happy accidents..?

Hey,
I am looking for ways and techniques to create 'happy accidents' with my drum tracks. I'm producing tech house, minimal, techno style tracks but I'm not really finding any quick ways to randomize or tweak my sounds into new sounds. I like doing things like auditioning lots of samples in place, changing envelopes, pitching things up and down and whacking on effects,.. but without any knobs the mpc1000 is really forcing me to endless amounts of menu diving and cursor movements and worst of all, thinking and planning how I'm going to get a new sound, and sequence it. I'm not really digging the workflow in the slightest.. (jjos2xl)

My experience is mostly from an EMX and ESX background, with some reactor. These are just knob tweaking paradise, and happy accidents occur ALL the time... My MPC feels dead and very stiff all the time. Any suggestions on how I might get a better workflow from the mpc? I'd like to be able to easily morph and tweak stuff and listen and pick out the best bits. Perhaps something with patterns that wildly mashes up sounds, and chop the result to a new program? I dont really know...

edit: the kind of thing I like: I record a few bars of noises, or synth sounds getting tweaked as one long sample, then map Q2 to sample start, and hold down the Tap Tempo to repeatedly trigger it, while moving Q2 up and down, makes for interesting patterned sounds... If you've ever done this kind of thing you'll know exactly what i mean by finding happy accidents .. its like the mpc starts coming up with new sounds and rhythms.

Attach a MIDI controller with knobs to the MPC. Page 144 in the manual lists all the assignable functions that will respond to a MIDI In signal.

There's also iOS controller apps that would work for this, but tactile seems to be the need here.

So it might take some tape labels on the controller, if it's a lot of assigns, but I think that part of the feature set is your problem solver. You should be able to map the start/end sample points to the external controller and skip the Q-links as one possibility.

I have a 1K but also a 2500 and a 4k, and it is certainly better to have more direct controls no question. I may give my Behringer BCF2000 a go with the 1k. The build quality is not the greatest but for $200 the BCF/BCR are great.

And overall yeah I feel you. I zone out doing beats and it's usually late night, so I've only been doing "happy accidents" for a year or so now. Got away from composing songs a bit, trying to get a 50/50 balance again of experiment/sound design+write songs with a plan in place. But it is great to catch dope sounds being adventurous like that as you mentioned.

Note repeat at different timings. liberal use of qlinks with different effects applied.

Metatron72 wrote:Attach a MIDI controller with knobs to the MPC. Page 144 in the manual lists all the assignable functions that will respond to a MIDI In signal.

+1
Even if you just grab something like the MPK25 it will open up your aspect dramatically.
JJ allows you to map a lot of control and the MPK will give you a decent amount of bankable encoders to grab.

If you don't need the keys then then MPD32 will give the encoders plus some sliders.

All machines got happy accidents waiting to happen.

Yeah I got a MPD32 too. Pads need to be modded, but everything else is cool.

It's 72 assigns, Faders, Knobs, Buttons 8 each x 3 banks.

I must have missed something here, but when I look at the midi control part of the manual (http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/os2xl/button.htm) it only offers midi mapping for the functions already on the front of the MPC1000. There's no access to a samples pitch, cutoff, adsr, etc...

I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but you can assign patterns to pads. One thing you can do with that is stick an fx slot change message into the pattern. So you can change fx with a pad, and then record it.


I stumbled across this cool effect where a really big reverb was switched on and off rhythmically in the sequence (when I accidentally cursored over to the fx slot select, and changed it to a slot that had this big reverb).
I ended up manually step editing in the fx change commands, but that didn't even take very long.

Not as much accidental as deliberate with lots of potential for sound exploration - layer programs with different sounds and crossfade between the kits as they play your patterns, to have the sounds more or less "morph" into new sounds whilst still maintaining the beat..... So you can have your bongo pattern turn into bird chirping or perhaps just a hihat pattern as you fade between them, it is just crossfades, but it's the in between states the magic may happen.. Use filters and pitchbend, or other effects to add to the sound manipulation, to make things sound a bit more organic and to sound more 'as one', as processing the different sounds together makes them bond some.

How do you crossfade kits? Copy data to a new track, and fade the track volume and/or sample volumes?

