MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
By midnightsun Sat Oct 20, 2012 8:00 pm
I want the MPC to turn on and off at specific points in a Protools project. I want the MPC performance to be as written in the MPC but triggered by PT as master. I know that a workaround would be to just audio record the MPC performance into PT and move it where I want it. However, it would be more elegant to have the MPC triggered by PT at a specific time so that if I wanted to later make changes to the MPC performance I could. I know that this would require rock solid synching and knowing exactly what the offsets are. I have become familiar with MIDI Beat Clock, MIDI Time Code (with and without MIDI Machine Control enabled) and have reasonably well able to get things to behave.

I am trying to get to what I was doing 15 plus years ago when I would synch my multitrack tape machines with other machines (digital and analog). Back then I would strip a track to SMPTE time code. I am not interested in SMPTE, just saying.
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By bliprock Sun Oct 21, 2012 4:58 am
It will not be able to turn on and off remotely. But it has MIDI. So get the MIDI out from your DAW and send it to your MPC. problem solved. Slave MPC to DAW midi clock so its in sync. I doubt you will need MTC, just normal midi will trigger start and stop, and keep it in sync. So set MIDI up midi in your daw to send to same midi channle as MPC and you will get it start stopping and playing any midi you send it.
You will need interface to get midi from your DAW to the MPC probably
By midnightsun Sun Oct 21, 2012 8:32 am
bliprock wrote:It will not be able to turn on and off remotely. But it has MIDI. So get the MIDI out from your DAW and send it to your MPC. problem solved. Slave MPC to DAW midi clock so its in sync. I doubt you will need MTC, just normal midi will trigger start and stop, and keep it in sync. So set MIDI up midi in your daw to send to same midi channle as MPC and you will get it start stopping and playing any midi you send it.
You will need interface to get midi from your DAW to the MPC probably


I can see I need to learn a lot more about MIDI and how to program Protools MIDI to tell an external machine to turn on and off.
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By bliprock Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:51 pm
It will take time, but it pays of in the end. Instead of thinking its turning on and off, it is just no notes (off) or notes playing (on). So if there is not any notes playing it is off and when notes are playing it is on. All you need is a MIDI out from computer (usually USB device) and that goes into MPC. Then match channles, and sync. MIDI clock is fine.
So in your DAW you will have a MIDI track and that is what sends the notes. So if there is no clip of MIDI data in that midi track nothing plays. Put in some notes and off you go. It is same principle for nearly every device so when you get that sorted you will be able to do any other midi device.