MPC SWING. Please help me understand!

Sovereign wrote:

dabmeister wrote:I'll be the first to admit...I like sampling, but it ain't the main course of my music structuring technique. However, like the countless threads that I've contributed to and for those that know, I play 99% of the time so timing is crutial for someone like myself.

If you sample 99% of the time, then of course you're more reliant to depend on how your sample sounds, is it truncated or timestretched enough here or there as opposed to you dedicating yourself to different timing variants.

I wonder how many of us here actually play or structure their own drum patterns versus sampling them?

Drum loops went out a long time ago.
We are talking about sampling your drums to play as a drum pattern or other textures sounds that may be sampled.

Me personally, I never got into doing my own drum samples. IMO it takes too long and I'd rather pay for a ready made producer set or something so I can focus on other aspects of the writing process.

Everybody has different work ethics. I guess in the end, who's going to notice if you've sampled your own drums, bought them pre-sampled or recorded a hellafied drummer (this is opinionated of course, your milage will vary).

punchdrunk wrote:

Zukan wrote:The famous 'mpc swing' died with the 60 and 3000.

The chips that run the new series mpcs, from 2k onwards, are rock solid in their timing.

Years ago we conducted some clocking tests with various mpcs and found the 60s and 3ks all had a small variance and drifted. This allowed for the so called swing.

The chips today are rock solid in their consistency and the overriding factors are more to do with the time it takes for the pad contacts to relay a note on/off message.

The quantize values are timed accurately against any DAW and it comes down to how you structure your templates.

actually it seems to be the total opposite of what you are saying when it comes to being solid in timing.
the old machines are rock solid in comparison with the newer ones that are a bit more unstable with their timing.

check out the 3000 and the 60 results on here...
http://web.webhost4life.com/innerclock/ ... ge&name=34

the maximum the 3000 was off was only 2 samples!
i've done this test with a 1000 running JJOS and once every couple measure it would go off by 40 - 80 samples.

Yes but then it need to be slaved.

Quote:Tempo Slaved to Ultra Stable External Midi Clock to Midi Input B

Interesting link thou. Thank you.
I did the test again. With different settings that all result in 120 bpm quarter note pulse (for example 8ths at 60 bpm, halfs at 240 bpm)
The biggest difference are always the first and the last* pulse of a pattern. A one bar pattern looks like this

22055,22054,22052,22048 *,22058, 22052,22052,22048 *, 22057,22053,22052,22048

But beside all that technical talkin. I wonder if we are all the kind of superman who really can hear that.
I think setting the start and endpoint of a snare has much more influence on the groove then the jitter of the machine.

peace

Sovereign wrote:

dabmeister wrote:I'll be the first to admit...I like sampling, but it ain't the main course of my music structuring technique. However, like the countless threads that I've contributed to and for those that know, I play 99% of the time so timing is crutial for someone like myself.

If you sample 99% of the time, then of course you're more reliant to depend on how your sample sounds, is it truncated or timestretched enough here or there as opposed to you dedicating yourself to different timing variants.

I wonder how many of us here actually play or structure their own drum patterns versus sampling them?

Drum loops went out a long time ago.
We are talking about sampling your drums to play as a drum pattern or other textures sounds that may be sampled.[/quote


Drum loops went out and came back in
Even if you sample , if your serious about your sampling , then timing is still a issue
When you really get deep into it , you'll turn that quantizer off . They knew what they were doing when they gave you that option .

peterpiper wrote:Yes but then it need to be slaved.

Quote:Tempo Slaved to Ultra Stable External Midi Clock to Midi Input B

Interesting link thou. Thank you.
I did the test again. With different settings that all result in 120 bpm quarter note pulse (for example 8ths at 60 bpm, halfs at 240 bpm)
The biggest difference are always the first and the last* pulse of a pattern. A one bar pattern looks like this

22055,22054,22052,22048 *,22058, 22052,22052,22048 *, 22057,22053,22052,22048

But beside all that technical talkin. I wonder if we are all the kind of superman who really can hear that.
I think setting the start and endpoint of a snare has much more influence on the groove then the jitter of the machine.

peace

you're totally right about the 3000 being slaved in that one example. but even when not slaved the results on that page were still good.

speaking of slaving the mpc, here is a thread i started a little while ago about how sketchy my mpc timing was when slaved to my soundcard.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=119641

the first post in the thread has a comparison of my results not slaved, and then slaved.
when it was slaved the clicks would sometimes be off by 300 samples!!
yeesh...

towards the end of that thread the guy from innerclock actually posted up to drop some info, and mention a new sync device he was selling. worth checking out.

peace.

Mr Guiness wrote:

Drum loops went out and came back in

No they didn't come back, we just have a new breed of people whole can sit around replicating old hip hop.

Sovereign wrote:Then as mentioned you have to deal with the responsiveness of the triggers.
I preferred when MPC had a set pad aspect that you learned to use instead of this adjustable sensitivity nonsense.
All the MPC with the adjustable pads all seem to have some funny point where they aren't responsive enough.

