New to the MPC world - live setup and MIDI assignment

Hey everyone, I just picked up an MPC500 and am loving it! I've spent the past few weeks wrapping my head around it and working through the Beatmaking ebook. I've never used an MPC before but am well versed in studio equipment, software, and analog synths. I had an ER-1 but just sold it to get the MPC and I'll never look back. I cant believe it took me this long to try an MPC - I've been making music for over ten years and somehow never encountered one. Now I can finally live totally outside the box when I want to!

I originally got it just for live performance but am quickly thinking that it will be a main part of my studio process as well. I loaded up stems from one of my songs last night and came up with a minimal-sequencer remix on the fly that wouldn't have come out of another machine.

Here's the setup I put together for live shows:

MPC500 syncing a MIDIfied Monotribe
iPad running Sunrizer etc. with a little LPK keyboard ( the arpeggiator is awesome!)
Both run into a small mixer and then into a KP3 for effects and live sampling/looping
I'm also using a DIY photoelectric theremin controlling Thumbjam on an old iPhone for some crazy sounds.

So the main reason I got the MPC was to handle drums and stems from my Songs in Ableton so I could leave my laptop in the studio. I've figured out an MPC setup that will work for me. I maxed out the ram so I've got plenty of sample time.
Here's what I've got so far:

Bank A is drum sounds, I've got my favorite 909 samples plus an 808 kick. Just a blank sequence for live finger drumming and layering up a beat.

Banks C&D I've slated for one song each to do live mash ups, Daft Punk Alive style.
I printed stem loops from my Ableton masters: 3 each for drums, bass, chord synth, and lead synth. I've got all these setup to loop at the same tempo (thanks to the shift trick I found in this forum!)

I was jamming out with this last night and its great! I can play my songs back, improvise new drums and synth parts, and remix/mash up my stuff live. It's a ton of fun and will be great live - everything fits in one case so I can show up, flip the lid open, get power and audio out and I'm good to go.

I've got enough RAM to load up 12 stems for two songs plus drum samples with room to spare. My plan is to create an identical project with different drum samples for each of my two songs, so I'll just have to take a break to load up the next project. I'll fill in this time either by talking to the crowd or looping with the KP3.

So this leaves me with Bank B, which I'd like to use to send MiDI notes into the Monotribe sequencer live. I know that the pads will all send MIDI notes and that I can select MiDI channel per track, but what I'm trying to figure out is how to only have Bank B pads send MiDI notes on a specific channel. It would work great as there are 12 pads and 12 notes. Ideally I'd like to be able to change the octave too, but that might be just a dream on the MPC.

TLDR: can you set only the pads in Bank B to send MIDI notes?

Is this forum not very busy in general, or just for the 500?

Yeah this forum is not very busy, you may get more action in the "Getting Started" forum. Also I did see your original post but have been wondering exactly what you want to do. Are you working in track mode with just one track and loading all the samples you need for your set into that one track?

In that case I think the following will work but I haven't verified it yet. In track parameters, set the track to the program with your samples. Then set track type to MIDI and MIDI channel to your monotribe (probably 1). Now whenever you play a pad on any bank you will trigger both a sample and a MIDI note. For bank B, this is fine since you don't have any samples there, but you won't want the MIDI note triggering in the other banks. Thus you will have to manually edit the MIDI note of each of those pads to something that won't sound on the monotribe--probably C-2.

Thanks - I'm actually using multiple tracks but it should still work the way you describe, but I can't seem to assign a note lower than C1?

Try both the lowest and highest--hopefully at one of the extremes, the monotribe won't respond (or you won't be able to hear it).

lowest MPC500 note is B0.

Try the program I created in this article, as it was set up outside of the MPC500, but should retain the MIDI notes when loaded:

http://www.mpc-tutor.com/low-midi-note- ... -template/

This one starts at C-2.

Thanks I'll try this tonight!

Ok I got the chromatic program to work but it I can only have one program assigned to the pads at a time? How do I assign my program with drum sounds and samples to Banks A,C,D and assign the Chromatic program to Bank B?

I think they both have to be in one program. So you would have to take the chromatic program and load your samples to it.

Blenderson, how are you liking the midi seq on the 500? Have you experienced any hiccups or burps while seq. i am getting a 500 and would like to know just how reliable its sequencer is. I think i'll have it linked to another seq. i want to seq indv drums in the 500 externally(from a step sequencer) and chop other parts, internally sequence those chops on the 500.

Sclr wrote:Blenderson, how are you liking the midi seq on the 500? Have you experienced any hiccups or burps while seq. i am getting a 500 and would like to know just how reliable its sequencer is. I think i'll have it linked to another seq. i want to seq indv drums in the 500 externally(from a step sequencer) and chop other parts, internally sequence those chops on the 500.

I have experienced the audio dropouts that a lot of people describe - randomly when recording new midi data everything else drops out for a bar or the length of the sequence.

I'm actually thinking about getting rid of the 500 and going back to a laptop setup as these dropouts are annoying and I constantly feel like I'm trying to get this box to do something it's not designed for. If I were using it to sample and make beats it would be great, but it's really not cutting it as a live centerpiece.

I'm probably going to go back to Ableton + Numerology + two launchpads until I can afford an Octatrack.

That's too bad. Do the drop outs happen on its internal sequencer?

Yes it happens on the internal sequencer. It always responds to incoming midi data.

the dropouts also affect the midi playback or just the incoming midi?

MrBlenderson wrote:I'm probably going to go back to Ableton + Numerology + two launchpads until I can afford an Octatrack.

That caught my eye, Numerology is sick, I'm strongly considering another Launchpad too having to share the one I have with Live/Max4Live and Numerology.