would appreciate tips on live setup....

Hi everyone,

First post here - I'm hoping I'm in the right part of the forum for my question. I've been reading this forum like mad..

So I am a recent MPC 1000 owner and have already read through the Beatmaking on the MPC tutorials and am very comfortable using it (following those tutorials solves most questions on how to use MPC!) on its own and with a couple synths and effects units. No problems there.. It's amazing!!

What I really need advice on is how I would translate my home setup of MPC + clumsy fragile old synths (some handmade, modular and not transportable) to a live setting without needing to bring them or a laptop around just as a matter of preference.

I have Ableton and am comfortable learning to record all the synth and MPC tracks into it and tweaking in there to do the mixing/eqing. I see the benefit of that. But once I'm done and have a song all ready, is it possible to get, say over an hours worth of music squished back into the MPC in order to play it live with possibility to do some extending/improvising? My tracks-in-progress have a lot of drum programs but I use synths to play longer drones and chord progressions that evolve for the length of the track so a short loop would take away from it. I admit one thing I haven't explored much is the audio track aspect of the MPC.... but I understand I have like 12 minutes of recording time.... and I'd need much longer than 12 minutes of recorded audio to fill a whole set.

So how does one play back a live set/collection of tracks that's got long stretches of drones from hardware synths done live without having to actually bring the synths with me? Can MPC playback very long audio sets while I jam out rhythms over it.... or do I need another sampler too for that? I definitely want the MPC to be the main rhythm maker and willing to maybe get another sampler if I need to. And I want to perform only with a few boxes with lights, buttons and pads to play....thats the zone I need.

It would be good to figure this out now so I can do my recordings with the outcome somewhat in mind.... just like how putting drum sounds on separate tracks makes life easier later....

If there are other threads that address this question please send a link. Thanks a lot!

there is a lot to cover really. In respect to drums first. why not sequence your drums instead of loops? Ie you only need to load sequence and drum programs.

Drones can be done with a loop. JJosXL gives you crossfade and you have LFO for the drones.

Chords are trickier. Specialy long ones. Maybe just sample and sequence each chord. Make instrument from a few chords to save space

homedude above really nailed a potentially very lengthy post in a few short, on point sentences. props.

basically, try to 'recreate' all your loops, sequences, drones, chords etc within the mpc.

yes it could be a lot of work at first, and totally going against everything you've already learned to do with a computer, but it is worth it, and you will get better/faster at it with time.

one benefit other than being able to play live is that by recreating your stuff via the mpc, you will basically be remixing your own songs and probably come up with some pretty jamming stuff that you never would have thought of with your comfortable set up.

and let's not kid ourselves, with as much ram as the mpc1000 offers, you've got PLENTY of wiggle room in regards to loops and longer sequences.

Hi, this is really helpful thanks!

I do sequence the drums, sorry I wasn't clear on that.

I have been spending all my time just learning and making new synths and jamming out on each thing separately, I bought the MPC to help turn all this into cohesive tracks. So I haven't really brought that to a head yet - on the computer either. All I have is this live set up.. If I'm reading the responses right, it looks like making tracks with all my gear and recording that is ONE thing, and then re-appropriating it to be more portable (kind of re-mixing as mentioned) is something that could come after I have finished stuff...ie it's kind of another thing? I'd like to get the two 'experiences' pretty close at least starting out as I am...

I used to DJ and am in process of making the switch over to just doing my own stuff primarily and its all going well, so the last big mystery is how to put it in a form that can be shared.

Maybe if I make a specific example..... for the course of a 7 minute track I'll have a little sequence going to, say, a korg mono-poly.... and for 7 minutes I'll be changing the timbre by adding and taking away noise, tweaking envelopes, doing wierd filter cv modulation coming from another sequencer.... so the whole thing is evolving over the whole time. The MPC can be keeping the time (via kenton pro solo) and be triggering drum samples..... but for a finished song, is there enough space to record parts of what i am doing to the korg and then play it back within the MPC, enough to do for many tracks? I just wouldn't want to lose the sounds of all the experimental crap I'm doing at home in a live setting so some of it I have doubts about re-creating just in the MPC, making me think I need to make these long audio samples... Sorry to ask what may be obvious but I'm much more intuitive with analog electronics and new to the recording / "packaging" process. In light of what I'm asking, is there more space available to play long samples than I should worry about?? I was just alarmed that I only have 11-12 (can't recall, smthg like that) minutes of sample time - how does that relate to what I'm going for here (ie wanting to make an hour long set with long samples in it)

I will try the suggestions above .... more welcome..

Cheers peeps!

In my opinion, running a backing track like you are talking about is going to get old really quick, and eat up your memory even quicker. 11-12 MINUTES is a pretty good damn chunk of time though. Don't forget about lower quality being your friend though...if its a mostly bass sound track you can cut the sample rate in half and suddenly you've got 22-24 minutes of sample time.

