Creation is messy

When I am just starting on a song, Chopping samples, looking for sounds, effecting and resampling sounds... I have no idea where I'm going with it all yet. I've been doing all my work in a project and saving that project to a folder. That's great for organizing my CF card BUT dealing with this mess in a project is driving me crazy. I'll make 5 or 6 effect setups. I'll have samples everywhere and all of my programs have things all over the place with all kinds of crazy settings. 8 character names. Sequences are all over the place and I get worried that I'm going to mess up something good while I'm trying to build something new. I used to try to undo the things I did so I could get my project back to normal but that is just too much work. Rearranging the pads in a program can be a real pain.

With this last song I've been working on for the beat battle here on the forums, I didn't work in a project while I was designing and experimenting with the sounds. I'd start up the mpc. Sample something. Work with the sounds till I like them. Save the samples on the CF and turn it off. This seemed to work well cause I could do anything and then get a fresh start when I restarted the mpc. But I still ended up with 5 or 6 folders full of attempts at things. Some of the stuff I could use, some I couldn't.

I'm about done with the song now. It's in a folder at the root of the CF called 'New'. That's because New is at the beginning of 'New Folder'. haha! The other work is in a folder called 'BB08' that contains other folders named 'A', 'B', 'C', '1', '2'. A lot of these were quick saves cause I had to go deal with the family and didn't have time to bang out a good name.

Maybe this is just normal and I need to get used to it. There's nothing like the feeling of a blank mpc and a fresh idea. Is the beginning of working on a new song a mess for you guys too?

it's the only way to do it as far as i'm concerned... AUTOLOAD is for pussies...

Not for me. I create a new folder for every song I do. Before I sample, I create a new folder. Then I sample, chop, load sounds into program, which will eventually have the same name, and in no particular order. Once my program is set, Start working out my sequences. Once I'm finished with the session, I save entire memory to the song's folder. Even if I have a program from another folder, it gets saved in this song' folder. Next time I fire it up I only load one folder and can continue what I was doing. When I make changes that I know I'm keeping I just overwrite that sequence or program. I don't use song mode a whole lot so maybe others will cover anything I missed. And by the way, The idea for each song having its own folder and then saving entire memory to it is not mine but one that I found on this forum and seemed the most efficient to me.

Yeah what Crossings said too. **** auto load, deleting that folder was the first thing I learned how to do.

Yeah, I'm thinking the next tune, I'm gonna try using only one Program and let everything be named automatically like Sample01. I'm not even going to try to layout the pads any particular way just start at A1 and each new sample goes to the next pad.

I wanna spend more time making music and less time trying to organize everything.

Thanks for the replies...

Do you guys try to get your sounds all processed and in a program before you start making some music? For me it seems like I have to start making the music before I'll really know what I need to do with the stuff I just sampled. Like I'll chop some stuff up but as soon as I start playing those samples and get a groove together, I've got to chop the samples more or tweak this or that to make the music hit.

don't use just one program... it will limit you... at least have a separate program for your drums and all that... some programs you will want to have set at POLY and others MONO... you'll get the hang of it soon...

MPC500 can play 24 Programs at once.

Yeah, I'm with you on the program thing. I've been building everything from scratch on the last few projects so I haven't had a pre made program to bring in. Just to see if it works, I'm going to put everything in one program and sequence everything in a single track across multiple sequences. I can break out the parts to separate tracks later if I need to. I think this is how I wrote my first couple of songs on the mpc when I first got it. It was fun!

On the other hand, I'd like to start building some multi-sample instruments and stock kits to use so I can compose some music from scratch without having to dig for samples. It'd be more like a musical instrument then.

As for the folder thing. Lately, I start in one folder with the idea that I'm going to save the project in there till it's done but then... I get all these different directions I'd like to take the tune but I don't want to have to undo the changes if it sucks so I save it in another folder and before you know it, I have like 10 folders with different versions of the same project. I guess that's what made me write this post.

I'm still looking for that 'magic' workflow.

I guess that's the best thing about the mpc... all the different ways you can use it!