Hello & Few questions about your experiences!

Hey, I'm sort of new here. I picked up my mpc500 about a week ago used and clean for $210 and change and am loving it. Read through some recommendations on this forum and ordered my 128 memory as well as a 2gb CF card. I realized this machine has a lot more to offer than I initially thought and am almost up to half way reading the manual in detail.

I come from a strong DAW (primarily ableton/logic/sonar) background with MPDs, APCs, midi keyboard and all that. I realized that MPCs are a whole different way of creating music and am really humbled by this.

Really glad to find this forum. So my question is how long did it take you to get completely comfortable with you MPCs? I'm assuming it would be roughly 6 months to a year as that was the case with DAWs for me. I'm still finding out new things about ableton and sonar and almost a daily basis.

Also, any other bumps in the road I should be prepared for?

Thank you!

Sounds familiar y'all????? Lol

Either great minds think alike or there's a shark amongst us LOL

Welcome to the boards.

the 500 isn't the most complicated thing in the world, so it's just a matter of getting used to how it's set up. it only took me a few weeks to really get the hang of it, but there's always room to learn more. the biggest bump for me was probably remembering what mode contains what. with the limited screen space you end up doing a lot of scrolling and it's easy to get lost.

I think in your case you could maybe halve that 6 months or even better. Your DAW experience already has you grounded in MIDI and audio, the uses of each and how they work together. Right there is a huge leg up in the process. I'm sure you've already realized that it's the same stuff you do in the box with software just more limited and in a lot of ways a different kind of fun/experience as you turn the limitations into focused workflow techniques.

I use hardware and software and I recommend to anyone to try to get comfortable with both. Then it's like just swinging different swords.

S.I.C.K. - Thanks? Ahaha

skurdnee - Thanks for the advice. I somewhat agree with the mode issue so I've been carrying aruond the mode parameters map from the manual and its been helping a bit

Metatron72 - I agree, and thanks for the kind words. Hopefully I'll get completely used to it soon where I don't have to walk around with the manual all the time..

My initial problem with the 500 is that the pads are rather unresponsive compared to the other models, so i fixed that with buying the thick pads, makes a huge difference.
On the 500 the pads are used much more frequently than lets say on a 2000XL..the reason is cause the program,load,sample, trim etc are on the pads instead of on regular buttons due to lack of space.

Everyhing on the 500 has to be done by ear since there is no waveform to edit. It takes a bit more time to scroll through everything, a lot of scrolling on the 500!

Other than that its a nice machine for a low second hand price, just takes a bit more time to create songs with it.