Sampling live stuff for the mpc

Hi. I don't own an mpc but I have a question about sampling.
Okay, say I have a track with drums and everything but I want to add my own homemade shaker. When sampling, can i sample while the beat is playing and only sample like 4 bars? THat way the shaker would be at the same temp as the beat and I wouldn't have to truncate it. Sorry, I don't know anything.

You can sample 4 bars, 2 bars, 1 bar, hell even a single shaker and put that one everywhere in the beat you like. That would also be the most memory-efficient way. No way do you need to record your shaker during your whole track. Is that what you wanted to know?

To further expand on the answer......this is where the MPC's excell as a drum sampler / sequencer. Shake that shaker 10 different ways. Sample them all. Assign them to pads, make sure timing correct is on and let your fingers dance....put some of the longer samples in a mute group with some shorter ones perhaps. Play around with velocity...... Your track will almost asuredly sound just as good and probably tighter than what your percussionist can play.....

All the above are great suggestions. I can only speak for the 2000 series MPCs, not sure about the newer models, but you can not sample whle the sequencer/beat is playing. I do a lot of live instrumentation as well and I was really disappointed when I found out I could'nt sample while the beat was playing. I want to say it's possible on the 2500. Not sure though.

teacher wrote:I do a lot of live instrumentation as well and I was really disappointed when I found out I could'nt sample while the beat was playing. I want to say it's possible on the 2500. Not sure though.

It's possible on the 2500, called Direct Recording. Eats a lot of memory though, but with 128 MB...

Okay, lets say i want to play a guitar part with my friend. Can I get him to record a 2 bar guitar loop while the beat is playing and just loop that?

or do i sample him playing and then trim it and hope it fits into the song?

thats kinda what i'm getting at

I think the 1000 doesn't have this feature.

But you can always record into your MPC while playing your sequence along in the Record screen. Just make sure the output of your MPC does not get routed into the Record In again, but only the guitar amp you want to record. Afterwards you can trim the recorded guitar loop and fit it into the sequence. I think that should work on the 1000 also.