tyrone_biggums wrote:^^
no difference...i just figured thats by far the hardest way. but then again u could just chop up the notes u record and then replay them inside the box so...
I guess what I'm trying to say is that its not really a different way of doing the
same thing. Well technically speaking, it is. But artistically and creatively, its a whole
different thing.
In other words, when you record MIDI notes, your intent is to lay down a part, in time, to the beat, already quantized etc. You have your final destination in mind. If that's your intent then MIDI is the best way.
When you play freeform and sample yourself, your intent is to get happy accidents, and a lot of times you can end up with something totally different from what you intended or thought you would. Something that you probably would have never thought of playing from the keyboard in the first place.
Either way, the two methods don't give the same results so they are not the same thing. The trick that works for me is to chop it into 'phrases' (groups of notes) and then resequence those phrases from the pads. Chopping single notes never worked well for me (no matter whether its a herbie hancock sample, a chick corea sample or a 'me' sample). But when I chop into phrases, that's when the magic happens.
Another example, what's the difference between chopping and slicing? One is freeform, the other one has built in assumptions and limitations. With slicing, you assume that the next slice begins where the previous one ends, you assume that you only want one drum/note/sound in each slice, you assume that you want the slice to start at the beginning of that single drum/note/sound, you assume that you're working with a whole bar or two bars (or some multiple thereof) of music, etc. With chopping, all that goes out the window. Its freeform, you just do what feels/sounds right.
When you sample yourself playing, you are starting with an idea, a seed, and letting it take you where
it wants to go. If that's not your thing then ok, but you can't dismiss it as just 'a harder way to do the same thing'.
A similar technique is to create a sequence on your keyboard and lay all your keyboard parts down. put a lil mix on it, get it sounding right, then sample it into your MPC. Chop and resequence, and there you go. Here's a good illustration of that technique:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1pxY6Nh ... re=relatedBut forreal, I don't know why I just wasted 10 minutes of my life typing that...