Live Performance Using an MPC?

Good on you!
After reading through this thread, I guess u'll get into it quick enough.

What U'r planning on doing should be perfectley possible and you'll soon realize that there's even more than that.
RAM has never been an issue to me (I've got 128mB), You'll be fine.

Just real quick some of the lingo you'll be dealing with, and a brief explenation of how the system works:
All you're "pad-settings"( like what sample is on what pad, filters etc.) And what you call it are saved into so called "programmes". One "programm" has four "pad-banks" A , B , C and D wich equals 64 pads in total!
"sequences" are made up out of "tracks" In witch you record u'r midi notes (such as: note on , note off , q-link , etc. i.e. :you're playing on the pads or an external controller) that trigger u'r "programms".


You can find detailed specs on how long a sequence can be, or how many programmes you may have, but seriousley, you have loads of room, man, it's enough.

You'll love it. I've never regretted having bought mine (And I came from software, too). Get used to it, and u'll be flying.

Cheers!

I just realised something I hadn't considered though. The bank situation, would that mean I could only fill 64 pads across the 4 banks before having to load more and inflict the infamous waiting/loading time? The fact that the SP-404 only had 120 is one of the reasons I didn't get it.

Nope you can just make a new program and set new sounds on that program!

bloc

Oh, good. I wasn't expecting that answer. So it basically works out infinite, with the only cap being the RAM?

Je Hones wrote:Oh, good. I wasn't expecting that answer. So it basically works out infinite, with the only cap being the RAM?

i doubt its infinite, but it might be very high.

for example on an xl the max number of sounds is 256. that's a limit i hit frequently, and i deal with it by using parameters to morph one sound into another.

again, when you hit a limit in the mpc, dont think 'what a crappy instrument'...think 'what can i do as a musician to work with this'.

in practice, the only cap you need to worry about is RAM and polyphony.

but as i mentioned before and as tapedeck just said, when you hit those limitations, its time for some lateral thinking, and that usually does the job.

the great thing is that for live applications sound quality isnt really your top concern, which allows us live people to cut things back even more and jam more in. so mono files or L+R instead of stereo and go lower than 16bit on certain sounds or during rendering you render more things together than you would think.

what you do to workaround the limitations depend on the track and how you're playing it.

occasionally, when practicing new routines i might hit the polyphony wall, cos i didnt switch certain sounds to L+R, but rarely do i hit the ram wall on the 2500.

If you do hit any limits like that, just render some less important parts of your track to a wav loop instead. It's probably a very bad idea to approach a live set with multiple programs of 64 sounds or 256 sounds at the same time. How are you ever going to navigate through such monster projects? Do you really need to be able to tweak and change all that, live? Seriously? 256 sounds, if you were to tweak one sound per second, it'll take you the full song just to go through them. If you are not going to tweak it live, render it to the backing track!!!

Building a live set is an entirely different discipline to producing a single track, and the key is having things laid out in an easy and predictable way, and keeping everything simple. If you think you need several muliple bank programs and are worried about hitting polyphony limits then you are certainly heading down the wrong path...

I know that I'd be looking into breaking each song into two or three sections (quiet, intense, bridge), each composed of a handful of tracks which I would like to mute individually, plus a single key track which I'd do the heavy tweaking on. This could vary from a drum track in one song to a lead synth in another, but I'd aim to lay each track out the same way in each song, and implement the fills and changes with the mute features. Keep every song structurally identical. Knowing where everything is is very very important, you most definitely do not want to have to search through hundreds of simultanous sounds and tons of tracks and programs just to stop that annoying bongo fill that's stuck in a loop.

Just my 2c, obviously your workflow will be diferent but I get the feeling live set architecture hasn't really clicked in your head yet. I think you'll find the MPC a very capable live machine, but the result is going to be a very long way from what you are currently considering, I guess.

Hey all, first post because this is relevant to my interests.

I'd hope to use an MPC1000 in an electronic dance music live set, switching between loop-based songs the same way a DJ would switch between records.

I understand that on an MPC, a program holds 64 samples, and a sequence holds 64 tracks (which can trigger the samples, send out MIDI etc.)

The way I've been working, each song or section of a song uses up to 4 loops (with track mutes, filtering, vocals and an electribe to make it interesting) - so I'd like to try setting up sequences where the pads look like this in track mute mode:



To be clear, the kick, perc, synths and vocals for each song would be completely different samples.

So basically, I can have 16 songs of 4 loop samples per sequence and per program (or 4 songs worth of loops per pad bank) - 64 samples total. Problem is, I want something more like 64 songs of 4 samples each (or 256 samples total) so that I can choose whatever song section I want without stopping the sequencer.

I know it's easy enough to switch to the next sequence to get more tracks, but the samples those tracks would be triggering would have to be in a different program, right?

So my question is: on an MPC1000 (with JJOs or whatever) - can you have more than one program loaded at a time? I'm hoping to have a sequence of 64 tracks to choose from, and be able to go to the next sequence of another 64 tracks that use another 64 totally different samples. Does this mean I'd have to load another program manually and drop the beat?

I'm not worried about polyphony because I'd only have about 4 loops playing at once, and as the loops are short it would be way under 128MB.

I'm currently doing something similar on an SP-505, but I think the SmartMedia card is getting corrupted and I want something more reliable (not to mention I've had to sample everything manually instead of just putting my loops on via USB)

I've already read the MPC manual and this whole thread, but I'm still not quite clear..

Thanks for y'all time!

hair wrote:So my question is: can you have more than one program loaded at a time?

yes, as many as your ram will hold,... so if you have 128mb ram and each program is 12.8mbs then you can have 10 loaded.

technically,...

cos then you start hitting the max ram and it can start acting up. but if you had 7-8 programs you should be fine.

Hey all...just sticking my beak in. I'm on my way into the wonderful world of dazzling a stage with my trusty 1000 so this was a good read.

How are things going so far, Je Hones?

Yo! Well we've not played live yet. It will probably be later this year that we do. Most of the music isn't finished yet. We have old stuff, but it's new stuff we want to start with. It's stronger, we think.

With the MPC though, things are going well. I've just been experimenting and familiarising myself with it, but I really like it. I'm working towards a video cover of DJ Shadow's 'This Time' with my friend. He'd sing and play guitar, and I'd trigger samples and drum on the MPC. That's my sort of short term goal with it for now. We hope to do it in the next couple of weeks and upload it to YouTube. I've already written the string parts that I'll export from Cubase and load up onto the MPC, and I'm trying to build a funk sounding drum kit.

I really need to buy the RAM upgrade and hard-drive though. While I don't have to keep the samples for live performance on it I want to fill it up with loads of other samples (I'm going to rummage through mine and my Dad's vinyl sometime soon), and drum sounds so I can just play with it and spark up sessions with people.