freeware beat chopping

Yeah I thought it would be nice to chop on a train or something on your phone. I dont know how far I will pursue it, but hey, the idea came into my head and I had to give it a shot! AskR and I are currently reverse engineering patched phrases and I think we can say that the next release of BeatButcher (hopefully coming soon) will support Chop Shop 2.0 exports. That means you can chop a beat and the mpc500 will automatically stretch it to the current tempo!

hey that got me thinking, if you're gonna use a rex based programs than it basically comes down to cutting a loop and keeping original score/groove. When you load/dial the program you can playback the loop over the pads or hit play and , its creative when you chop your own sequenced loops but if its a basic loop than it might be handy if you could add zones from the editor. The zone is in addition to the basic markers used in the "rex" file, so its only functional in the editor but it does change the layout/order of the loop over the pads while assigning them over pads in consequtive order according to the zones.

I'm not entirely sure how u mean mate.. but it sounds to me like u might be talking about sequences or something? when u said the zones on pads + hit play part.. to clarify, were talking about one single sample that automatically plays back at the current bpm.. sorry if i misunderstood..

ok, let me dissect the rex file...originaly its one wav, after autochop you'd have a rex file. Opposed to the rex file you'd have an akai program file and the samples(chops), with recycle you'd also have the midi file. You load the akai program and the chops are devided in consequetive order over the pads (16 chops to the break means that 16 pads are assigned). If you have recycle you can re-arrange the loop from its original groove/sequence by setting a different start/end marker (example of a zone). Im not sure about the idea of "timestretch", i think its in way that you'd chop the sample including midi file thus maintaining the original groove (like recycle does) except that its not possible to hit a pad and let the loop play as a one shot in sync with the selected track bpm. The way the chops would be assigned to the pads is in the same order recycle would cut it (or by your idea for timestretching files). You eitherway would end up with a chopped loop + midi file to retain the loop which you can manualy bang away in the same way by hitting pads 1 to 16(1 to 12 on the 1/2k).

Now...by zones i mean that in addition of the markers like explained in the comparison with recycle, there would be a zone. Not start/end but a zone that would include the markers in a selected zone and start/end is determined already by autochop(existing markers). A zone's start/end would be determined by the marker placed due to autochop and changing the order of zones would imply a different assigning of the chops to pads.

below example of normal operation

zones [ a ][ b ][ c ]
markers/chops 1to4 5to8 9to12
pads 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12


with an additional zone in the BB editor you'd simply re-arrange zones A/B/C to either B/B/C, pretty much whatever. The zones of course could vary in their range, preferably just drag the zone marker as desired. On top of that you would/could drag the zone over to a location in range of the 48 pads.

This is just currently from the use of the editor and not specific to the timestretching as i have no clue what you guys currently imply by timestretching. I just assume its a way of emulating timestretching which would mean that the loops is assigned to one pad which would adapt its tempo to the track tempo, more likely it'll be a program + midi file. This means that only when you hit the play button you would be able to hear the effect of "timestretching" and that hitting the pads in the original order gives you the option to manually play back the loop, chop by chop over the pads and recording it that way. "Timestretch" would be usefull then if no other editing of the original loop/score (thus the midi file used) is maintained which is not always the case.

I hope that clears up what i meant

Ah now i totally get what u mean.
However...
I think the previous convo between me and guyb led to some confusion.
let me clarify:

What we're working on is not related to timestretching nor sequence+program files ala. 1 sample per pad..
what we are working on is the reverse engineering/figuring out how it works/etc. of the Patched Phrase file format itself.
In other words, we're figuring out how to make the chopshop ****PP.wav/PP2.wav files, like on the 1k/2k, in a comp. program rather then on those mpcs.... iow, one sample assigned to one pad, one hit on the pad plays the entire phrase in the correct tempo, without any manual stretching, midi-seqs etc. just like a REX file loaded up in DrRex in reason.

hope that makes it clear mate.

Yeah it does, though i wonder whether thats possible without re-writing the OS which i hadnt taken into account considering this all was related to the BBeditor alone (though thumps up for OS modification, i want multimode filters!!!).


Eh...actually..small rephrase..are you guys reverse engineering the OS ? (Friggin Cool!)

Formant wrote:Yeah it does, though i wonder whether thats possible without re-writing the OS which i hadnt taken into account considering this all was related to the BBeditor alone (though thumps up for OS modification, i want multimode filters!!!).


Eh...actually..small rephrase..are you guys reverse engineering the OS ? (Friggin Cool!)

nope, thats yet another misconception which i guess stem from prev. mentioned conversation hehe.
the 500 cant create or modify (to any greater extent anyways) PP files.. however its quite capable of playing them back.
atm. we're (cant speak for guyb, but from my point of view anyways) only working on a method to create PP's for the 500 (or the others for that matter) for guys that dont own the other mpc's, but still want to make their own.

Yep I reckon we have succeeded too! BeatButcher can now write Chop Shop files! I am thinking we may also be able to hack the Akai wave format also so that you can set loop points in BeatButcher. Hopefully a new release coming soon....

Thats dope! I figured that editing them was limited to editor indeed but didnt knew it was possible for the half K to read them. Im a mpc2kxl owner(2x) since the release so im still somewhat conservative as i have never wanted a 1k/2,5k. I also bought recycle, something each old skool samplist probably has done and will keep on using it. It does look like you're also pretty much assembling a file (or file to program cq. program to file) converter aswell. Do you think there will be PP to Rex/APK conversion too, aside from the normal program batching (or vice versa of course) as it doesnt sound to be that impossible in the current way the editor is being formatted.

anyway, you guys are evil hehe

I'm not affiliated with the BBMPC project, cred for that goes to Guyb alone...
in regards to converting rex to pp/ the other way around. that was my initial idea, when me and guyb got started on the pp stuff.. so that's defi. something that might be coming up in the not too distant future.

It so happens that I implemented BeatButcherMPC chopping in exactly the same way as Akai did for Chop Shop. What this means is that you can load a patched phrase file into BeatButcherMPC and it will automatically come up with all the slices displayed in the normal way. You could then export each of the slices as a wave file, move the slices, export a MIDI file of the groove, etc in exactly the same way you could with a normal wav file chopped in BBMPC. You may have noticed that there was previously no way to save where all your slices were in a file in BeatButcherMPC. Well now there is! Very conveniently solving the problem of saving and also adding an extra feature for when exporting to the mpc "half k"

is that program Mac compatible?
i'm a new mac user and search for the installer-file but can't find it at the zip package.

There is no installer, its just an executable jar file. Don't uncompress the *.jar file within the zip file. Just double click or whatever you do on macs to run something. You need Java Run Time 5 or greater installed.

this shit has me confused, i cant seem to figure out how to actually "chop" or the "autochop"