Connections

Here is whats up.... When I make a track I use my 4000 for the drums and for melodies I use various sounds from my roland 307 and my mo phatt rack mount module......I know there is gotta be a way for me to have both the roland and the mo phatt hooked up together.....Cause right now what im doing is when I wanna us the roland I have to unhook the mo phatt from the 4000 and vice versa to sample my melodies.....I also have the oxygen 8 midi controller.............

Here is my new list

1. mpc 4000 (the cream of the crop of my studio)
2. mbox-pro tools
3. mo phatt (The urban dance synth module) used for melodies
4. US122 audio/midi interface (This is what I use for slaving to pro tools)
5. roland 307 groove box ( use for melodies and hats/hihats)
6.casio workstation 1800 (hardly use)
7. athlon pc 2500+
8. maxtor external harddrive (120 gig)
9. oxygen 8 midi keyboard controller( use it for the mo phatt and roland)


Love Peace and hair grease.....

I'm confused here......Do you sample your melodies into the 4000? Why not hook the keyboard up to the 4000's midi-in, and the 4000 midi-outs to your modules.
If your soundcard has enough inputs you can play them back all at the same time.

Yeah...I sample my melodies in the 4000.......Are you talking about hooking my midi keyboard up to the 4000 midi in and my roland and mo phatt to the midi out on the 4000 to control them that way.....? My US122 audio/interface only has the one in and output.......But I only use the US122 for synching my 4000 to pro tools.....!

Oh, i see. You got an M-box and you only record the stereo-out from your 4000 into ProTools?
You don't use midi at all now besides syncing?

Well there are some advantages using midi to trigger your mo'phat for instance.
1. You record midinotes in your mpc, so you can edit them if you get a note wrong, and do some other nice stuff like quantize and use your mpc's swing.
2. You can change the tempo of your sequence, and the synth will still play back in time without timestreching.
3. You won't have to sample and loop no more (your synths at least) recording midi is much easier than sampling.
4. You can change the sound of your synth even after you've recorded the melodie. So if you think that bassline is a bit too heavy simply select another patch on your mo'phatt.
5. You can create a milion variations of a melodie in a second, just as fast as banging out a drumpattern, and choose the best one for your song. You can use up to 16 channels per module, so you can also trigger 16 different patches on each module.

I'm saying your method of working is not right, but there's a lot you can do with midi. It may be hard to change your setup, but your workflow will improve a lot.

The only problem i see is that you only have two inputs on your M-box, and an mpc and 3 synths means you'll need 8 if you're triggering them with midi. You could also get a simple 8-channel mixer so you can hear your synths, and record the finished song into ProTools like you do now.

I hope i havent confused you too much with all this. Bottom line, and to reply to your original question:
If you don't want to keep unhooking your modules to be able to hear them on your mpc, you'll need a small mixer.
If you're gonna buy a mixer anyway, i suggest you also get yourself two midicables and experiment with recording midi into your mpc.

You can always send me a PM if you've decided what way you're going and i'll explain in more detail how to hook things up.

Now let's hear some more opinions on this........