Chop a Sample

I was wondering if it's possible to chop up a sample (some drums for example), without copying the sample over and over
again to cut out the kicks, hi's and the snares separately and delete the rest. Thats how I do it...

It takes quite a long time this way and if there's any other way I'd be very happy to hear it !

I use the 60 mkII v3.10 by the way.

to answer your question, Yes. Search, it is DEFINATLEY covered x1000.

what do you mean by that ?

Im not totally sure how it goes but it has to do something with putting the loop in temp. I personally just use ur method which works very good for me.

I think he is refering to this:

elmacaco wrote:Record and save a sample that you want to chop.
then go back to the sampling screen and set your sample time to 0.1 second and sample nothing (silence). If your Threshhold is too high it won't trigger the sample with silence, but if you have your Turntable hooked up and the needle on the record (which, since you are sample, should be the case) you just need to bump the TT or the table it's on and it will trigger the sampler without sampling any noise. Silence is not critical though.

save the sample and do it a few times (for as many chops as you need).

The go to the main sample in the edit sample page (Sounds > 6).
Set the play X button (Soft Button 3) to play zone [it's on the right, second field from the bottom] and set the zone on what you want to extract.

Once you got it, hit copy zone to temp.
Then go to one of the blank samples, still in Edit sample screen, the zone should be set to .100 on both start and end.
Go to the the <do it> button field at the lower right where you select copy to temp and delete before soft start, etc. Change that to INS TEMP TO ZONE END.
Once that's copied, you need to set the soft start and soft end how you want it, wide open if you zoned it right, but the soft start should be at 000.100.00 which is the silence that created the sample.
Then go back to the <do it> menu and set it to delete before soft start so you can delete the silent 0.100 that you started with when you press <Do it>.

I'm quick with that now. It sounds more complicated than it is, once you do it a few times you zip along. Its not the fastest method, most of my samples I just do straight from vinyl, but if I grab a bunch of hits in a sample, I'll zone them out this way.

the smaller the zone the less time it takes, so I tend to use it for drums, whatever the longest section of the sample is, that's what I keep there and then zone out the smaller bits I want.

at it's worst it takes about a minute, but it can feel like forever, sometimes it takes a while and you just gotta leave it alone, also you gotta make sure that where you are pasting is right in the zone field, I had an error once where I had the zones at zero and I pasted something and the machine stayed pasting for too long so I shut down, I consider that a crash, but I did something stupid, that's why it happened,

The something stupid was:

I deleted the .1 second section before pasting, so the sample had no data, and the zone was still set to 00.100.00 so it was trying to paste in a non existant location. It only was possible because I delete the silent sample first, the zone settings didn't update, normally it won't let you set the zone beyond the sample length.

be patient, it can really give good results. Another good thing is if you set the zone to how you want it but don't have a silent sample to paste to, you can go sample it and then go back to the sample edit screen and your zone stays how you set it unless you switch sounds in the edit screen. When you hit sounds 6 after sampling the silence, you go right back to the same sample with your zone settings Intact. Copy it into temp then you go to the new silent sample and paste. I am not sure if you can copy the zone to temp and then sample the silence, I wouldn't recomend it though, I think the temp memory would be cleared when you enter sampling.

I like the control of sampling into the 60, I can turn stuff up or down and get different results, plus I love chopping on the 60, for longer samples I just back cue the record and sample and trim again, but for short things I do the zones, and sometimes for long things depends if I am feeling impatient or not.

Everyone witha 60 should know how to do this and try it at least once, and get to know that do it menu, it's got play before zone, after zone, before soft start, after soft start, so you can do really precise chops and edits like pulling out pops and clicks with the Silence zone feature.

From the MPC60 bible thread on top of this page.

chillbob wrote:what do you mean by that ?

He meant use the search function before posting questions
That way you can tell if your question has already been answered (which it had) and you dont need to waste peoples time replying and waste server space with duplicate information.

64hz wrote:Im not totally sure how it goes but it has to do something with putting the loop in temp. I personally just use ur method which works very good for me.

I think he is refering to this:

elmacaco wrote:Record and save a sample that you want to chop.
then go back to the sampling screen and set your sample time to 0.1 second and sample nothing (silence). If your Threshhold is too high it won't trigger the sample with silence, but if you have your Turntable hooked up and the needle on the record (which, since you are sample, should be the case) you just need to bump the TT or the table it's on and it will trigger the sampler without sampling any noise. Silence is not critical though.

save the sample and do it a few times (for as many chops as you need).

The go to the main sample in the edit sample page (Sounds > 6).
Set the play X button (Soft Button 3) to play zone [it's on the right, second field from the bottom] and set the zone on what you want to extract.

