Ohh God! MPC500 is whooping my A$$ (Questions for the Forum

Alright, i got an MPC500 for a youth program. There is a serious learning curve since we make most of the music for kids on software. If anyone has some times please answer some of the questions we have ...

1. How do you load some of the songs from the memory card? When i access the Flash card is has a folder called Beatbox ... but the for love of me, i don't know how to set the program to the pads.

2. How do you time stretch a sound? Please assume that i know nothing of the process.

3. I am reading the manual over and over, and i am getting some things but is there a place where i can get a step by step process that shows me how to record in sounds, compose, and then send out of the MPC?

4. I am very happy with the purchase ... but I have a degree in music and this thing makes me feel like a novice. Any help would be awesome.

a song= a series of sequences strung together.

a program= the set of sounds assigned to pads

once you load the program you have to choose the program from the loaded ones. it's a really simple machine, more simple than it seems but it's not easy to get at first.

I know what you mean about feeling like a novice. This manual could have been so much better laid out. If they had explained in the very beginning just the definitions of terms like Program, Project, Folder, File etc. I've spent probably 20 hours in the last few days just on trying to figure out the Save/Load process and I still don't fully grasp it. I can do what I need to do but I sure don't feel I understand it. They could have easily saved so many people so much time and frustration writing a decent manual and maybe anticipating where people would have problems.

Referring to the reply above: What I've gathered is that a Program is just the information about what samples are assigened to which pads, it doesn't necessarily include samples themselves. That's an example of something that took hours of frustration loading different "Programs" I had created to find they didn't play anything unless the samples were loaded first, maybe from another "project"..
So what EXACTLY is a Program and what EXACTLY is Project. Exactly, not generally so that we can really know what we're doing rather than finding things out slowly by trial and error and never really knowing for sure.

a complicated part about the process is knowing that there is the internal memory that you work on like a workspace until you have what you want to save then you save it to the cf card.

a program is the samples assigned to the pads together. but then you have to choose to work with that program once you've loaded it.

a project is everything together but i don't have much experience with them.

Alright i am getting a sense of some things ...

Here is one of the exact problems ... I follow the manual ... that seems to be cool (hard to follow). when i press MODE > LOAD > it lets me go to folders that seem to have some preset banks. I select one, it then ask me do i want to clear what existing folder, i say yes, nothing happens. I say no, i get one more question and then nothing happens ... i just want to access the preset banks on my Memory Card ... please help me ...

I also need to learn to time stretch samples but god knows i am having enough problems with this first ... let alone learning to put my own sounds on the darn thing ...

PS i do like this machine. my setbacks are in no way stopping me from understanding how dope the MPC500 is.

DHGonzalez wrote:Alright, i got an MPC500 for a youth program. There is a serious learning curve since we make most of the music for kids on software. If anyone has some times please answer some of the questions we have ...

1. How do you load some of the songs from the memory card? When i access the Flash card is has a folder called Beatbox ... but the for love of me, i don't know how to set the program to the pads.

You can choose to load different types of files/folder.

Probably what you want is either to load the folder or the program file in that folder.

When you see the folder name, use the right cursor key to move into that folder and view the files, scroll through until you see a program file (.PGM), then choose to load it with samples (so that the samples that the program assigns to the pads are loaded), and choose to clear all files in memory (so it clears anything in memory and only loads the pgram and samples assigned to that program).

The Program files tells the MPC which samples are assigned to each pad.

DHGonzalez wrote:2. How do you time stretch a sound? Please assume that i know nothing of the process.

You go into the Trim mode, and then the Edit: parameter within Trim mode, and change the type of Edit: to Stretch. Then you set the original tempo, and the New tempo. If you don't know the original tempo, set it to 100, and then the new tempo becomes a percentage value that it will stretch the sample to. Then there are different algorithms to choose from, you will have to experiment to see which algorithm suits each sample best. Once you press Do It, you are prompted for a new pad to assign the newly created sample to.

DHGonzalez wrote:3. I am reading the manual over and over, and i am getting some things but is there a place where i can get a step by step process that shows me how to record in sounds, compose, and then send out of the MPC?

Have you tried the MPC500 Quickstart Manual?

DHGonzalez wrote:4. I am very happy with the purchase ... but I have a degree in music and this thing makes me feel like a novice. Any help would be awesome.

Keep asking here when you run into problems, lots of helpful people to try and sort it out for you.

this video might be helpful, even though it's for the 1000 the save system is the same.

http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/s ... hp?t=97467

SimonInAustralia wrote:

DHGonzalez wrote:3. I am reading the manual over and over, and i am getting some things but is there a place where i can get a step by step process that shows me how to record in sounds, compose, and then send out of the MPC?

Have you tried the MPC500 Quickstart Manual?

werd i was gonna say the same thing

dbl post.