MPC for live backing tracks + midi integration question

Hello,
I've been trying to figure out a way of playing a backing track and have a midi clock signal ( or analog) ate the same time. To make it more clear, I have a sequencer I want to run in sync with the backing track while playing live... would it be possible to import a full track into a MPC and then send a midi clock signal when playing it? I don't want to have to reconstruct all the tracks in the MPC just to make sure the clock is synced, if you know what I mean...

What do you guys reckon?

thanks

It might help if you told:
Which MPC you've got?
Do you have a separate hardware sequencer, or what?
What do you use for backing track playback, if not your MPC?

I've only used MPC2500 w/JJ OS, it is capable of sending Midi Clock or MTC (or both with JJ OSXL 2.X), MPC1000 should be the same, basically. No idea about other models.

I have an MPC1000 with JJ OS. I need to sync an Analogue Solutions Europa ( takes midi clock and analog pulse clock).
I usually don't do back tracking but I need to do that for an upcoming little tour just because all my equipment is vintage synths and drum machines and I don't want to have to bring 8 synths and 5 drum machines on stage with me... I need a more compact set up since the gigs are not in the US... my plan is to bring the MPC, the Europa and a 2 to 3 synths...

I've been thinking about this...

You use the Europa for sequencing some of your synths and drum programming, right?
And you would like to use the MPC strictly for backing tracks? The tracks would run for a few minutes per song? Would you need more than one stereo track per song?

I strongly suspect that the loading times would be excessive for live playing. Let's say you have ten songs in your live set, 5 minutes each. Each song has a stereo backing track that runs the entire length of the song. If you have 128 MB of memory, you could load four such tracks at a time. After you've played the songs, you would have to load the next four tracks. It might take several minutes to load them - I never tried, though. I play synths live, with some sequenced elements plus sampled drums and noises from my MPC. A typical song might have 8 - 10 drum samples (less than a second each), maybe one or two longer (5 - 10 seconds each) atmospheric samples and a bunch of midi information. A simple thing like this still takes several seconds to load.

Anyway, maybe you should try it: record a 5-minute audio track, save and reload it on your MPC. How long does it take? Is the loading time acceptable for live playing? In my opinion, if I'm on stage, more than 20 seconds would scare the siht out of me - "Is it going to work? Why does it take such an eternity?" and so on.

If I really understood your way of working correctly, I think a better option might be any decent multi-track recorder with midi clock that you could sync to the Europa (or whichever would be the master/slave). Or another MPC, so you could play one and load the next song on the other

Ok, some corrections...

I had to test it myself. I recorded two stereo tracks, one around 4,5 minutes, the other 5.5 (48,9 and 56,9 MB respectively). My first mistake: 128 MB only holds a little past 11 minutes of STEREO recordings, of course, so my estimations were 50% off.

Saving the recordings was very quick. My second mistake (or miscalculation): it took 46,9 seconds (not several minutes, as I assumed) to load the folder I'd saved both files into. So, for a 10-song set, you would spend 5 x 46,9 seconds loading. Acceptable? I don't know, what do you think?

The testing was done on JJ OS-XL 2.07.

hey jungle man, this is extremely helpful - you're absolutely right, I guess 45 seconds is not that bad to load a song, assuming I can play some parts on the synths while that happens, or even say something on the mic. Thank you so much for running this test, it was extremely helpful, you basically saved me the trouble of spending about $500 to figure out if the MPC was even capable of handling loading and playing tracks in a live situation... I am thinking of not using the Europa actually because it might be really hard for me to match the tempo of the recorded song to the midi tempo coming out of the MPC... by the way, do you know if the JJ OS lets you dial in the tempo in milliseconds? how precise is it?

Why not slave the MPC to the Europa? MPC might be the better (or more flexible) sequencer, but you already have done your programming in the Europa, haven't you? You'd have to do it all again if you replaced the Europa with the MPC. And the MPC won't do Analog Clock, if you need that with some of your synths!

Sync any synths and the MPC to the Europa, play the backing tracks and record them to the MPC while it (and everything else) is synced to the Europa. Should be quite easy - or, then, I might be wrong again

thiagozt wrote:I guess 45 seconds is not that bad to load a song, assuming I can play some parts on the synths while that happens, or even say something on the mic.

you'd better have a lot to say if you want to talk into the mic for 45 seconds while you wait for the mpc to load!

there must better ways to play back pre-recorded audio tracks than using an mpc!

doesn't the Europa have its own clock?

how about using the Europa clock to sync a Roland SP-404SX, which can play samples straight from an SD card, so you can play much longer samples than an mpc, without having to stop and load anything