Sampled / Deep House Production

Hello hello,

Anyone on here using their MPC (particularly looking at the older models) for creating sample-based house music?

I'd be really interested to hear your workflow, approach and way of thinking when creating. I come from a hip hop back ground in terms of production but I have always had a love of house, so I'd love to hear from those of you that are doing it.

In particular I'm interested in hearing about:

1) Bass lines
2) Finding and using shorter sample stabs as opposed to chopped loops etc like in hip hop
3) How you work with your DAW and MPC

Thanks a lot!

I am also quite curious as to producing house on the mpc, I used to dabble in house a bit with software but I was using vsts and sampled 909 material, but dude I'll just say its the same process as making any music on the mpc you need to dig out some good samples and sounds thats all there is to it! I recommend listening to some pepe bradock he samples in his music and he started off doing hip hop

Maksone wrote:Hello hello,

Anyone on here using their MPC (particularly looking at the older models) for creating sample-based house music?

I'd be really interested to hear your workflow, approach and way of thinking when creating. I come from a hip hop back ground in terms of production but I have always had a love of house, so I'd love to hear from those of you that are doing it.

In particular I'm interested in hearing about:

1) Bass lines
2) Finding and using shorter sample stabs as opposed to chopped loops etc like in hip hop
3) How you work with your DAW and MPC

Thanks a lot!

sounds like u already figured it out chop the re-verb trail off piano's or guitars or any instrument and program your patterns with those.

workflows should not be to dissimilar just different patterns and sound selection

sound like u should just go ahead and experiment with what u think is the right approach, and listen to stuff in genre and figure who u can do similar things with the mp

i did a quick youtubeu might get something from dudes approach, but if not search around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys15ZGntgyY

kia ora mate
i make house using an mpc1000 (and sometimes a s3000).
i make my tracks all in the mpc.
for basses i sample bass sounds in scales from my synths, then play them on the pads.
i also sample lots of piano and organ chords in chord progressions that are common in house then play them back on the pads.
for drums i often just loop up a few bars of sampled drums with lots of latin percussion. i cut the loops up to make a breakdown or two and add some variation.
i don't use stabs. more likely to use an ethereal pad or a single tone in the root note.

for house that is made on mpcs, check out moodymann, omar s and theo parrish.
also have a look at forums member vinyljunkie on youtube.

I make House under a different name using just an MPC & an S3000XL. But I don't really have much input since I approach it the exact same way as I do Hip-Hop.

The one point you asked about that I can comment on is the DAW -> MPC flow. I arrange everything in the MPC & track out to PT one track at a time thru an Empirical Labs Fatso. Takes a bit of time, but it's worth it for me.

But overall I approach the two styles (or any other style I make) pretty much the same.

This place has tons of useful info:

http://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/

Hey man cool thread.

I do sample-based house music, so I like to see topics like these for the MPC.

1) Bass lines

I like finding bass sounds/hits to use more than a proper bassline. I do anything from take a bassline I've sequenced and using bits & pieces, to layering sparse synth hits and stabs on top of something else, to throwing random sampled kicks/basses/blips into the 16 levels. It's finding a driving arpeggio, dropping in filtered 808s, adding something for the sub range...and creating a cohesion & mix so that it pulses as one. For me it's not about using one source for bass; it's about a multitude of sounds that create a groove, and especially dynamics. Music like deep house is about establishing a groove.

2) Finding and using shorter sample stabs as opposed to chopped loops etc like in hip hop

You can get a lot of those stabs out of Yamaha FM synths & 90's Rolands and you'll have to learn a few chords. Although really, my preference for sounds like that is to trawl Youtube, a lot European disco & funk...basically whatever old genre contributed to the formation of modern house music. I find a lot of bass hits/snares/stabs/synth arps/weird female vocal shit/etc. in that stuff. So the cool thing is you still get to dig. There's a lot of great hip hop beats & loops ready to be chopped in there too, but I'm really about grabbing 1-2 second samples; finding a nice hit off a slap bass or a good horn stab that I add to the sample collection.

3) How you work with your DAW and MPC

Well, I don't use a computer to make music...MPC is the brain, sequences everything. I've got my drum machines sampled onto it, so I load programs or drum sounds and get a beat going. A few other go-to sounds on there I try out, bass hits, monotron samples, pitched kick drums, to get some low end taken care of. Then I fire up other samplers for one hits and interesting samples. After that, I'll integrate bass and consider synths for rhythm & lead type parts, a lot of those synth parts are sampled into the MPC. The MPC has so many tracks that I can throw each sound and synth on it's own, then it's a matter of bouncing back and forth between the handful of sequences I've come up with using the sound palette I built until I've found the sequences that mesh with one another. Then I can begin to play with track mutes and worry about fills, transitions and editing tracks/sequences to reflect that, until I have around a dozen or so sequences I can organize into a song.

The Jackal wrote:Hey man cool thread.

I do sample-based house music, so I like to see topics like these for the MPC.

1) Bass lines

I like finding bass sounds/hits to use more than a proper bassline. I do anything from take a bassline I've sequenced and using bits & pieces, to layering sparse synth hits and stabs on top of something else, to throwing random sampled kicks/basses/blips into the 16 levels. It's finding a driving arpeggio, dropping in filtered 808s, adding something for the sub range...and creating a cohesion & mix so that it pulses as one. For me it's not about using one source for bass; it's about a multitude of sounds that create a groove, and especially dynamics. Music like deep house is about establishing a groove.

2) Finding and using shorter sample stabs as opposed to chopped loops etc like in hip hop

You can get a lot of those stabs out of Yamaha FM synths & 90's Rolands and you'll have to learn a few chords. Although really, my preference for sounds like that is to trawl Youtube, a lot European disco & funk...basically whatever old genre contributed to the formation of modern house music. I find a lot of bass hits/snares/stabs/synth arps/weird female vocal ****/etc. in that stuff. So the cool thing is you still get to dig. There's a lot of great hip hop beats & loops ready to be chopped in there too, but I'm really about grabbing 1-2 second samples; finding a nice hit off a slap bass or a good horn stab that I add to the sample collection.

3) How you work with your DAW and MPC

Well, I don't use a computer to make music...MPC is the brain, sequences everything. I've got my drum machines sampled onto it, so I load programs or drum sounds and get a beat going. A few other go-to sounds on there I try out, bass hits, monotron samples, pitched kick drums, to get some low end taken care of. Then I fire up other samplers for one hits and interesting samples. After that, I'll integrate bass and consider synths for rhythm & lead type parts, a lot of those synth parts are sampled into the MPC. The MPC has so many tracks that I can throw each sound and synth on it's own, then it's a matter of bouncing back and forth between the handful of sequences I've come up with using the sound palette I built until I've found the sequences that mesh with one another. Then I can begin to play with track mutes and worry about fills, transitions and editing tracks/sequences to reflect that, until I have around a dozen or so sequences I can organize into a song.

Good post man. I've just started to make deep house on the mpc myself. Some handy workflow knowledge there, cheers.