doing drums on mpc 1000.. having trouble

ok.. basicallt i am at a good place in learning mpc 1000.. i can chop samples do that pick what drums to use or other sounds cut up the drum sounds.. umm..trim stuff ya know.. got cool samples.. ok..here's the deal.. i can't play the drum patterns smoothly.. i can't figure out the step edit.. will that help? my friend said try quantizing the notes.. man this is hard.. i'm so close yet so far away.. please help me

well what exactly happens when you record your patterns that is not correct?

Are you using the metronome when you record? What quantized setting are you using?

You got to learn to count to four man...... I know it's hard for some, but if you can't do this, you'll never mix records or make loops, or even be able to play alongside other musicians. Counting to four, it's what makes us special.....

use metronome and set quantize to 1/32 try just doing one sound at the time so lay ur snare down in time to the metronome typically it should hit on the 2 and the 4.

then lay ur kicks in, then ur hats or which ever variation u choose.


but maybe ur tryna play ur kick and snare and hat at the same time like a real drummer but that may be a bit to much at first.

jpeg wrote:use metronome and set quantize to 1/32 try just doing one sound at the time so lay ur snare down in time to the metronome typically it should hit on the 2 and the 4.

then lay ur kicks in, then ur hats or which ever variation u choose.


but maybe ur tryna play ur kick and snare and hat at the same time like a real drummer but that may be a bit to much at first.

good advice.

TribeCalledQuest wrote:Counting to four, it's what makes us special.....

1...2...3...4!!! Yeah, I'm special!!!

Here's some tips:

Set quantize to 1/8 and lay down a straight hi-hat pattern. Turn quantize off and practice playing kick & snare along to the quantized hi-hat and try to be as tight as possible. Set quantize to 1/16 and lay down a kick pattern. Turn quantize off and record a snare line. Combining quantized with loose you'll learn how to add natural groove. Reverse it - keep the kick & snare quantized but record the hats loose. Start with a simple hat pattern that's quantized, but then overdub more hi-hat on top without quantize. Also, turn the tempo way down, record some unquantized patterns, and then speed the tempo up and see how it sounds. Sloppy playing at 70bpm turns into solid groove at 100bmp....


Carlos The Expanding Man

i'm new to the mpc 1000. and i found that when i was laying down my drums i could lay them down perfect and when they loop back around there was pausing or like a studder in the drum pattern. i turned the T.C. off and now i lay them down the way i want. for me with sensitive pads and the t.c. off was all i need. for me it is better to seperate your drum pattern instead of having kick, snare, hats, etc. all on one. peace.

Menco wrote:

TribeCalledQuest wrote:Counting to four, it's what makes us special.....

1...2...3...4!!! Yeah, I'm special!!!

This is wrong. haha

don't separate your drums into multiple tracks unless they honest to god require separate programs, like 1 drum pgm and 1 percussion pgm.

separating drums makes editing your drum pattern much more time consuming than it should be.

instead, get jjos and use drum grid edit. record your drums in one track and edit them as necessary. you don't miss out on anything having them all on one track due to seq edit's surgical nature, and you get the added bonus of visual stimulus seeing them all together.

your brother crothers.

Hi chaps, I've been trying to download the JJ OS for mac, when I unzip the file called 'mpc1000_jv311.bin' it just creates a file called 'mpc1000_jv311.bin.cpgz' and when unzip that file it just creates another zipped 'mpc1000_jv311.bin' and so forth. Everywhere I've checked nobody seems to be having these issues. Any advice?

crothers wrote:don't separate your drums into multiple tracks unless they honest to god require separate programs, like 1 drum pgm and 1 percussion pgm.

separating drums makes editing your drum pattern much more time consuming than it should be.

instead, get jjos and use drum grid edit. record your drums in one track and edit them as necessary. you don't miss out on anything having them all on one track due to seq edit's surgical nature, and you get the added bonus of visual stimulus seeing them all together.

your brother crothers.

I disagree

I think it's a personal preference. I hate it to go through all those events in step edit mode to correct that one hihat stroke.

I also like to track mute option, especially to break down the drums.

But to each his own.

to each his own.

this quote is the only absolute truth out there. right on.

I think it's a personal preference. I hate it to go through all those events in step edit mode to correct that one hihat stroke.

i'd hate doing that in step edit, also, which is why i would do this in grid edit. however, step edit does feature that "show ____ note only" param so you can view only your hats, or only your ____. all depends on how you get down on grid edit. i find that i can slam my drum patterns down and edit them while just staying in 1 screen - speeds up my work a lot.

when i was runnin the stock akai os, i worked my drums on diff tracks for that exact reason, though (to avoid step edit clutter). seeing only 4 notes at 1 time is REAL limiting. esp when you start working in CCs and realtime qlink changes - ****!!!

I also like to track mute option, especially to break down the drums.

yeah i don't use recordable track mutes at all and vanilla track mutes only a little. if i want a drum part cut, i delete the pads in grid edit. if a track's empty in my sequence, i delete the whole damn track so it doesn't **** me up when i do song to seq.

i close with again, to each his own, but good to get different workflows out in the open.