Brand Newbie

Hello everyone..I'm totally new at all of this. First off, let me say that I'm a guitar player, jazz that is, but I'm looking to start creating music from within, it'll be more of "R&B" and "Black Gospel" type of stuff. Here's my equipment, I have a pc that I built myself strictly for music production. I have an M-Box1, Guitar Port, PodXt Live, Reason 2.5, Pro Tools LE that came with M-Box1 and an MPC-1000 that was used. MBox & Guitar port is already connected to pc. I turn my MPC on and can't get any sounds what so ever when hitting pads. I don't think that I want to use Reason yet due to the learning curve. I can record my guitar thru M-Box in Pro Tools, but I'd like to make my own drum beats and import them into my protools. The owners manual of the mpc doesn't tell you how to activate the pads or it's not clear for a newbie like me.

Can someone please give me some helpful info?

you need to sample or load the sounds into the mpc. There are no preset sounds in the mpc.

"You need to sample or load sounds" Where do you start? They're no basic drum beats?

dwricha, sounds like you just wanna play along with something for now and record those guitars. its really easy to find free sounds on the net. really easy

www.google.com

make friends with this site. it can be a good one.

type in free instrument loops or free instrument samples or free drum breaks or free drum sounds

that will get you started. download them into your computer. if im not mistaken, the mpc 1000 has a usb port, right? if so it should be easy to transfer sounds from the computer to the mpc. send the sounds from the computer to the mpc and load the up into the pads.