Calculating the tempo.

Okay, I've been having a problem with this.  Mainly, in the params screen of the trim section of the MPC, they ask you to insert the amount of beats that the sample is, and then the tempo is calculated from that.  How can I be sure of how many beats the sample is?  Should I count out every snare hit?  For example, should the first snare hit be one, then the next one, two?  A lot of times I just find myself counting off without any kind of reference point, but I may be counting the beats according the tempo i have in my head rather than the actual one.  Could someone give me a method for this?  Getting this down will really help when it comes time to do my sequence.[/color]

Also, what the usual range of tempo for a hip-hop track?[/color]

Counting beats is just that. Count every beat snares & kicks. You  may be getting this confused with counting the number of bars. A one bar loop should have four beats and a two bar loop will have 8 beats(assuming they are in 4/4 time).

Hip hop really doesn't have any rules, so there is no set tempo for a hip hop track, but most tracks will probably be somewhere between 85 and 120bpm.

hope this helps

Cspace[/color]

Thanks a lot, mehn.  Anybody else got any other methods that they use?[/color]

A regular 4/4 measure is made up of four quarter notes or "beats".  So you would count 1-2-3-4--1-2-3-4......
and the backbeat(snare) always falls on the 2 and the 4.

So it's like 1-----2-----3-----4------1------2-----3-----4----
             kik     sn     kik      sn       kik       sn     kik      sn[/color]

you could throw the snare on 1 & 3 or just 1, anything you want which keeps abeat[/color]

No - but a typical dance beat does have snares falling on the second and 4th beats, but I would just rely on counting the 1,2,3,4 for each bar rather than paying attention to the snares.[/color]

look everybody is tring to break this down by the snare or the kick count. i dont even do that when tring to count bars. as soon as the beat starts just snap your fingers to the the beat. every time your finger snaps 4 times thats 1 bar  and snap for more times thats 2 bars and so on an so on. dont forget as soon as the beat starts or loops you snap. i dont mean to step on nobody toes all of us who have answer this question in there own way just can feel this and its hard to break it down. good old rhythem, hope you got some kid.[/color]

umm, snapping your fingers to the beat is the same thing as counting the kick/snare, The only diff, is that when a song has a snare erased on say the 2 or the 4 still count it as a beat, its still a beat, even though there is no sound on it. the beats is not indicative of a sound being there in a bar, just a PLACE for the sound in the bar, and the most logical place.[/color]

i still snap my fingers cause just listin to just blaze beats and sometimes he do something that you might want to do but you need to count the bars the effect might happen so fast that  you got no time to put in a a drum or snare i just snap my fingers. if im in the club and im dancing and i need to catch the beat i snap my fingers. i can better pace my self. so on and so on. i never said that what i do was right or wrong or if what you do was right or wrong i just said what i do ok. duh[/color]