Samples and Programs

I'm having some troubles, when I load my folder of samples, i want to be able to load drum samples simultaneously on the same sequence. Lets say I have my samples loaded, record what i want. Then lay some drums over it, but when i load drums, it just takes the place of what i recorded. How can i use more than one folder of samples at once?

Make sure they have different names so they don't overwrite the old ones in memory?

thats not it... So uh did anyone actually buy this mpc 500 beat making tutorial.. seems pretty interesting... but helpful to anyone?

No, it came with a free tutorial called the manual. You read that once or twice to familiarize yourself with all the functions, then you dive in and play with them on your own.

Maybe rephrase your question, it was difficult guessing what you're talking about.

ok.. for example, I want to load some drum kits from the included flash card. I want to lay down the snare, kick, then hi hat or whatever order. So I load the snare kit from the sample menus and I have the snares. I record a 4 bar loop, now i want to put in the kicks. Now if I load the Kick kit from the samples menu, it asks me,

"Load folder, clear memory: YES/NO".

So I don't want to clear it because I will erase any previous work. So i put "NO", click do it. Now it asks,

"Replace same file: YES/NO".

This is where the trouble starts. I chose either YES or NO, and the new sample doesn't load, and if it does i sure as hell don't know where it went. What gives? It seems the only way to load a kit is by clearing the RAM memory and loading the new one. There is no way i can believe you have to save your work instrument by instrument, its slavery i tell ya! I'm also using the onboard 16mb RAM for now.. will upgrade as soon as possible.. I plan on laying down some drums, then load my sample folder with my chopped slices from Recycle or laying down a loop and some drums on top of it, whatever the occasion calls for. hope that clears up my question a little bit.

You might also need to make sure that you assign the sample to a pad that is not already in use.

This is basic, anyone giving you the answer is doing you a disservice. You need to reread the manual as many times as it takes to fully understand how the MPC does things. Then you'll know a better approach than the one you're doing.

Jamon wrote:This is basic, anyone giving you the answer is doing you a disservice. You need to reread the manual as many times as it takes to fully understand how the MPC does things. Then you'll know a better approach than the one you're doing.

Well if this basic to you, it doesn't mean anyone would be doing me a disservice by helping me, as its not as simple to me. I want to go, folder by folder when creating my song. Open the Snare kit folder, laying down my layered snares, opening the kick folder, layering kicks and so on. If i save my sequence with the snare, and I want to load some Kicks, I'm having trouble keeping my original work while loading the new sample kit. Is there a way to build your song piece by piece? or do u have to make one folder with your samples (chopped slices, multiple kicks and snares) and just work off one folder?

Folders are for file management. The MPC thinks in terms of Songs, Sequences, Tracks, Programs, Samples. Each one of those contains the others below it. Songs are Sequences in order, Sequences are Tracks mixed together, Tracks are Programs or MIDI, Programs are Samples assigned to pads.

The MPC uses RAM. The CF storage is only for holding the files when power is off. When you load something, you load it into the RAM. If you load a folder of samples, it has to copy all those sound files into RAM. When you record a pattern, it is triggering those samples from the RAM. It needs them there.

If you want to record 1 thing at a time, kick, snare, hi hats. Then what you'd normally do is goto track 1, look through your kick folder, preview them and find one you want, load that kick, assign it to a pad on your program, then record a pattern on track 1. Then repeat for track 2 with snare, etc.

Or you could have a program for each, like a kicks program, which has a different kick on all 48 pads. Then you can assign the kicks program to track 1, snare to track 2, etc. Now you goto track 1, and can record any of the kicks, and go to track 2 and the pads switch to the snares.

Loading a folder at a time isn't a good method. You'll end up with a bunch of samples in memory, that you have to assign to your program, and you probably won't use all the samples, so then you have to clear the ones you aren't using to free memory. Better to build your programs.

All of this is in the manual. You're supposed to read it.

yep.

Ok figured it out, thank you.

Wow, it took him amost two days to look in the manual. Insanity!