Reviews and questions about the entry-level MPC500
By forward Tue Apr 19, 2011 7:49 am
Hey everyone,

New to the board and am still yet to purchase an MPC but I'm just trying to find out all I can about it prior to spending the cash. Anyway, there is a couple of things I haven't really figured out from reading and watching various videos of, hence why I am asking.

I am wanting to start a live project without a computer, hopefully, based around the mpc and a few keyboards (midi) and then just lots of circuit bent gear.

But yes what I am wondering is, am I able to record say a four bar bit on say a casio keyboard plugged into the audio in, live, and then save it, whilst the beat is playing? As I would prefer to build up the tune live rather than have prerecorded parts,

Or would I need to get say a loop station or something for looping the keyboard parts?

Would the MPC 1k be able to do this?

Also, can you use the MPC to say trigger a sequence on another midi object, like the microkorg or something?

Any help would be much appreciated as, as most of you can tell from this post, I don't really know much about the MPCs...

Cheers
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By Esquilo Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:47 pm
Live looping is unfortunately not possible with the MPCs. You will want a loop station for that. I reccomend the KP3 or the Boss RC-50. The mpc will however send midii to any synths. Which is sometimes just as good as looping. You can program basslines or leads in the mpc and it will play your synth for you. This can be done live if youre nifty with the machine
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By The Jackal Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:10 am
I have a Kaoss Pad 3 for the sake of catching and looping and messing with parts of songs and doing transitions between one song from another, while my MPC gets ssequencer duty to trigger another sampler. Seeing as you can't do any sampling whilst playing back sequences, you could use the MPC and a Korg Kaoss Pad 3 for the sake of bouncing samples back and forth between the two. Basically play sequences/loops/samples off the MPC and sample them onto the KP3, then while the KP3 is playing back those loops, switch the MPC over to sampling mode to sample the KP3 loops and assign them to the MPC's pads to play back as loops. Of course the time it takes to sample and assign everything on the MPC would probably be too much if you're looking to jump between loops often. I have a Boss SP-202 sampler that is pretty good for loops and you can create start and end points on the fly with some primitive filters and whatnot on the box as well, you can sample and loop real quickly and it could be sequenced super easy. I'm sure you could do some loop building and improvising pretty easy with a KP3, SP202, and using the MPC in overdub recording mode.
By redriding Sun Apr 24, 2011 11:14 pm
For Live looping, the EHX Super Multi Track Looper is pretty awesome. I did quite a lot of research a year or 2 ago. Not that cheap and marketed as a guitar pedal but it has MIDI sync, a metronome and is perfect for beats/whatever you want.