [ Drum Program ] [ Prog. 2] [ Prog. Whatever Sounds]
| | | |
[Bass [Drum Sounds] [Chopped [Retarded Lil Jon Noises]
Samp] Sample]


The tracks fall under the sequence. These are the performances you record with the programs.... below [Tracks] are all your separate tracks (bass, snare, kick). These tracks hold the performance information you play and record.... The programs house your samples. You use these programs to trigger the sounds with the pads. Programs can be used in multiple tracks like the [snare] and [kick] tracks.

Hopefully this makes some sense. This is the best I can do right now. Haha.
If you don't understand this you should buy the book, read some info about basic recording, or take your MPC back. Most of these things are basic to music, and recording.

Track – 1) One audio recording made on a portion of the width of a multitrack tape. 2) One set of control commands in a sequencer recorded in a similar manner to an audio track and often controlling one synthesizer over one MIDI channel. 3) A term with the same meaning as the term Band Track (the part of a song without the lead vocal or without the lead and background vocals). 4) A section of the magnetic surface of a disc consisting of a circular band at a fixed distance from the center.

http://recordingeq.com/GlosPubPT.htm#sectT

Check this out. Its basic terminology. I hope this helps some too. Feel free to ask some more questions.

Yeah.... my diagram got messed up when I posted.