I think the way the rubber pads depresses after impact may also be a factor. You can't really play keys like a percusive instrument. To me playing the mpc feels like jamming on some type of drum. Like a lot of people say: playing the mpc feels like banging out drumpatterns on the kitchen table.

Menco wrote:You can't really play keys like a percusive instrument.

I agree, but there's folks out here that can put together some mean sh!t with just a keyboard, and/or sound module & sequencer.

goal is to give you that subconcious head nod factor/ bounce when listening to a beat that you don't even realize your doing until people start pointing at you

Menco wrote:

I think the way the rubber pads depresses after impact may also be a factor. You can't really play keys like a percusive instrument. To me playing the mpc feels like jamming on some type of drum. Like a lot of people say: playing the mpc feels like banging out drumpatterns on the kitchen table.

That's what they were designed for thus the reason the MPC wasn't originally setup with Chronomatic Pads.
They always thought you would use an external keyboard to your keys into the sequencer.

Im new to mpc and dont really use the swing do you normally put the swing on all notes or just the drums? I understand what it does but not really how to apply it.

I think that some have missed the point here about timing resolution and testing pulses.

The 3K used 96 ppqn (pulses per quarter note) and the 2k used 480 ppqn. That resolution is crucial when testing and clocking for midi timing.

Think of each pulse as the timing variation between one midi event to the next and this can be termed as 'ticks'. You can check this when trying to edit midi events in your DAW by selecting and checking what 'tick' values are available.

Older drum machines used to work off even lower pulses, some as low as 24 ppqn. You can imagine what this can do with regards to quantisation.

Test clocking any midi based sync entails long bar count tests and over variable bpms.

As I mentioned earlier, the contact time is also crucial. The Linn based contacts/pads had a depress/release time that was crucial in a note on and note off event. The processing chips have a huge influence over clocking speeds and therefore sync and this changes based on both the ppqn values when dealing with quantisation and chip processor speed when dealing with the actual events and their processing.

It is not as clear cut as loading a midi trigger in one application and comparing it to another.

Today's midi resolutions and their processing are rock solid and we have had to recreate groove templates by applying all sorts of quantisation values across: strength, length, velocity, range, flam, 2 tick swings and so on to attain and mimic the 'grooves' from other units.

TBH, I create my own templates and save them as grooves. It isn't that hard and is very rewarding. Hell, it is so easy nowadays to even extract grooves from existing loops and tweak them and save them as grooves in your DAW.

I still love the mpcs simply because of the hands-on aspect. The time it takes to slam a pad also adds hugely to the timing of the beat but the resolution, when trying to put notes back into some kind of sensible timing sequence, is important when it comes to quantising. I would rather use a 480 or 960 ppqn resolution when all I want is to slightly move a couple of errand notes closer to the values, than a lower resolution that would throw my notes further away to the next value be it lower or higher.

However, I love using the 3k more than today's driven systems simply because the timing drifts are inherent in the processing and this can give a more natural feel to my beats.

But hell, that's why we love things with 'character'.

Zukan wrote:
It is not as clear cut as loading a midi trigger in one application and comparing it to another.

This is also the reason why the templates are not the same as the hardware.
A template can only mimic note placement not the other elements of a hardware unit, at least not as they are now.

This is why I wonder why the 5k only has 1 mode of Quant OFF instead of 2 like the 4k, so that it can function like the older MPC's.

Zukan wrote:I think that some have missed the point here about timing resolution and testing pulses.

The 3K used 96 ppqn (pulses per quarter note) and the 2k used 480 ppqn. That resolution is crucial when testing and clocking for midi timing.

Think of each pulse as the timing variation between one midi event to the next and this can be termed as 'ticks'. You can check this when trying to edit midi events in your DAW by selecting and checking what 'tick' values are available.

Older drum machines used to work off even lower pulses, some as low as 24 ppqn. You can imagine what this can do with regards to quantisation.

Nope. MPC 2000 / 2000XL also got 96 ppq. Its the resolution of the sequencer. You can kind of double this resolution when you double the bpm and play for example a 1 bar drumpattern "streched" in 2 bars. You can also use half of the tempo bpm and play your 1 bar pattern in a half bar. This will result in so to say 48 ppq.

If I remember correctly the SP1200 has 48ppq so some people like to double the bpm on this beast.


peace

Yep, stand corrected on the 2K. Not sure why I recall that ppqn....

BTW, you can't change the ppqn value of a sequencer. You can work around it. An example would be to play in double time so as to allow for more accuracy on the divisions as you have suggested.

Zukan wrote:Yep, stand corrected on the 2K. Not sure why I recall that ppqn....

BTW, you can't change the ppqn value of a sequencer. You can work around it. An example would be to play in double time so as to allow for more accuracy on the divisions as you have suggested.

Thats what I ment when I said "kind of" and "so to say"

peace