mpc500 nOOb thread

hello folks, mpc500 newbie here, and am finding it mighty frustrating. got it a few weeks ago but haven't felt very motivated due to some aspects - i will go into that in due course. mainly, i expected things to be more fluid. some OS aspects are, but others not. my first main gripe was stiff pads - so now i'm just turning velocity off for the time being - and some awful pre-load sounds and sequence the previous owner had (argh), that i've just got rid of today. meh i was being lazy about digging up some sounds to put on a CF card, that kind of thing - which is mad, because i'm not new to samplers, and at last i can just plop some wavs on a card with the PC without proprietary formats and all that. so really i should be up to my elbows in it, but that hasn't happened yet.

what i'm looking for here is some expert guidance. normally i can find my way around a device pretty quickly without the manual, and this one isn't terribly complicated. i get how most of it works, but one or two things are still a bit of a mystery - namely saving your stuff and not losing your work ! i finally managed to get it to load up what i actually did before powering off today - but that's only because i did a 'save all' to the autoload folder. (grim sounds and dodgy sequence gone at last)

somehow i was failing to save something; whether it was the program, or the sequence (or song? or project?), most of which is user-error. i'm sort of getting there slowly (not without feeling like doing it some murdah a couple of times, cursing it and 'who designed this?!' )

so now, nice and calm, i shall start again with the CF and figure out how to have folders on there, and where to save: samples/programs/sequences/projects, without having loads of doubles and much confusion. it's a load of junk on there atm, and honestly, workflow is at a snail's pace. had a decent test the other day, but it was just doing hackneyed loops, even if i managed to knock out something to 6mins, and get to grips with how tracks and pads relate to sequences, and then songs. so i'm getting an idea of what i can do there.

but then i lose everything i've done or it loads the wrong version of sequence or program file that has ended up with the same name, and it's playing the wrong samples or has wrong playback attributes - driving me nuts, essentially.

so first off, some tips please on how you organise your CF drive. and your saving routines, foolproofed. i started thinking i should just save to the root folder/drive, but that's going to get chaotic and lead to problems. plus i would want to get some sounds together separately on the PC and chuck a folder over, and have a bit of a library, and then have some work folders.

sitting in front of it earlier, i'm getting mixed up with 'autoload' and 'internal' flash - not so much, but when you're trying to use it, you want to be clear in your head when you press 'do it' - and then power down, just to check if you've got it right this time, and it comes back and aagh you've lost everything again.

(to deal with that, i just deleted everything and saved it as 'internal', but that still didn't get rid of those grim samples. can't remember what i did in the end but they are gone now. after switching autoload off for a bit i got there in the end.)

and here's the other thing: the layout and navigation has me thinking: where's the 'exit' button? where's the 'samples' button? why are pads numbered bottom to top instead of top to bottom like a page? and yeah: why do Load and Save do the same thing?

why doesn't 'shift'+ < take you back to the top? (yeh i know how to do that now, but.. )
and why can't i save while it's running? would be particularly useful for programs (and sequences).

but dropping in and out of record in play mode is nice, and realtime erase. i'm familiar with quite a few drum machines and sequencers and that's always nice. shame you have to stop so often to save, and that that is such a nightmare. also, track mutes like that, is nice. and i can see how the 'track' thing could be interesting with midi sequencing, that's quite different.

i am not at all familiar with this thing about mapping 12 levels. i doubt i'd use that for velocity, but for pitch i really want to figure that out. there is sample fundamental pitch, then these 12 levels, which do not seem to be automatic, but ?have to be set with the fader? the fader that seems to have other roles as well, including another one involving pitch? - bearing in mind that i'm quite familiar with s950 and s3000xl (as well as software etc), this is definitely 'frustrating'.

even managed to resample myself today so i know how that works and to remember to crank the recording level enough (secondary concern) - oh and i do now understand why the posher MPCs have angled screen !

the buttons that aggravate me the most are 'do it' and 'cancel' - shared function on the most important ones, instead of 'enter'/'exit' ... and the fact that one is always going back to 'mode' + one of the yellow functions. this design is quite mystifying tbh.

