Laying the foundations.

Okay, I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet.

Over the New Year I had a bit of a revelation, not gonna write the whole story out, but basically I'm 24 and have spent the last 10 years of my life, drinking, doing a lot of drugs, and generally, not doing anything productive.

Over new year, I looked around at the people that I've been friends with throughout a huge chunk of my adult life and realised this isn't what I want anymore, I need some positive change.

I knew the only way to really change my life, was to drop the people that bring me down and only maintain contact with the people who lift me up, so I knew I was probably gonna be quite lonely for a while until I found some new friends who weren't up to the same shit.

I had a search over the last couple weeks to see what I could fill my spare time with instead of alcohol and came across a few MPC videos, straight away I knew this was something I could fill my time with, and would make me a lot more happy than getting wasted all the time.

So anyway, to the point...

I've invested in an MPC studio as a starting point, I got a high power laptop too, and am ready to put some serious time and effort into this, and am hoping that its something that can help me turn things around.

So I'm sitting at the moment, waiting on the MPC arriving, it should be here later today... and I wanted to know, from the time I open the box, what would you say are the vital things I should learn on the MPC, I've looked over lots of the tips and tricks but finding it hard to figure out what ones are the first things I should be focusing on, I'm looking to do some production work and am willing to put a lot of time and effort into this.

For anyone who offers their help thank you, and I apologise if this seems like a stupid question. Just really excited and anyone who can offer a little insight, even if its just about how they started out, then it would be most appreciated.

God bless

Welcome to the forums

First thing is get it all installed and start playing around with it, relax and have some fun. Then when you are ready to start properly exploring the machine, check out the book I wrote that's perfect for MPC Studio beginners, it will get you started on the right track and then gradually take you through a series of projects that introduce progressively more advanced topics so you can completely master the art of beat making on the MPC:

http://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/ ... laid-bare/

If you need more help with a particular topic, post up a question in the MPC Studio forum and we'll help you out.

Happy beat making

Thanks very much! Will have a play around once its through the door and will get the guide over next couple days. Looks like it has a bunch of great content.

Way to go 16th Chapter!

I was in your shoes around the same age as well. People were wondering why I don't come around the way like I used to, but I got fed up with people wanna laugh when you fall and no hand, so I knew they weren't anybody to be missing, and began my own thing.

I worked on many Roland samplers before I touched an MPC and the first bump I hit was learning to create Programs. On the Roland, you just sample and its automatically assigned and saved to an empty pad and that spoiled me. When I got my MPC500, I would sample something but it will not appear on any pad and that frustrated me. Later I learned that I had to create a Program in order to assign the samples on the pad. It might sound tedious, but actually setting up Programs is easy and the most vital part of production on an MPC. You can have a Program strictly full of snares and call it SNARES or you can have a Program filled with various samples for a specific song, it doesn't matter, Programs are like your sound banks to build sequences.

Second, is saving your stuff. I strongly recommend saving constantly. You trimmed a sample? Save it. You changed the name of a Program? Save it. You moved a sample to a different timing? Save it. Save it all no matter how big or how small the changes were, get into that habit of saving. Believe me, it'll become second nature and you'll be glad you did. Roland spoiled me so every time I worked on something, it'll disappear after turning it off, so I had to grill myself to get into saving.

Hope that gets you up and going

definitely just get yourself familiar with the workflow in general of the machine. figure out what programs, samples, sequences, projects are in order to ensure that you're saving/loading/recording stuff properly. read the manual front-back, watch as many tutorial videos as possible. most of all, have fun! it will take lots of time and energy to understand your machine, patience is key!

I only have one advice for you, do not cheat, only nick samples from either funk or jazz songs.
No one shot samples for your drum parts either!

Have fun mayne

i'd say learn what makes a break loop.....

1) buy the MPC tutorial from MPC-Tutor....it's the quickest way to get up and running on your MPC period

2) Make as many beats as you can! Through the process of trial and error you'll learn what works for you and what doesnt, and you'll become better that much more quickly

3) Listen to as many records as possible! Being a good digger and having a wealth of interesting sounds available is more important than sheer technical skill on the MPC

4) Focus on arranging your beats! Eg: dont just make them as a repeating 4-8 bar loop, include an intro/outro and change some of the patterns up throughout the song. This is essential to making songs out of your beats AND you'll start identifying what kind of elements make up a good beat

5) Read the forums here, especially the older posts. Lots of great info shared by users that you cant find elsewhere