Now, back to my opinion, backing tracks are not always worth it.

When I say recreate the track, I'm talking about taking very short samples of the synth, whatever, then recreating the synth line just like a drum line in the mpc. At the most low level, you'd sample very few 'cycles' of the waveform...we're talking millisecond range...and then loop those so the mpc basically becomes the synth. This is harder to do with very evolving sounds, but....you could recreate the filter sweeps, etc, in the mpc via lfos.

To clarify, I'm not really talking about having backing tracks...it's just too much memory to waste and then what happens when your stuff gets out of sync? I've used them only for more ambient or noisy backgrounds that weren't really tied to tempo.

Yea tweaking a synth live is very cool, so maybe designate your most tweakable, durable synth as your live synth. It doesn't hurt to re-do your synth lines on a different synth if need be. That's what's great about midi, just plug in a different instrument and recreate the sound live if you have to.

For a bit of perspective, I saw a pretty popular band last year, a very studio-heavy band, and just before they were about to play, the guys synth, a Nord Micro Modular, totally crapped out. I know plenty of people who would feel they couldn't continue, because their one, comfortable synth was dead. Well he just hit up the first band, borrowed a moog, and ran all his midi into it...he must have had to recreate all his patches on the spot.
For those who don't know, a Nord Micro Modular and a Moog are on complete opposite ends of the synth spectrum.

My point is, make it work. You can do whatever you want in the studio, but live, it's a totally different story. You need to be ready to PLAY like a MUSICIAN and therefore REACT to whatever gets thrown your way.

Ah ok .... well I'm definitely using this thread as a reference, good thoughts to chew on here.

It also occurs to me that if I bring one other live tweakable piece of kit then I could have that going and load up a different program/song so there's no dead space.....seems obvious but that would be a way right?

Really another reason for my question is trying to think from the perspective of someone in the audience - like if I have a couple records by an artist and really love their tracks , if I get the chance to see them live I enjoy hearing them - with extensions and improv elements but still, hearing personally loved tracks on a big soundsystem is a great moment . My setup has a lot of self-made circuits and custom signal routing stuff that just makes things more difficult to recreate/swap for a different synth.... but I definitely appreciate your response, some good bits of wisdom in there. I wouldn't be doing this if I wanted the easy route I guess.. And a good musician indeed is very responsive - to the audience and the machines =)

First post here, loving the site!

Interesting thread, I've been thinking the same thing. We have a live setup with a bunch of analog gear, no sampler. We sequence everything with ableton at the moment, but I got an mpc1000 so I could ditch the laptop altogether. All we're doing with that is sending midi to the various synths and drum machines.

We've only been able to gig in California, lugging the whole rig to the club in my old van. But we've been offered gigs out of state, and it's just not feasible to bring the whole bunch of kit. Now it consists of

Jupiter 6
Juno 60 (midi to dcb converter to boot)
TR808 midi retrofit
LinnDrum midi retrofit
MC 202 with midi to cv conversion
Roland cr8000 (din sync from the 808, works like a charm. Trigger out of the cr to the jupiter filter trigger and live drum fills)
A&H Mixwizard v3 16 channel analog mixer
Moog Rogue (for incidental leads here and there)
outboard effects & midi splitter/routing

The setup with the mpc will never be the same as the full gear setup, in terms of what we can do live with it. If we use all the drum samples for the 808 and Linn, we won't have dedicated sounds coming into the mixer for effects sends etc. But we can live without that...

I hear you on the desire to have your long sustained pads & drones, and I think the only way to do it is to bring at least one synth with you. You can send the midi to it and it should maintain most of that drone sound... and it will look cool to have some keys onstage

My question is this: for sustained pad sounds from the synths, how would one lay in a long mpc track? Just set up a sequence that is as long as the midi pad track?

Which brings up another more general mpc question (I'm a total noob so bear with me): Does a sequence have to be as long as the longest track in the sequence? It sounds like a dumb question, but if there was any way to have a long sustained pad sound/chord progression running while shorter drum/bass/stab tracks running on top of it, that would be awesome. I'm running jjosxl, and I know there is a "Simultaneous Sequence" feature. Do both sequences have to be the same length, or will the longer one keep running and loop until it's length is reached?

Thanks!

^ I dunno about jjosxl, but in basic jj os a seq gotta be as long as the longest track on the seq..

your gear seems nice, would like to see a live video
and I gotta say, with that kind of gear it would look much cooler without a comp..

yeah at the stage of gigging now and all i can say is thank god for rack cases and rack mounted gear. I have compressors and eqs, patchbays, and synths in rack so this helps alot. Synths are a bugger but i rekon a case for each will do it, costs money but really your investing in keeping that gear safe. Also you spend less time patching gear for gig if you have it done allready in a rack.

Cool set up. I would suggest another sampler with a keyboard.Nothing like being able to play,sync midi, and tweak over the MPC sequence for a live show.