djflash wrote:ordinarily i wouldnt do something like that,but i came into a little cash.(very little)its gone.like i said i really want to do this live set thingy and having both both boxes i think i will be able to do some interesting stuff.has anyone here done a live gig with an mpc 4000.i would love to hear how it went.
I did a live show with one recently at Seattle's Decibel Festival. We were a group
of 3 (Me on MPC 4000 & SE ATC-1, another on MPC 2000XL & Roland MKS-50, and 3rd
on Evolver, TR 808 , TR 707 and 2 303's.) So as you can see, I was far from taxing
the MPC 4000, but it was solid and held up like a rock. We soundchecked at 6pm and
went on at 10pm and I left it on between soundcheck and the show. Played about 10 songs about 5-6 minutes each and used the "Next Sequence" to seque into each track with no stops.
Plus, due to technical problems with Dj Twonz who was coming on after us, we had to play a couple of extra tracks to cover the time and keep the crowd dancing, and I sure was glad that we were on the MPC' and not on a Linear based sequencer, as I had already loaded up about 10 other seq/multi's in case we wanted to change things up during the set. We were able to on the fly decide which song we want, switch sequences to that and crowd had no idea that we weren't even originally going to play that track.
And I can confirm that it does sound VERY good over loudspeakers. Ohh.. so much
nicer then the studio monitors. (But then again so did the 808!)
There is an anoying bug on MPC 4000 when using the Next Sequence function and
you use Program Changes to have the MPC switch to a different Multi that goes with
that sequence. When you switch to another sequence, for a fraction of a second, the
New Sequence, plays the old Multi until the new Multi gets switched over. This causes
a brief blip of craziness. I believe that Flo Zombie has documented this quite a bit
on this board before ( I saw postings on it before I purchased the MPC and discussed
via private emails with him at the time).
I believe that he has worked around it by using 1 Multi in a live performance and
using all 128 Parts in the Multi. The downside of this method, is that you are stuck
with 1 set of FX options for the whole live set. ( If you used the 8 out option and external
FX then this isn't a problem for you)
I used a method, where before we switched sequences, I would normally go down break
down to an external synth playing or a drum solo before switching sequences. And also
prepare my sequences, so they all started off this way as well, so basiclly, there
were no notes on the new sequence to trigger the old MPC's multie Before it switched, other then external synths. I would then manually bring in the parts via Track Mutes.
I believe that Flo Zombie has reported this to Akai, but I have not (at the time, I was
more worried about getting the upcoming live set on my new MPC 4000 together
then reporting the bug, as I had a workaroudn). Just for safety sake, I will be
reporting this to Akai. I plan on giving them 2 of my Sequences/Multii's from the live
set that exhibits this problem, so that they do NOT have to recreate the issue themselves, just debug it and fix it
