FILL ?

Hello,

I'm a heavy Elektron user, considering moving from the Octatrack to the MPC One, basically because the limitations of Octatrack sequencer / polyphony.

So i've been searching a lot about the MPC One, to check if it suits my needs before taking the plunge.

And so far the only thing i could not figure out is about creating drum variations / fills to use in live situations.

For instance, on the Octatack i can set a step to only trigger when i press the FILL button. In this situation i can create drum fills on the fly, like muting the kick drum and doubling the snare when the FILL condition is enabled. I just press the FILL button and all steps with FILL condition will be triggered (or muted).

Does the MPC One has a similar feature ?

Thanks

Well, there's a couple of different ways, although not precisely what you ask for..

Also, I'm on the MPC X, and I'm just assuming that the software is pretty much the same as far as the features I'm about to describe, so take it with sine grains of salt.

But you can program entire patterns, render them to a single audio file and triggering those on the pads.. You can cut them up and set to the same mute group, and/or as mono per pad.. This way with noterepeat on, if you say press and old a drum roll, with timing set to 8th, if the roll is playing 16ths you'll sustain that roll for as long as you hold the pad.. As it starts over each 8th, meaning that you'll get a fill with a 2 hit 16ths shuffle that repeats over and over..

If you let go of the pad, it will play out the entire slice..

This way you could technically have very long sequences that you can trigger and let play out if you want to say jam keyboards to it live.


This is an easy way to set things up to do old-school jungle/dnb type patterns with slice triggering.

Another way to do drum fills on the fly, is to use cycling on a pad, this way, instead of playing 4 layers at the same time, it will cycle through each..

So again, if you use noterepeat and just press and hold the pad, you can have it cycle through up to 4 hits, in order or randomly..

So say you want to throw in a tom roll.. Then you can just hold that pad, and it will roll for as long as you hold the pad, turn off full level to have it more dynamic in velocity..

Similar to when doing the same with longer slices of audio.. Only this time it's not a static piece.. But you can tweak the hits individually as well.

And you can link them to other pads, with different hits that cycle, perhaps with just three layers, meaning that you'll get some polyrhytmic shuffles going on as the pads loop independently, if the original pad has a different number of layers..

And you can tweak layers differently, with pitch and velocity, or even silence one layer so that it plays the silence as part of the pattern, at whatever timing you've set up to use with noterepeat.

So you can make pretty complex fills if you set other pads to play simultaneously..

For example like this, where each number represent whatever drum hits you've placed as layers on the pad:

1234123412341234
1231231231231231
1212121213121212
1413134234222234

Original pad with 4 layers cycling in order..

then it's linked to a pad with 3 layers, making it polyrhytmic..

Then one more with just 2 layers..

and finally one set up to cycle randomly..

It's overkill, but just to show some of the potential...

As for playing doubles..

If you want a double kick at whatever timing, you can just press and hold the pad with noterepeat on, it will play the kick according to the timing.. If you do it quick enough, you'll just get a double trigger..

Though, since I don't know exactly what you're looking for, I have a feeling that this is not quite it..

But it at least DOES allow you to throw in drum fills on the fly, IF you have set things up initially.

Or just play a fill manually whenever you need one, by quickly double/triple hitting a snare pad, which will sound quite natural if you have two or three round robins configured. The MPC pads are, I assume, significantly more suited to finger drumming compared to the octatrack. Or create a set of pre-rendered 'fills' one shots which you then assign (up to 4) to a pad as a set of round robins which can be triggered when required - each time you trigger the pad, a different fill would be played.

discorules wrote:Hello,

I'm a heavy Elektron user, considering moving from the Octatrack to the MPC One, basically because the limitations of Octatrack sequencer / polyphony.

So i've been searching a lot about the MPC One, to check if it suits my needs before taking the plunge.

And so far the only thing i could not figure out is about creating drum variations / fills to use in live situations.

For instance, on the Octatack i can set a step to only trigger when i press the FILL button. In this situation i can create drum fills on the fly, like muting the kick drum and doubling the snare when the FILL condition is enabled. I just press the FILL button and all steps with FILL condition will be triggered (or muted).

Does the MPC One has a similar feature ?

Thanks

Or sequence the mpc from OT to get all that juicy performance trig action and set mpc outputs to get mangled by OT effects. I don’t have an OT, (too scared to invest all that time ), but I do use other sequencers and post fx with ma mpc. The chops, pads and production fx are epic on the mpc. Live sequencing, so far for me has been dull on mpc. Above @ibunshi post has some pretty cool ideas I’m gonna try.

Of course you can always finger drum you fills live with one-shots on the pads.

One other thing that can be done is to create a pre-programmed fill on an unused pad. Then, just mute the pad and in love performance you can use the Pad Mute function to unmute the fill pad to hear the fill. In fact, you could have tons of pads with fills ready to go and each one could be tweaked a little different (like a pitched up snare, or lots of reverb on the one pad, etc)

Yeah, there are tons of ways to do it with the MPC, it’s just a matter of finding what works for you.

Another fun way to do fills is to create copies of the pad (sound) you want a fill on (like a snare) and pre-record or program in some automations. Then using the note repeat you can “play” the fills live with the sound automatically changing timbre/ pitch/ whatever for you.

I used to do this a lot with the korg Electribe.

What T-Monk said: RESAMPLE.