I'm going nuts!!!! Yes, another "Newbie Question"...

What am I doing wrong here? My biggest hurdle right now is the most important. Loading and saving everthing.

I talked to Randy at AKAI Support USA( a great guy) and he walked me through some things needless to say he could only hang on the phone for so long.

So, I'm back at square one. I've gotten to the point where I'm saving my seq., prog., samples. and multis to go with it (which I don't understand why there isn't a screen to save everything together at once!). I'm not consistant with it, so, I make sure these aren't beats that I don"t want to keep, but, when I go back to load this stuff up, I thought everything was supposed to pop in place after I load the multi, samples automatically in the parts field, pad assignments, etc.


I still find myself assigning the program back to the parts field after the seq. pops up. This is fustrating because I want remember the what program goes with what after about doing 50 songs on this thing.

Somebody posted earlier about crashes after they tried to save to CD. Thats horrific!! I was thinking about saving to the hard drive first and then backing everything up on CD. If I do this it won"t overwrite whats in the hard drive will it? Even though I'm choosing for it to go to the CD rom?

Last, If I put a drum kit samples on one track because I play my snare and kick together when programing can i assign those to different tracks later? If so, what is the purpose of switching tracks when everything will be routed to seperate outs later anyway? Maybe I'm missing something on that one.

Please advise....This is a great site. Jues you are the man. One day i will work this thing like he does, until then hang in there with me.

If you use "Save entire memory" every setting will be "remembered", atleast I havent had any problems with it. If you end up saving way too much samples that werent in use in the song just delete the programs that you dont use and in AK.SYS choose "Purge unused items" and THEN use "Save entire memory". That does it for me, hope this helps.

Kalei

Does that mean everything associated with that particular sequence or does that mean everything that is in memory? Because it would seem a little redundant to continue to save everything in your hard drive everytime, when all you really want to do is save your current sequence, programs,etc.

That is if I am understand you correctly. But, if it works I'll try it, because its so confusing to have to save everything independently and then load all back up the same way. Its driving me insane...

By the way do you use a usb keyboard for the Akysys software? If so I suppose you don't use the mouse. Do you find it easier to use the software as opposed to the hardware screen. I have not use the softwware yet because I have not purchased a seperate keyboard to run that system.

But I'm intrested to know what you think.

you need an external pc, not only a keyboard if you want to run ak.sys. on it. you install the software on the computer, connect the computer with the rear usb port and are ready to go. make sure to install the usb drivers first. you can download all this, i don´t have the link around anymore.
as for saving, i had the same issues and it drove me insane too. however, truth is, you have to save individually to make sure everything´s in it`s right place. first save an ALL file containing all sequences. give the file a name just the way you do it on the main screen with your tracks. then save the multi in which your progs are organized. choose multi only. fx settings, q-link settings, program to part assignment and overall levels are saved within these. then save your progs. choose multiple, select "with samples" and press for instance "all". it sounds confusing. but this way you are safe. also it makes sense to give differnet names and dates as you will be able to follow progression of your work. since i do it this way, there are no more saving issues. next time you load it up, just load the "all seq" file and the multi, this time "with progs and samples".
if you have snare and kick on one track and wish to divide them, copy the track and delete the snare in the copied track. go back to the original track and delete the kick. if you are just referring to dividing the sounds to different physical outputs, you do that in the program page.
the key to alot of functions is, as you might already have found out, the orange little button. try it on almost everything.
greetings.

I suggest that you make up individual folders before you make any trax with RAW DATA
example
accapellas samples
Kick Drums
Snares
Hats
Stabs
Loops (tempo mapped) etc.. etc..
now draw from these folders as you make trax but keep the folders as master files that you never change
now when you have produced a track that uses pieces from all these folders make a brand new folder and NAME IT (in CREATE af older)
Now SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY making absolute sure that you have saved it ONLY to this brand new folder that you JUST CREATED!!
This way you have several folders (files)
Folders with data that you use to make trax
and folders that re in essence your new songs that you have produced (Comprised of the selected data drawn from your other folders (Your library of sounds)
This way you ONLY SAVE relevant information each time

The bad part is that the MPC doesnt "link" to already stored samples in other folders, it simply saves it all again, which means your hd space can get eaten up pretty quick. AFAIK theres no way of getting around this but please correct me if im wrong though!

One thing you can do before "Save entire memory" is to open AK.SYS and right click "Memory" and choose "Purge unused items". It then deletes all samples and programs that arent "activated" on any of the "tracks".

Kalei

Yeah, but lets face it - on a 40Gig HDD, you're not gonna run out of space in a hurry are you....

jues.

Thanks everyone. You guys are da shit!!!!

Other tips for the board

Separate tracks is good for editiing. But not necessary with the program out or pad mixer.

cvere wrote:Does that mean everything associated with that particular sequence or does that mean everything that is in memory? Because it would seem a little redundant to continue to save everything in your hard drive everytime, when all you really want to do is save your current sequence, programs,etc.

That is if I am understand you correctly. But, if it works I'll try it, because its so confusing to have to save everything independently and then load all back up the same way. Its driving me insane...

There is your hard drive which is a fixed memory location and your RAM which is what's actually in the mpc at a given time. If you load a sound from the hard disk it goes into your ram, all other data like sequence, programs etc are also in RAM. when you save entire memory, it will save the RAM to your hard disk, ie what you are currently working on. if you switch off your mpc the ram is not memorized.... (get it????) that's why you save your sessions to indidual song folders...

here's an example.... when I make my sound banks I have a root folder called samples and that folder has subfolders with the names of different sounds... IE drums-kicks etc. or Pads-soft etc. then I also have another root folder called songs. when I work on a song I create a folder in the songs folder with the same name as the sequence. I also name the Multi with the same name as the sequence. before I save I purge unused programs
and samples. All the song goed into that folder..

to load all the song with multi,programs, sequence and samples, I just highlight that song's folder and it loads everything inside it.

best regards

Andy