Noob question about click tracks

Hi, I'm about to take my first step into creating electronic music and have decided to get myself a synth and a sampler/sequencer. I'm pretty much all but set on buying a MPC500, but to use it in my band, I'm going to need a click track in time with the samples on the MPC, that only our drummer can hear through an earpiece.

Is there any way to make a click track, and have it so it only goes through the headphone out or do I need to buy something else?

Buy something Else

You can only do this with an MPC with more than one audio out (MPC1000 can do this I think). Alternatively get a separate drum machine that you can synch to the BPM of the MPC and get your drummer to listen to this. An alternative would be to have the click track only in the left or right channel and amplify your tracks in mono but obviously this would compromise your sound.

Well, if your budget allows, get MPC 1000. It's far better in terms of using it for live gigs, because it is more flexible (what with the individual assignable outputs, two midi in/out ports and larger screen). But, I suppose, there is a way to emulate separate outputs even in MPC 500.

The only thing you have to do is to pan the click (or other sound your drummer prefers as a click) hard left or hard right. While other sounds coming from MPC should be fully panned in the opposite direction. So, let's say, you panned your click sample hard left. Other samples should be panned hard right. After that, just plug drummer's headphones into the left channel of MPC's stereo-out (or, to make it more comfortable for him, connect left channel of MPC output to a mono channel in the dedicated mixing desk and drummer's headphones to this desk's phones' or stereo-output). Then the right channel of MPC's stereo-outs could be connected to another mono channel, but on the main mixing console that you use for playing live. I think this should work. The only disadvantage of this setup is that you won't be able to use stereo-samples for backing parts played from MPC. But you can always stereorize them by sending the signal from mixing desk to an external effect processor, for instance. And MPC 500 do allow you to program midi messages that would switch effect patches in external devices and even control their parameters. Only this requires some serious f***ing up with the midi setup and some meticulous midi-programming. If it is beyond your current skills, it is always possible to control effects manually. Your live sound engineer can do this.

Hey, people! I made a tutorial on how to make independent click-track for MPC 500 (with example sequence and programs). D/l link here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/toj0d5

It's nothing new, nor original, but I hope it is useful to people who are new to playing live with MPC.

Enjoy!