Thinking about picking up an MPC500 tomorrow

Coz wrote:I think people have missed the part where the OP said he'll probably go with the 1000 afterall.

Yeah, but he seems to still be persuaded to go the 500 route because he thinks it's much simpler to use & maybe whatever else that's got his attention.

Then he followed up with...

Beats22 wrote:Yeah I hear you guys. I know an MPC1000 is harder to use, but I feel like I would learn faster with actual pads and buttons. I'm not very good at using my computer keyboard.

So in all fairness, we as a community feel we have an obligation to help those that want to make a wise decision, but aren't too sure of themselves.

But you know the deal...right Coz?

I think that may have been a response to Jamon's lame attempts to push him onto the burger kangz software, but I'm not sure!

Coz wrote:I think that may have been a response to Jamon's lame attempts to push him onto the burger kangz software, but I'm not sure!

Tag One The Fader Fiend wrote:

Coz wrote:I think that may have been a response to Jamon's lame attempts to push him onto the burger kangz software, but I'm not sure!

i love my 500, way more then my 1000, dont get me wrong, 1000 is easier to chop and all, but 500 is more fun,. just remember it is a bit of a pain to learn,. just get tutors ebook and su-premes dvds..u'll be all good!! ps. **** a beat thang virtual, dont waste ya breath

Yes haha. I plan on getting the MPC1000. I mean, it comes with a manual, so it won't be impossible to use.

That's why I joined the forum though. So I can get help from the pros

Yup,

Search is your best friend.

My first sampler was an SP-555. I learned to chop samples by ear....similar to the way you'd have to on an MPC 500.

I wish I would've done more research an gone with an MPC 1000 at the time. I think it's a great choice.

Best of luck to you.

Look, I'm the first one to actually try Beat Thang Virtual and give it the thumbs down. All the rest of you judged it based on the public front put on by the Beat Kangz. But you know what? They didn't program it. They were just the marketing, interacting with the customers. They're out now it seems, but none of that should reflect the quality of the software.

I haven't bothered to try it again in years, but it is plausible that it has improved since then, and is now quality kit. It was built using JUCE, a C++ cross-platform framework aimed at audio software development. The creator of JUCE is a smart guy and used it to make the excellent DAW software bought by Mackie called Tracktion.



That right there makes it worth keeping an eye on, because JUCE solves a lot of the technical details for audio software creation, so the programmers behind Beat Thang are less likely to make big underlying mistakes.

A new MPC1000 from a common store is $1,000. Plus you'll need the 128MB RAM upgrade, which you should get generic, but if you bought it at the store too you're up to $1,150.

Beat Thang Virtual is $119, and there are various MIDI controllers you can get, but the Akai MPD18 looks MPCish and is $100.



So you've got around $1,050 with non-Akai RAM vs. $220.

Now listen, there's a lot of fandom around here obviously since it's an MPC forum, not Burger Kidz community. But the fact is, there's nothing that special about an MPC. You can do what it can do, easier, faster, with more flexibility using a laptop. That doesn't mean there's no reason to prefer an MPC, it's just, you really have to know before it's legit, and it's not that it's better, it's just differences, most of which are tradeoffs and losses, not benefits.

It doesn't matter what the box says, even with the shoddy copy of Beat Thang Virtual I got years ago I could plug an MPD into a laptop and emulate a lot of the MPC feel, but more importantly, produce something that sounds like music. In fact, the way it was designed, it looked funner for people who want to make music, not play with nerdy details. It's more visual, with everything setup to be optimized for making beats. MPC is more of a generic utility, that can be used as a drum machine, or MIDI sequencer for a classical pianist, etc. Beat Thang is setup from the start to make beats, and make it fun.

That doesn't mean I'm recommending it. I haven't even tried it in years. Maybe once you hooked it all up, and made some music, you wouldn't like it. But for a quarter the cost of an MPC? Yes, that is where I would start, to at least start getting experience to know exactly what I need and prefer.

I might not get that exact combo though. There's other stuff to look into.

There's smaller laptop controllers for around $60:





There's one for the same price of $100 that also has keys:



Double the price to $200 and you've got faders and knobs:



Or for the same price as that you can get this crazy thing:



Then for software, there's energy-XT for $50:



Tracktion works on OSX, but I heard it's got issues with the latest Mountain Lion version, and Mackie seems to have let it die. But if you don't have the lastest OSX, or if people figure out how to make it work 100% on it, it says in my account I can buy another copy of Tracktion2 for $30.

There's Ableton Live for $450, which is a lot, but it has a unique workflow that can be much better than the MPC for more realtime creation. With the MPC you have to stop the song from playing to do a lot of things, and it's designed more for offline construction, like composers would do. Ableton Live is more performance, where you can just drop in loops and samples and modify it all on the fly, as you choose what plays, and it records everything to a sequencer you can then edit and compose with.



If you were on Windows you could check out FL Studio.

Point is, I like my MPC2500, and an MPC1000 with JJ OS would be very similar, and I own the MPC500, but if I had $1,200 of hard-earned cash saved up, and a laptop with stereo, I'd play with software and a MIDI controller first. That might be what I prefer, and never buy an MPC. But it's cheap enough either way to start with, because with a $100 + $50 for energyXT, I could make music that sounds just as good as I could with MPC, and it'd be a different experience looking at a laptop and using the trackpad sometimes rather than cursor buttons and data wheel, but for some people that's better, and it works.

For $150 you could have the tools necessary to produce something that sounds like it required $50k.

