Where are all the MPC 5k Experts? Anyone know this unit enou

I have been putting up some questions about some advanced features, and nobody has replied to any of them. I have seen plenty of reads, but I guess nobody is on enough of an expert level with this particular unit to help me, which is unfortunate for me.

May as well take another chance and post another question.

THis concerns program changes. I had a progression in one sequence, and another sequence made with a copy of the same main sample program except this main sample pattern had filters over it which were for the verse progression, and the sequence with the clean progression was the hook. The problem came into play when I converted this to a song. It basically picked to use all the eq and mixer settings from my first sequence, and applied that to my second one. This is pretty lame as there is really no reason for that to have been done. Aaaanyhow, because the main sample sequences were on the same track, this could have been worked around by moving the other sequences main sample track to a different one. But I was determined to keep things the way they were. So what I did was assign a program number to the clean sample program (1), and a number to the filtered program (2). In the song now, I inserted program changes at various points where the hook and verse would transition. This seemed to work out pretty well and was happy....for a short amount of time. Anytime I played back the song from the beginning, it was like a 50/50 chance that when these program change events were exectued, that they were actually on the down beat. Take for example a program change occurring on 5.01.00, now sometimes this would sound perfect, but the second time around it may actually occur on 5.01.95. You could see how this could cause a big issue. Why is this occurring though? I had to scrap this logical idea for a more advanced solution which was working with some pad mutes and moving around some tracks, but I just don't get where the problem lied with this one.

I can't recreate this. What I did was:

create a new blank sequence
Assigned a drum program 'DRUMS' to track 1,
Record a drum beat on track 1
Copied DRUMS to a new program - DRUMS-FILT
filtered the whole program using a low pass in FLTlfo
Copied sequence 1 and assigned DRUMS-FILT to track 1.
Created a song - step 1 was sequence 1, step 2 = sequence 2

This works as expected. Can you explain exactly what you are doing, step-by-step?

Sure, I have my main samples on track one in a program called sweet. Drums on tracks 5-10. Made a pattern and copied this to sequence two. Deleted track one (my main melody sample progression) and made a copy of sweet called sweet2. Assigned the program sweet2 to the new sequence I created and recorded a slightly different progression and set low pass filters and what not to it. I then created a song and converted this to sequence 5. Now heres the area I think maybe something different can be done. In the convert song to sequence window there is an option for the track to either maintain all the mixer and fx settings from the main sequence, ignore pad mutes, and something else. I had left it on the default which is maintain settings, but even tried to change this to 'ignore pad mutes', but either way, the mixer settings are merged to one setting for the main melody track 1 in the converted song sequence. I would expect that once the the clean progression played for however many times, even though the new filtered progression coming in next is on the same track, I would have hoped that the mixer settings and fx settings would have changed to what was actually set in its original sequence. But it just keeps one general setting for the entire track, basically throwing all my fx and mixer settings I had for seq 2 out the window.

This is what gave me the idea to assign a program change number to each of my programs. So sweet = 1, and sweet2 = 2. So program change 1.01.00 = 1, and then the next one is on 9.01.00 = 2. Half the times I let this play, it IS on point. But others, the program change falls an entire beat behind. Very frustrating.

Thanks for helping me on this man. I found a work around as I seen in the manual that the program change events are more for midi, but I still figured this would have been on point. Hope you understood my explanation. If you need anything clarified, just let me know. Thanks again mate. Much appreciated!

I've not got time to check this ATM, but it sounds like a bug. TBH, I've never used the 'convert to sequence' option in practice, I just keep my song as a collection of multiple sequences.

Hmm, ok so you keep them in the Song window with the multiple sequences and keep it like that? How do you record in your pad/track mutes and drops? Or do you multitrack that into a DAW and do that there?

When I keep my sequences in that Song window like you do, it plays perfectly! But can pad mute events be recorded in at that point?

Convert to sequence sucks! Quite dissapointing for me. I have to track everything to DAW to add stuff like sweeps, stabs and do buildups and such afterwords. I don't want to keep copying sequences.

About the mute. Have you enabled record Mute events?

Its really not so bad if you keep your tracks consistent. It actually works pretty well. The whole purpose of the 5k is so you dont have to track everything all the time. And you really shouldnt have to. And yes, I am actually a very experienced producer and to not have that option turned on would be a straight up rookie mistake. Id retire myself out of this forum if that was the case lol.

jigzelmnt wrote:And yes, I am actually a very experienced producer and to not have that option turned on would be a straight up rookie mistake. Id retire myself out of this forum if that was the case lol.

Stripes don't impress me. Everybody forget things sometimes...........

Lamp, the problem is with program changes NOT how the 5k rolls down 1st sequence mixer/fx settings when converting a song. If you read the earlier posts, you would see, that this was already known and established. The actual problem exists with random late drops of program changes, regardless of if the event entry is on the exact down beat or not. If you follow the steps in my earlier post, add the program change events, and play your sequence back, you will see that sometimes the changes are right on point, and sometimes they come in an entire beat late. This is kind of puzzling and if anyone has some knowledge on how to fix this, it would be greatly appreciated.

The work around was to take the track data in the second sequence, and copy it all to track 2, removing the old data on track one. Then, once this is converted from a song to sequence, the program change events would not be needed, but you would need to record pad mute events so when it changes from the corus to verse, track one would be muted, and track 2 would be UNmuted. This is fine, but the program change method seemed interesting, and potentially useful in other situations. So it would be nice to figure out why the random latency exists.

You do understand that you are asking the 5k to send a Program Change and also respond to it, but wonder why you are getting inconsistent lag.

You are trying to be both the quarterback and the receiver.

It's a cool idea in theory but impractical in the reality of how program changes tend to work.

My suggestion to you would be now that you know what won't work look at what will work.
If you are trying to use the 5k in Song Mode you have got to look at making use of the Hard Disk Recorder.
It's a real workaround for some of the 5k shortfalls.

Im with you on that one, and also ahead of you. I did figure out a work around (not using hd recorder), but its just puzzling that half the times the program changes drop right in on point (as I expected them to). But it was such a "are you kidding me" moment when it would randomly come in a whole beat later.

My work around was to take the second sequences main sample track, and move it onto a different track. So instead of program changes in the converted song, I just record in track mute events (mute the main sample track in seq 1, and unmute the main sample track in seq 2). This worked well, but I hate having something go unexplained an mysterious on a piece of hardware I own. Its just not acceptable.