Chops to my drum tracks.

cyrus wrote:

dabmeister wrote:

cyrus wrote:bpm aint always gotta match. it depends on the sample and how you chopped it.

I'll be the first to admit that sampling is more secondary to me than it is for those that solely rely on it.

Yeah if the sample isn't dead on point, then I guess how it's chopped up and being laid out will work just as well.

Myself personally, I always try to get sh!t to fit like a glove in hand...but that's just me.

thats definatley a good point. sometimes, before i chop up a sample, ill find a loop i can loop up to figure out the bpm, pitch, timestretch the entire loop to figure out the correct tempo and get things in sync, then ill chop that once i know it fits nicely as a loop........see what i mean? sometimes you gotta go back to orignal song you sampled and figure out the bpm from there too......but sometimes, the most out of wack (timing wise) loop can end up sounding good over perfectly quantized drums.......depends.

+1, and to add to that...all of this stuff is important to know especially for the novice producer.

These are more of the inside secrets that zero in on the fine nuances of production work that many overlook and don't take the time to learn.

MGStudios wrote:What do you guys prefer? Mono or stereo chops? I usually find myself doing mono.

well, i guess what i mean by mono is monophonic, the pad setting......so when you hit a pad, the next time you hit it it will cut itself off.

but as far as mono vs stereo, if its comming from vinyl, i prefer stereo, because some samples have stuff panned to the right or left, (like drums for example) and you can then remove the left or right side and isolate instruments. for example, i might sample a jazz piano riff that has some light percussion on the left channel and more piano on right channel, i can then just take the right channel and the percussion is instantly gone!

but things like drums or bass, it ends up being mono....although sometimes breaks and certain style of drums tend to sound best stereo.

on the mpc2500 there is a stereo > mono function that inverts the channels and cancels out vocals, sometimes i use that too.

so for me its a mixed bag......

at OP.....

wow...just wow

cyrus wrote:

MGStudios wrote:What do you guys prefer? Mono or stereo chops? I usually find myself doing mono.

well, i guess what i mean by mono is monophonic, the pad setting......so when you hit a pad, the next time you hit it it will cut itself off.

but as far as mono vs stereo, if its comming from vinyl, i prefer stereo, because some samples have stuff panned to the right or left, (like drums for example) and you can then remove the left or right side and isolate instruments. for example, i might sample a jazz piano riff that has some light percussion on the left channel and more piano on right channel, i can then just take the right channel and the percussion is instantly gone!

but things like drums or bass, it ends up being mono....although sometimes breaks and certain style of drums tend to sound best stereo.

on the mpc2500 there is a stereo > mono function that inverts the channels and cancels out vocals, sometimes i use that too.

so for me its a mixed bag......

I meant the monophonic setting as well, like for chops and what not lol.

cyrus wrote:

youknowmysteeze22 wrote:So, I just gotta find a melody with the chops?

thats one way to do it. i guess the point is, there isnt one specific way to do it. sometimes you need to loop something,so yeah, finding the bpm is important. but sometimes you chopping the sample up into little pieces and at that point the bpm may not matter (sometimes it does, depends on the sample and how you chop it).

some pointers:

1.experiment
2.best producers are masters of chopping things into bits and rearranging (alchemist,dj premier,dilla)
3.best producers also jack **** and straight loop (alchemist,dj premier,dilla) - but always put it into thier context.
4.tap tempo is important tool, but not always accurate, tap the tempo, but tweak (use your ears!)
5.practice chopping stuff into small bits (learning where to chop stuff)
6.use your ears, above all, use your ears. dilla aint got that **** by not using his ears!

youtube "boondoc" and watch all his videos.

What do you mean by tap tempo. I know the switch on the mpc and how you can hold it with a drum but I dont understand what you do with to a tempo? Also. to count bpm you go 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 etc. Is it the same speed for every sample?

MGStudios wrote:

cyrus wrote:

MGStudios wrote:What do you guys prefer? Mono or stereo chops? I usually find myself doing mono.

well, i guess what i mean by mono is monophonic, the pad setting......so when you hit a pad, the next time you hit it it will cut itself off.

but as far as mono vs stereo, if its comming from vinyl, i prefer stereo, because some samples have stuff panned to the right or left, (like drums for example) and you can then remove the left or right side and isolate instruments. for example, i might sample a jazz piano riff that has some light percussion on the left channel and more piano on right channel, i can then just take the right channel and the percussion is instantly gone!

but things like drums or bass, it ends up being mono....although sometimes breaks and certain style of drums tend to sound best stereo.

on the mpc2500 there is a stereo > mono function that inverts the channels and cancels out vocals, sometimes i use that too.

so for me its a mixed bag......

I meant the monophonic setting as well, like for chops and what not lol.

haha,
yeah probably almost always mono....that and mute groups accross multiple pads (mpc2500 + jjos got mute groups, dont rmemeber what other mpc's do)
occasionally ill have some note on stuff, but thats if there is a certain sound im going for.

U can also adjust the bpm of the drumloop (assuming u programed ur drums) to fit the sample. Or pitch the chops.

cyrus wrote:steez,

are your chops set to mono?

Sorry, I didnt even realize you replied again. yeah, I have them set to mono. Im in the beginning stages of this stuff. When you say time stretch, you mean if the the 2 bar sample for example is 80 bpm stretch it 90 bpm, then chop it up and it could possibly fit better to the 90 bpm drum tracks?

I actually just did some experimenting. I threw on a record and counted every beat within a beat and came up with a BPM. Then I counted 10 seconds of a song and multiplied it by 6 and came up with the same number. This could real confusing if your using different parts of a song if the tempo changes right?