recording without bpm and/or about improvising loops

Hi,
sometimes I'd like to use my MPC live to record a long phrase as it was a loop.

It would be awesome if the MPC would allow to press record and then close the recording of a long pattern without having to set BPM and bars as it was an audio looper.
Is such an option available?

thank you

The best way is to trim samples by the numbers.

Lets say you have 3 loops, one drum pattern, one bassline and one synth melody. Lets say the drums are 4 bars long, the bassline 2 bars long and the synth is 8 bars and you want to play all three at once playing on time with a single palm strike against the pads.

You would need to trim your main sample by the numbers and multiply that number by the number of bars. For example: we trim the drum pattern to 2440 samples. The start and end points are perfect and the drum loops, so with that, you know 4 bars are 2440 samples. Now lets trim the bassline, we know its 2 bars, so quickly we can trim the bassline to 1220 samples because we can divide 4 bars to 2 bars. Then the synth with 8 bars, you can take either number from the drum (2440 x 2 = 4880) or the bassline (1220 x 4 = 4880) and you'll get 4880.

Considering that all samples are pitched the same, you will get perfect loops without beat detectors or quantize. If all pitch-tuned differently, its best to resample, then trim by the numbers.

The math looks complicated but its easy peazy when you count how many bars in a sample. Once you got that, the numbers appear themselves.

Unguitar wrote:It would be awesome if the MPC would allow to press record and then close the recording of a long pattern without having to set BPM and bars as it was an audio looper.
Is such an option available?

maybe you have only been using the Looper? if you use the Sampler then you do not have to set bpm/bars ahead of time, it can record up to 20 minutes.
after the first recording you will still have to define bpm/bars and place the sample if you want to build on it.

I'm sorry if my English is not good enough to express what I mean.
Let me try articulate it in a different way:
Imagine you have a looper that records midi instead of audio.
As it is with audio loopers, you don't have to set up a bpm or measures, it records starting from the first record press and stops when you press again.
Instead of audio I would like to record the pads (midi data) I'm playing and create a midi loop.

well, on the Main screen, up in the Sequence section. you can turn off the "loop" button.
when you record, the sequence will keep extending until you stop.

it's still a good idea to set the bpm close to what you are playing at or the sequence will not loop cleanly without some editing.

xantus wrote:well, on the Main screen, up in the Sequence section. you can turn off the "loop" button.
when you record, the sequence will keep extending until you stop.

thank you, this is the trick!
the solution which works best for me is setting the bpm to a very high value and disabling the metronome.
As soon as I start recording (with loop off) I can set loop on again so that once I stop recording the MPC starts looping.

This is exactly what I was looking for.
Many thanks for the brilliant idea!