An MPC1000 + JJ OS is fun too. But you should be aware of the options, and know that they're much cheaper, without loss of power. For electronic music, there's so many free effects and instruments for software hosts like energyXT. Check out KVR (http://www.kvraudio.com/q.php). For a couple hundred bucks you can get something where you can drop in all kinds of synths and effects. With an MPC, the FX suck, and there's only 2, and it doesn't come with a synth so you'll have to buy more gear to get sounds you don't sample.

You could also get an SP-404SX or Electribe for $500:





Since you said you wanted to make techno, the electribe might be better for you, because I think it generates sounds. An MPC is empty. You get it, and there's no sounds. You can download and record samples, but for a techno sound you're better off with sound generators. You could buy a synth with your MPC, but there's free VSTi synths and samplers, so why wouldn't you download some software and buy a MIDI controller?

So basically, a new MPC1000 will cost me about $1000, and I will still have to buy extra equipment to make it work? It sounds like the MPC500 is a dead end, so that option is out.

I want to take my MPC home, plug it in, read the manual, download some beats onto my computer, upload them to the MPC, and have some fun. But I guess I can do that without an MPC1000.

The MPC1000 lets you arrange sounds or MIDI events into a sequence. A sound is like an audio file on your computer or MP3 player. It's like if you open a sound file on your computer, and it plays. That is primarily what the MPC does, but you can assign those sounds to play when you press a pad.

There are banks, which are like pages of pad assignments. So if you have 32 sounds, but only 16 pads, you use a bank button to go to the next page and play the next 16. You press a pad, and your sound file plays. Then when you record onto a sequence, it just remembers when you played a sound.

You could do the same basic kind of thing by just recording your stereo, and playing sound files from your computer. But the MPC makes it easier to do things like layer them, and it also knows how hard you hit the pad to make the sound louder or quieter. It also remembers when you pressed keys on an external keyboard synthesizer, so plays that back too.

It doesn't just put beats on it and you have music magically happening. Something like an Electribe is more like that I think, where it's packed full of sounds and you just hit play and start tweaking. Even the new Korg miniKP2 can do something like that, where you can just plug it into your laptop, drag over some MP3 files, then unplug and play them while having fun changing the sound.

Actually, that's another option I forgot to mention. Watch this:



A miniKP2 + Kaossilator2 is $320, and with it you can have fun mangling beats and full songs you download, recording your performances, and adding synth sounds along with it. If you're more interested in quickly being able to have fun, in a portable way, where you can just hit record, play around, then have an audio file to put on your laptop, then that combo is actually pretty killer.

The Kaossilator2 has built-in drum patterns, and individual kits, with really simple short loop recording. You just hold a button, and you have 2 tracks to put some audio on, then you can mix between them. So you could hold the I button, press the pad for a drum pattern, then you've got a drum beat instantly looping. Hold II and play some synth backing, and you can mix and mute them.

Then with that plugged into the miniKP2, you can be recording on there, and do all sorts of neat things to the beat in realtime, like causing it to glitch, running it through a low-pass filter so the sound can start muffled then rise as you hear so often in techno kinds of music. There's delays, pitch shifting, distortion, and all kinds of looping glitchy effects, including a vocoder.

So the Kaossilator2 is your synth and drum machine, the miniKP2 lets you mangle those sounds, and both have a built-in mic so you can press a button and add some vocal sounds to the mix. Then both of them have built-in recorders, so you can be recording all of this. If you don't need the effects, you could just start with the Kaossilator, and make beats with only it.



It's a different kind of thing than the MPC, but for having fun that setup is better. An MPC is best when you want to do something like record off vinyl records, then chop those recordings up to get segments for things like drum hits and orchestra stabs. Then you can assign those chops to pads, and record your sequence of hits to make beats. But that's a lot more work.

For just making music, there are things that have more instant gratification, where you don't have to do all kinds of work to find sounds, record them with the correct levels, set in and out points, assign to pads and set advanced parameters, recording and editing MIDI events, on multiple tracks, mixing them. It's a lot more to do and know, which is necessary for some goals.

That's why you really need to know your goal, and what tool will get you there. Until you know those kinds of details, there's lots to play with to find out.

Beats22 wrote:So basically, a new MPC1000 will cost me about $1000, and I will still have to buy extra equipment to make it work? It sounds like the MPC500 is a dead end, so that option is out.

I want to take my MPC home, plug it in, read the manual, download some beats onto my computer, upload them to the MPC, and have some fun. But I guess I can do that without an MPC1000.

It's your choice. Maybe you need to play the field a little before you jump into making this type of decision. I already had some sort of drum machine experience before I purchased the 4k.

I owned a Roland R8, and it served me well. But I've also tried software drum machines and they didn't meet my preferences because of latency issues for example. I finally chose a mpc because it offered what nothing else could do which was dialing in your own special type of "groove".

Being able to advance or delay the feel of a drum pattern was something I never experience on the level the mpc provided. The Roland R8 had a similar feature, but it was no where close to what the 4k offered.

So in the end, I decided to part with my R8 and stick solely with the 4k. It's a decision I'll never regret 'til this day.

I'm familiar with what an MPC does, and it's what I'm looking for. I haven't bought one yet, but i'm trying to mess around with some software and a few apps.

It's hard to do all of this since most software has limited sounds (iPhone apps), but I figure once I get an MPC I can find sounds I want online and start messing with beats I like. I mean sure I can get new sounds now, but it seems like you have to sign up for a bunch of different websites and pay money for a handful of sounds.

Sound is everywhere.

Jamon wrote:Sound is everywhere.

Very true.

I'm kinda stuck here though. Not sure if I should get an MPC, or keep messing around with the computer/phone.