Marker Track idea for working with large sequences.

As most of us know the mixing situation in the MPC software isn't the greatest atm.

You either work with sequences and forget the track mixer completely, or work with one big sequence so that you can use the track mixer without duplicating fx plugins which = major crashing and cpu overload.

I decided to work on a template today and tried out a marker idea if you're working with one big sequence. Previously if you had a 144 bar sequence it becomes very difficult to jump around to sections.

This marker track is set up for a 144 bar sequence.

Intro 16 bars, break 16 bars, drop 32 bars, main break 32 bars, main drop 32 bars, and outro 16 bars (just an example dance track).




As you can see I made the notes 8 bars long and then duplicated them over the length of the track. Any set of bars (e.g. intro 16 bars) that I want to stand out I adjust the velocity to change the color. The other thing is that there is a clear mark every 8 bars when the notes end and start. This helps immensely when jumping around the project to loop and work on different sections.

Thought I would share because I find it very helpful to my workflow and it allows me to do all my mixing in the MPC (or at least most of it).

Cheers,
~Airyck~

--this idea came from a discussion I was having with Fanu, so thanks for that

Also if you wanted to spend a little more time and get more creative you could write big words with the MIDI notes that say stuff like "Intro" or "break" or whatever you wanted. You would probably be able to save those as MIDI files and load them when you needed.

This looks really interesting. I have been using songmode with different sequences and having to duplicate the effects plugin has been a disaster for me. I would like to work this way in track view it kinda looks similar to logic arrange page.

Really good work !

Yeah you've spelled it out really well as far as a likely easy to implement solution. Very reminiscent of the Blocks that Reason had added to it's sequencer.

Sharp mind there Airyck.

This works great
Thanks, dude von dudenstein!

(now, Akai, as you're reading this, we still need an actual marker track that lets us hop to different sections marked with markers, just like it's done on Ableton Live etc.)

Thanks for all the positive comments

I'm glad it helps! I figured it's best to go with something that is really simple to set up but still effective.

Visual cues like this help when working with a lot of data. It's easy to see what numbers you need to type in when looping and to make sure that your song has enough fills and changes happening at the right points.

While this is no replacement for a dedicated internal solution (like a real marker track)
it definitely helps for now.

Cheers!

Bump

...in light of the mixer thing coming up again.