Once you got it, hit copy zone to temp.
Then go to one of the blank samples, still in Edit sample screen, the zone should be set to .100 on both start and end.
Go to the the <do it> button field at the lower right where you select copy to temp and delete before soft start, etc. Change that to INS TEMP TO ZONE END.
Once that's copied, you need to set the soft start and soft end how you want it, wide open if you zoned it right, but the soft start should be at 000.100.00 which is the silence that created the sample.
Then go back to the <do it> menu and set it to delete before soft start so you can delete the silent 0.100 that you started with when you press <Do it>.

I'm quick with that now. It sounds more complicated than it is, once you do it a few times you zip along. Its not the fastest method, most of my samples I just do straight from vinyl, but if I grab a bunch of hits in a sample, I'll zone them out this way.

the smaller the zone the less time it takes, so I tend to use it for drums, whatever the longest section of the sample is, that's what I keep there and then zone out the smaller bits I want.

at it's worst it takes about a minute, but it can feel like forever, sometimes it takes a while and you just gotta leave it alone, also you gotta make sure that where you are pasting is right in the zone field, I had an error once where I had the zones at zero and I pasted something and the machine stayed pasting for too long so I shut down, I consider that a crash, but I did something stupid, that's why it happened,

The something stupid was:

I deleted the .1 second section before pasting, so the sample had no data, and the zone was still set to 00.100.00 so it was trying to paste in a non existant location. It only was possible because I delete the silent sample first, the zone settings didn't update, normally it won't let you set the zone beyond the sample length.

be patient, it can really give good results. Another good thing is if you set the zone to how you want it but don't have a silent sample to paste to, you can go sample it and then go back to the sample edit screen and your zone stays how you set it unless you switch sounds in the edit screen. When you hit sounds 6 after sampling the silence, you go right back to the same sample with your zone settings Intact. Copy it into temp then you go to the new silent sample and paste. I am not sure if you can copy the zone to temp and then sample the silence, I wouldn't recomend it though, I think the temp memory would be cleared when you enter sampling.

I like the control of sampling into the 60, I can turn stuff up or down and get different results, plus I love chopping on the 60, for longer samples I just back cue the record and sample and trim again, but for short things I do the zones, and sometimes for long things depends if I am feeling impatient or not.

Everyone witha 60 should know how to do this and try it at least once, and get to know that do it menu, it's got play before zone, after zone, before soft start, after soft start, so you can do really precise chops and edits like pulling out pops and clicks with the Silence zone feature.

From the MPC60 bible thread on top of this page.

Alright, thanks man!

chillbob wrote:I was wondering if it's possible to chop up a sample (some drums for example), without copying the sample over and over
again to cut out the kicks, hi's and the snares separately and delete the rest. Thats how I do it...

It takes quite a long time this way and if there's any other way I'd be very happy to hear it !

I use the 60 mkII v3.10 by the way.

The answer is a complete, absolute, thorough, definite and undisputed NO!!!!!!!!!

Grenozh wrote:

chillbob wrote:I was wondering if it's possible to chop up a sample (some drums for example), without copying the sample over and over
again to cut out the kicks, hi's and the snares separately and delete the rest. Thats how I do it...

It takes quite a long time this way and if there's any other way I'd be very happy to hear it !

I use the 60 mkII v3.10 by the way.

The answer is a complete, absolute, thorough, definite and undisputed NO!!!!!!!!!

The Zone Function allows you to do exactly what he was after.
He was referring to not having to use the sample copy then truncate.
He was looking to be able to copy just the portion he wanted and that's what the Zone Function allows you to do.

As someone mentioned neither method is really faster.
In one method you have to make copies of the original the delete what you don't want to get the section you want.
In the other method you can just select the section you want and copy that but you have to have a blank sample to paste it in.
Just comes down to which works better for your mental.

I say if you want to chop, get a 2500 the 60 wasn't designed for sampling records though 3.10 makes it easier

Grenozh wrote:I say if you want to chop, get a 2500 the 60 wasn't designed for sampling records though 3.10 makes it easier

The things people type never cease to amaze me.

Sovereign wrote:

Grenozh wrote:I say if you want to chop, get a 2500 the 60 wasn't designed for sampling records though 3.10 makes it easier

The things people type never cease to amaze me.

would you care to provide contradicting evidence?

Yes, because all MPC's except the later JJ OS' still link start to end from chop to chop so you still have to do creative chopping the same as on other MPC since you can't overlap points.
Still not sure why Akai missed the benefit of non-destructive chopping.

People will say you can use the chopping on the 2500 to divide to a given number of chops and then tweak those chops but it's not really faster than doing it the old why of highlighting a section and extracting it.
Also the auto chopping still lacks the ability to overlap chops.

When JJ finally added non-destructive editing it was a welcome addition but still not implementated as smoothly as on the MV when using the VGA.