QF Events to compensate for lack of track or pad volume.

I was wondering if anyone had tried inserting a QF event on the first beat of a sequence to act as sort of a track volume?
I have some pads with 2 or 3 velocity splits and adjusting each layer's volume is turning out to be a pain...it's strange that there is no overall pad level setting.

The QF event is the only thing I can think of, but it is an extra step...I guess I'll just get fast at it.
I'm trying to keep my basic kits pretty stock from song to song and this is the only way I can think of to have levels per song or sequence.

If anyone has any suggestions or tips they would be greatly appreciated.

Uuhhh...?

I'm basically adding a static slider event on the 1st beat to set the relative levels of the tracks in a sequence. Was just wondering if anyone else had done this or found a need for track levels and figured out some other workaround.

I was just being silly babe.

I have no idea, some of the more hardcore boys might can figure it.

Ok, I tried it and it works as you would imagine. So I made my autoload sequence with blank tracks on A1-A12 with a QL event on the first beat set to 100. Now I can record my drums hits, jump into step edit and change the pad number and the level for the sequence. Works well and now I can have levels set per sequence in case say I want to bring the hi hats up for the chorus or something. I think I'm going to need to put a blank bar at the beginning of my song setting all the pads to QL zero because if the drum hits on the one at the same time as the event you can hear it change level real quick.

Years ago in Logic I liked that you could put events before the start of the song using negative measures...was cool 'cause you could put all your sysex and stuff over there so when you hit play everything went back to how you had it. Guess I'll just make a "reset" pattern that I put on every song.

I had to make a metronome track too because that internal click is far too loud to be useable...ridiculous that there is no level parameter for it. The accent click can destroy an ear drum.

Added an extra "pad reset" sequence that resets all the pads to QL 0 and now it works well...you don't even loose any of the first attack on the next bar.

This seems like it should work out as a system.

Let me know if anyone has any more ideas. I don't think the MPC accepts control change for those slider values, and I would like to keep the mpc as a standalone unit without the need for some midi fader box or something.

^^

We have finally discovered the folkes who this difficult booger was made for in the first place!

I'm glad you finally got it figured out baby.

And now we'll follow your lead, as always.

greta

hell yeah
too bad you have to select the track and the pad in slider mode but hey....thats brilliant
nice work

It's a little clunky, but it's all we've got. I have to remember to hit overdub instead of record. You can bypass selecting the pad in slider mode if you want and just dial in the pad number in step edit. I just make the event with whatever slider and then change the assignment and the value.

I think it'll work out after a while...

I don't know why there isn't a level setting in the program...seems like all the functionality is there...someone just forgot to build the menu or something. What I would really like is a level in the program to group the 4 sample layers and a track level setting, but I still love you MPC500.

As a side note, do you ever get clipping when using the filters? Depends on the sample content of course, but I notice some clipping when setting the high pass or low pass in the 17-23 range with resonance off. Seems like another dumb software screwup. It's a little bit of a bummer for me because I like to use the low pass/high pass as a pseudo crossover...so I can put chorus on the mid high and not muddy up the low end.

What do you define as clipping? You mean digital clipping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio)#Digital_clipping? I've never noticed that with the filter. I've noticed other things, but not digital clipping.

Yeah, with a normalized sample to -3db...it's distorting the filter section. I haven't tried reducing the level of the wav file itself to see what happens. Also, the sample has to have a decent amount of low frequency information. I pretty much signed off on the filter section except for maybe putting a high pass on the hihats or something.

There's definitely something wrong in the software as the filters are very similar to the classic Akai filters on my old S3000...so I'm very familiar with the sound of them. The gain is set too high. When you turn on the filter Akai should lower the gain on the input to where a normalized sample doesn't clip and then raise it after the filter stage. I understand there would be clipping if the resonance was up but this is without any feedback at all.

I think it shows here and there that not a lot of care went into the OS...seems like they were rushing out the door...but the box itself is great.