A fresh MPC user here. I tried to find exactly what you want, but apparently it isn't possible. The audio track recording thingy can't do overdubs, and it won't record beyond the end of the sequence (loop). There's the "Auto Record" feature in the Locate window where you get by double-tapping the time counter, but I can't get it to work no matter what. I was able to auto-record MIDI once, but not again. Repeating the same steps, nothing. For audio I couldn't get it to start recording at all, with any combination of settings, stop/start, record arm etc. and reading the manual.
I found these semi-lame workarounds:
- Use the Looper, which can do Overdubs. After you got the loop recorded, a multi-step procedure is needed to get the recorded loop onto an audio track, involving many button presses and touch screen functions. It's so tedious, you might as well stop playback and record from zero with count-in, because your flow was interrupted anyway.
- Place your song content so that MPC's bar 2 is your song/chorus's bar 1, so there's some time to press record between MPC's bars 1-2. You need to plan this ahead.
- Maybe you could use "single sequence workflow". Don't start your song in the sequence at bar 1. Start at something like bar 9 and set the loop to bars 9-16. Then you can maybe jump back to bar 8 using a locator, so that it feels continuous, and press record when bar 9 starts. Or use auto recording, if you can get it to work, I couldn't.
It looks like the MPC was designed to be an integrated sampler and MIDI sequencer for making something like 8-bar loops (sequences). Anything outside that "designed for" native sweet spot has been added later, and support for every use-case has to be specifically implemented one by one.
With all of my few days of experience in using the MPC One, to me it seems that in order to compete with Ableton for audio-recording use cases, at least the following changes are needed in MPC standalone:
- It must be possible to share Tracks between multiple Sequences
- It must be possible to record tracks which overlap Sequence boundaries
- There has to be Audio Warp Markers and Audio Quantize, without being limited to a "MIDI+sampler" concept. Each slice has to be able to automatically self-stretch so that it ends when the next slice starts. (Which isn't possible with conventional MIDI, because in MIDI you can only send commands instructing the recipient to do something ASAP, and there's no way to say "there's 100 ms time before I'll send you the next command")
- It must be possible to record audio and have it audio-quantized etc. without interrupting the flow and stopping playback, and without being forced into the sequence jail.
