Further question for live using (MPC Key 37)

Hi folks,
playing in a Cover-Band might not be the standard case of using a MPC, but If you can live with the drawback of loading-time per project (per Song I use one project, then referred in the Setlist...) it does a nice job (and suits very well on top of the other red keyboard (Nord Stage 4). For some songs the main use cases are the pads (Percussions or one-shots), others take advantage of the nice Jura-sounds played by keys.
Two things I still haven‘t figured out:

1. is it possible to use the pads and the keys independently for 2 different sounds/(plugin-)tracks? I found out that a drum-synth multi-sound is only laid out at the pads but there is no setting to change that...

2. for firing up samples I‘ve loaded various samples on the pads; one-shots are working fine, triggering an endless loop (e.g. first hit start, next hit on the pad - stop the loop), only activating the Pad loop button on the edit-Screen doesn‘t change anything...How to do..?

Regards
Tim

Yes you can play keys and drums at once but you need a keyboard that sends drums on channel 9, keys on channel 7 and transport on channel 1 (if transport is desired). Then you have to set the midi channel specifically on each track to the coresponding input channel. Also after that you need to set the channels to "merge" so you can hear both instruments.

Your second question i cant answer.

Hi Ultros,
when you say "I need a keyboard..." then you mean a secondary (external) keyboard? Mmh... I wish I could realize the purpose with only the MPC Key 37...

Regards
Tim

1. Since MPC Keyboard and MPC Pad show up as separate input ports, it’s possible to assign them to different sounds. To do this, uncheck GLOBAL in the MIDI Input settings, then set each track’s port individually and make sure the Monitor is set to In.

2. On the MPC, loops can only be triggered using Note On. As a workaround, you can load a long enough loop as a One-shot, and use Mute Groups to stop it when needed.

Also worth noting, depending on whether you're on the latest firmware (3.5?) or some version of mpc2 firmware that a lot if folk still use :

In v2 OS you can have an entire set in one project quite easily, to avoid loading time lags between songs - build each of your songs in as many different sequences as you need (one drum program per song has always been plenty for me) & then arrange your song in 'song mode' - once it's all there you can convert it to a single sequence, so you can play your whole set from the 'main' screen - makes it a lot easier if this is possible for you.

I've no idea if this format will work in v3 OS though, everything I've read tells me probably not..