Oxygen 8

Can someone tell me is the oxygen 8 only for playing sounds on my software or can I hook it up to the 4000 and play samples I have laid out on the 4000...Im thinking about copping one.....! Its kinda hard for me to play a melody on the 4000 when I have piano sounds loaded in the 4000!.....

As long as its a actual midi controller and not a USB/midi controller it should work fine basically as long as it has a MIDI out connection it will work.

yeah it has a midi out (no midi in though). you can definitely do that. it takes a bit of tweaking cause the sounds in the mpc arent automatically laid out in keyboard order - you might need to have a chromatic program loaded . . . but especially since you have a 4000 it shouldn't be that hard cause there are fewer technical issues than my 2kclassic has. i have an oxygen setup through my mp, when the track on the mpc is set to MIDI it plays whatever softsynth i have loaded on my comp, and when the track is set to drum it plays the internal mpc sounds (albeit in a funny order).

Cool...... I will go to the guitar center today and see whats up.......The reason I asked this because my wife bought me a steinway grand piano sample cd and its kinda hard to map a melody on the 4000 pads....So I was wodering if the oxygen 8 can do that.......!

yep it can do that and alot more...It's good to see someone that actually uses the 4000 as the full fledged sampler that it is.I had one for a minute(wish I still did)and the cat I got it from had probably 1000 or more instruments loaded into it that could be played out with a midi controller.I think I remember him telling me that he just rented some sounds modules and multisampled all of the sounds he could into it which makes sense cause most of the "romplers" that are out know like the triton and Motif only hold 120-160megs worth of sounds and the MPC 4000 can hold 512 at once although it makes for some long load times.

I might also look into getting a rack mount also with it......I called the guitar center and the guy was telling me about an mo phat rackmount they got with tons of sounds..... So im going to check this $hit out....Besides I have a casio workstation 1800 and the sounds it have just aint cuttin it when im trying to whip up some heat.....!

I'll let you in on a secret...Those "cheap" or "inexpensive" keyboards might not sound good by themselves but you run one through an effects module and the sound gets real good real quick.Those cheap keyboard sounds can be kind of flat but you add some reverb and maybe a little filtering and you have yourself a nice pallette to paint with that chances are nobody else would even think about using.The Mo-Phatt is good stuff you have to tinker with it cause alot of the pop-hop stuff you hear uses the same sounds.It's great for percussion though...Pretty much anything E-Mu makes as far as sound modules goes is good stuf.I've tinkered with all there modules and my favorite one is the Vintage keys deal.It's got some big sounds in it.