Still not getting the point of a midi controller...

i'm not sure how'd you do it on your mpc, but personally i would just automate the volume on the individual programs.. so that i can fade in/out any kit into another..

on the mpc4k, you can layer two programs right on the main screen, so its fairly easy there for the program layering part.. i do it a lot with regular drums kits.. and often with pre-made akai drum library kits that i use often, where kick and snare and hats etc etc are placed on the same pads most of the times, following a system for drum placement on the pads, so kick always play another kick on the layered program, snare has another snare and so on.. basically, all placement work there is already done, and i just have to program the pattern, and then if i layer two programs, they both play the same pattern.. and i can just use q-links to control things like volume if i want to fade one program..

you should be able to do it on an old 2kxl even, though maybe a bit more tedious, but i know at least you could automate volume on single sounds in the mixer there... but would just take longer, so ideally, being able to control the volume, or maybe amp, or velocity for a full program with q-links, you'd be able to do whole kits at once... and yeah, if you can not layer on the main screen like on the 4k, you just copy the pattern to to a new track and assign it that new program

i can't say i use it a lot for experimentation though, but as you can layer whatever you want, you should be able to do some neat things.... otherwise, for regular drum kits, its a nice way to automate fades like this so that your layered program adds variation on each hit.. like, if your snare has another snare layered on the second program, that is a bit more tonal, or perhaps longer.. you can then just tweak the q-links in time to your beat and kinda jam along, and accentuate certain hits.. maybe give every 4th snare hit a bit longer tail by fading in the 2nd program etc etc



.........


another thing i used to do, that can involve happy accidents, is to load up old sequences and songs, but to completely different programs.. so say you have this new nice kits you have done, and you have not programmed any sequences for it.. then loading up an old sequence can be fun to see what happens when it plays your new program... i never had any specific pads i placed hits on myself, but more or less just filled up the pads as the sounds arrived when i browsed them... and that could lead to weird stuff when playing sequences that wasn't intended for that specific program... but even if you follow a strict system where you always place your kicks on the same pad, etc, then it can still be interesting to see how it plays a different kit

Ibunshi wrote:load up old sequences and songs, but to completely different programs.. so say you have this new nice kits you have done, and you have not programmed any sequences for it.. then loading up an old sequence can be fun to see what happens when it plays your new program...

best advice so far.

innovine wrote: I record a few bars of noises, or synth sounds getting tweaked as one long sample, then map Q2 to sample start, and hold down the Tap Tempo to repeatedly trigger it, while moving Q2 up and down, makes for interesting patterned sounds...

yeah I did that on some vocal sample, maybe you can try to resample some your own beat, and use the same technique?

You can also map samples to just one pad via simult (max5pads x 3 layers on drum program), but it needs some work.. you have to set different velocity range for each layer/sample so only 1 will play at a time (basically) and disable velocity to level (velo parameter).Than you assign velocity to q-link per track. Enter some notes (note repeat) while selecting sample with q-link.
It's tricky, coz you can set up velocity in different ways, like... going from down to top with q-link it can play regular 4x4 beat. Just don't restrict yourself to one program, make a few of them each with different "velocity switch", maybe different samples. Assign Program change to those programs.. enter PC changes corresponding to those programs in random manner in an empty sequence. Now start recording something, even with note repeat. As you got basic track, move the q-link. Velocity is not destructive, you can re-record and overdub many times creating different pattern each time you move a slider, even the note pattern is same and stiff. It's not bad to also add some empty layer somewhere to mute the whole sound.

Actually best to go with 12samples per pad, why? because you got 4 banks, so you simult banks BCD to A and you play it all with A bank, but undernieth you got samples from BCD banks (+ layers), not mention few similar (or no ) programs switching automatically under. I should have mention that whole 128 velocity can be spread on all 64 pads, and it can overlap between them in anyway, this way you can have 64 samples under q-link to choose from, or even 128 if you like and you can record it.

Second way is a bit experimental.. you have to "imagine" your 16pads x 4 banks as a 64note linear grid yeah I know.. anyway.. you enter notes from A1,A2... to D16 in equal step (there is a feature that is T.C. dependent called auto step increment- press window on main grid, and than just overdub, without play).

Now It's up to you how dense you want this grid to be. It could be.. 64 per 4 bars, per 2 bars, per 1 bar, per 1/2 of a bar..? or two 32step lines going on
in the same program yeah you can. But for a 16th beat it would be.. 64 per 4 bars.

As you have that track ^^ playing with no sound you can start to place samples in a program (preferably with q-link 1), maybe even all together for a starter to choose some basic sound like hat, to get a feeling of what's going on. Mind each "step" got it's own pad settings here: sample, tune, filter, amp, layers etc.. it's also for drum program to be used.

What else? this is actually for regular drum track, if you add a bit, maybe a longer bit of silence in front of each drum sound, you can add swing like effect in realtime on previously recoded notes, they will shift in time while setting up q-link to start.

Also, I don't know what are your settings, but better use "note on" instead of "oneshots" for drums, first of all you can set up a loop on a sample (drill like effects) , on individual hits (say you got one sample, but you can copy it to make 4 "same samples" but each with very different loop setting) and secondly lenght of each hit will be different as you strike a pad, which is good I think.

I know it all sound like madness... but hey.. you asked