i have a slightly glitchy power connection, which seems ok at the moment, but i'm going to be opening it up because i want to see if some sort of insert on the pads will help the response a bit - not shelling out for cork anything shipped from the US to the EU, or Fat anything. may even have to pull out a midi keyboard for it.

i think the main thing initially is how much of the UI is dedicated to the sequencer, when i'm more accustomed to rack samplers - as i've been thinking of it more as something to chuck sounds onto primarily, with sequencing being a secondary issue - also just found out a bit more about navigating the sequencer today, so that's not a real problem. but saving files, and being offered default 'project01' etc names all the time, something about how that works is offputting eg: have not got my head round it yet.

rtfm? yeh sure, but i like to find the panel 'semantics' first, and manuals can take you on long detours, when you understand fundamentally already eg: i am not going to memorise the whole thing and page numbers.

so, hope you get the idea and can offer some insights to help unlock ... my workflow, primarily, yes, so i can avoid losing everything each time, and get a bit more done, -reliably! thanks! (sry, v.long post...)

more questions

how do you clear the Internal memory completely? what a strange machine. i keep ending up with 'Top Set' and 'Sunny Set'. i never want to see these again. also want to delete all internal samples, and start afresh. also want rid of these remnants of sequences.
... ah, hang on: if i turn Autoload OFF, restart it and save everything to internal memory, that should do it? i thought i'd done this yesterday, but still found the same samples in there, and some 'remnants' of sequences. this is interfering with what i want to do with it.

i'm surprised not to find a menu item to clear all samples from all memory. why isn't there an 'initialise Flash' function? this OS

hope i'm not offending anyone, saying this. i'm scratching my head going through the Mode+ save/load menus, and then think, ah: there is another menu, at sequence/track + params - so i'm going back and forth looking for things. it's the same when you go Mode+ Seq Edit - but in fact what you want is under Sequence + Params - eg: delete sequences.

maybe if i connect it via USB i can get at the internal flash memory. switching it on and off to check what i'm left with isn't achieving anything.

managed to 'purge unused samples' after deleting programs and sequences, then turned autoload off, renaming the autolooad folder on PC, saved empty memory to internal, overwriting existing, and finally seem to have got there. going to do without the internal memory for the time being. and without autoload. have now forgotten where that is located anyway. but at last i have a machine ready to make my own.

interesting, this thing about samples that won't load. i grabbed a few that wouldn't, and passed them through the Akai MPX files converter, and that did the job, abbreviating names. not sure they are all available now, will check, but most of them seem to load.

Compared to a rack sampler to sampling section on the 500 is quite limited. Seems like you just need to get used to the general workflow of the MPC, but it's actually quite simple and once you get the hang of it.
You edit your sample in trim mode. Assign the samples to a program. Edit the program in program mode. This must be very similar to the S950 and S3000. Then you assign that program to a Track in one of your Sequences. Track and Sequence are basically your Home/ Main button. When you press Params when in Track mode you can assign a program to the selected Track. From there you sequence your patterns when in Sequence mode or Track mode, and edit the sequence in Sequence Edit mode and event editing can be done in Step Edit mode.

Saving and deleting can all be found in the manual. For file management I'd suggest to hook up the MPC500 to your computer via USB. The CF card will pop up as an external disk. Make folders to keep things organised. I have a folder for kicks, snares, hats, bass etc. I also have a folder with all my beats. In that folder I also make a new folder for every new beat. Name everything!!! It sometimes is a pain in the ass to name your stuff on the 500, but it will save you a lot of headaches later on. I save my sequences and programs of a beat into it's own folder. Some people like to Save Entire Memory option, but that's all personal preferences. As long as you save each beat or project to it's own folder you should be good.

The MPC500 only takes 16bit 44.1khz files. Filenames can not be longer than 16 characters.

For the 12 levels, you can choose 12 levels of velocity. Very helpful for programming hihats and kicks for example. The 12 levels of tune is a bit of missed feature with the MPC500. It just takes the selected pad as 'rootnote' and transposes the other pads with one semitone intervals. So don't expect rack sampler type of tuning here.