my noob thread : endless questions

sup shonz

in an effort to stop making lots of threads i will just make one and use this one over and over to ask questions and use it as an faq and hopefully some other noobs can use it too.

so first question of the thread.

what is the bet method for slowing down a beat?

i know about pitch shift and tunning wich pretty much mess with the note/key of the sample. and sample stretching which keeps the same key/note but kind of a pain in the ass if you want to get it to be a certain length exactly. if you want it to be 2 bars and you stretch it enough and have the tempo you wanted but then its 2 1/2 bars and i am **** there ;/

now ive seen videos on youtube on patch phrasing. they seem to work nice when you are only working with drums. but when i try slowing down a beat with pp it **** sucks nuts. if i slow it down too much it sound all choppy so i pretty much have to play it at the same bpm or speed it up. which limits my options.

also what is the best way to chop a loop with several instruments?

should i chop it up by drums? kick/snare/hi hats etc. or bass/other instrument.

if i chop a sample by drums sometimes it sounds like shit because when i play it the other instruments make it sound like shit when i play around with it. like the bass/guitar/horns.

****. so many questions. but ill just ask this first.

drum sampling originates from people sampling drum breaks, which are parts of songs in funk/rhythm n blues genres where everyone in the band stops playing while the drummer goes nuts for 2 bars. If you want to sample drum hits from songs you should look for areas like that, as well as intros and outros that often have isolated clean drum hits. you might be able to use filters with some success to get rid of other instruments in the mix from where you sample, but it will effect the sound of the drum hit and often make it sound crap.

my advice for people looking to create their own unique drum kit for productions would just be to find some free download samps (eg. there is a huge zip file of drum machine samples that has been going around the web for the last decade, just search drum machine samples in pirate bay) and start combining and layering them in the mpc software (if you didn't know pituchez u can put up to 4 samples on one pad in a drum program) and then fiddling with the pitch settings and volume levels for each sample until you create a new drum sound that you're really into. the most basic way to do this is to find two samples that are different for each drum, like get an 808 kick sample (very bassy, not much click at the beginning of the drum kit) and layer that with a sample of a real kick drum to make it sound different

also, there are a lot a lot of drum samples available all over the web for free. check out www.bedroomproducersblog.com for samples and VSTs, or anywhere. i also sometimes use VSTs for drums, i usually like to sample from them then treat them as a sample. a good drum vst is Drumatic 3, it's a free with heaps of customisation

ill look into the vst

thx mateski

yo sons

is there a way 2 have 2 different programs playing in one sequence with different bpms?

i got a lil sample im trying to play but if i slow down the bpm on the 2nd track where i have the drums the bpm changed for the whole sequence ;(

pituchez wrote:yo sons

is there a way 2 have 2 different programs playing in one sequence with different bpms?

i got a lil sample im trying to play but if i slow down the bpm on the 2nd track where i have the drums the bpm changed for the whole sequence ;(

Using tuning change the sample instead...

yea thats what i didnt want to do.

well i guess i can just use time stretch.

but bleh. damn u akai!

thx mane

yo shonz

when programming a sequence do you set the bpm on how fast you want the drums to sound or what? ;/

mate i think most people who use MPCs program their own drum lines... i usually start by tapping on tap tempo whatever speed i'm feeling, then i correct it to make it a whole number eg if i tapped out 81.6 bpm i might change it to 80. then i hit overdub and start play, and start playing the pads like a drum kit to the click track, then i overdub extra detail. after that i start putting in a basic bass line to set the chord progression, then i work on adding in chops or instruments.

yea i dont use pp or other drum breaks. i just use the pads to make my own. but then once i start adding chops or other sounds it might sound to slow or fast. atleast thats what ive been told when i show it to other ppl.

also..


everyone but mpc tutor can answer this question

hope it doesnt get me banned

but has anyone used the mpc : sampling laid bare book? and if you did. what did you learn? ive downloaded and read other tutorials and seen lots of utube videos. for the most part they are super basic and i didnt learn much.

downloaded some "mpc" videos from some website. they where shit. super basic stuff that i had learned reading the manual or looking at a few videos on utubeski.

im poor as ****. i dont even have monitors ;p

so before i spend my money id like to know if its any good.

p.s

forgive me mpc tutor

pituchez wrote:when programming a sequence do you set the bpm on how fast you want the drums to sound or what? ;/

Most users would probably normally set the BPM to how fast they want everything in the sequence to sound (sometimes maybe a multiple of how fast they want it to sound, i.e. double speed).

If there is no relation between the sequence BPM and the music in the sequence, things might get difficult to work with.

That is not saying you can't work that way, just that the most logical way would be to have the sequence BPM matching the tempo of the music you record into the sequence.

i guess i just have to mess around with it more.

i just dont understand the whole bpm thing. ive seen videos online and read about it and shit. just confuses me. so im just going feeling it out. if it sounds good it sounds good. if not then it doesnt. but i have noticed that the drums make a beat feel faster or slower depending on the speed they are going.

pituchez wrote:but i have noticed that the drums make a beat feel faster or slower depending on the speed they are going.

That speed is the tempo.

The tempo is measured in beats per minute (BPM).

hmm ok ill try and look that up and see if i can understand it more. ;/

so no ones used the mpc tutor book?!