MPC 500 used for Sample-based Busking Performance

I used an MPC 500 as the mixing/arranging/sequencing/midi-controlling and performance instrument for a project I developed called BUSK. I used samples I recorded of street performers (buskers) as the source sounds to create my own street performance.

In terms of the 500, I sold my 1000 because I needed something battery powered and while it took a bit of time to get used to it was definitely worth it for the project.

Check out the documentary of an improvised performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD-G_m7IOi0

...and here's a piece of music I made on the 500 syncing the samples to their video footage via MIDI in real time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8wR2HwKdnE

Any feedback is welcome!

that's hella nice! way to be creative with an mpc.

nice!

I have been thinking about buskin with my 500 as well, what did you use as speakers?

Sick stuff man.

Jim Beats wrote:I have been thinking about buskin with my 500 as well, what did you use as speakers?

i think is something like this (proel free50):

I'm def feeling that. I likes creativity...

Hands down the most creative use of an MPC i have seen on this site. A++++!

Hot use of various technologies.

Probably not easy to do, but would be really dope to figure out a way to make it closer to real time... get the crowd involved.

This is pretty fresh! I think you should project a larger image on the walls though. You'd really make people do a double take.

I didn't know there was another word for street performers. First time I ever heard the term "busking" was on Aloe Blacc's album. I thought he was just referring to himself as someone who rode the bus regularly. haha

Funny that in the US it is usually referred to as pan handling instead... which is why it probably gets such a bad rap over here.

Googling Busking returns a great many awesome results though such as...

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Money-Busking-%28Street-Performing%29

How did you get those videos to respond to the individual pads? I had a similar idea with the videos a short while back, but sampling buskers is just genius!

^^^
midi triggering
i do it with resolume
you can map the mpc pads to the video channels

He's using Max/MSP (possibly with Jitter) to trigger the videos and presumably the sample playback on the computer. I'd imagine it's a bit too much work to do the audio on the MPC 500 and the videos in Max/MSP although I could be wrong. If I had to guess, he's probably just using the MPC 500 for the sequencing but not audio playback.

We'd need to see more details though to get a complete idea of what he's doing exactly... my guess though is that quite a lot of effort went into programming everything and hooking it all together.

Quite clever.

Really sickk, except for the hater at 5:17.