Newbie needs answering!!!

whatup...i was thinking of buying a mpc2000xl, but i dont know exactly how they work. I just need to know the answers to a few questions:

1) Does it come with sounds on it?
2) Do you have to have sample that are already a melody line? or do you take one note and you can change the pitch and create a melody line like a keyboard?
3) Can it burn onto a cd?
4)How would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10?

Thank you....go easy on me, i'm only 15

1.no sounds, most samplers tend not to come with sounds
2.you theoretically can....but it takes lots of time and practice(its worth it in the end)
3.only the mpc4000 can burn to cd thus far.....the rest can read cd's if they have scsi
4.a 10, i'd say 15 but thats me and 10 is the highest, right?

if you're only 15.....I'd buy the 2000xl for now...get comfortable with it.....and since you're so young, here is the best advice you'll ever hear(esp. if you're doin hip hop), LEARN HOW TO SAMPLE........sample any and every sound you like or even don't like....play around with all those sounds and develop your own style.....but i'm telling you SAMPLING is the diff between good and great(thats just an opinion), but the fact is...the big boy producers sample...PAY ME FOR THIS ADVICE WHEN YOU ARE ONE OF THE GREAT ONES......1

but if its so hard to create those melody lines why should you sample? why not just use a nice keyboard like the korg triton and play your melodies easily (which also samples)? i'm not sure i fully understand what sampling can do...please tell me what i am missing.

and also doesnt the mpc2000xl only have like 20 seconds of sampling with out the expansion thing? and how am i supposed to export songs? do i need to have a track recorder or something?

sorry for all the questions...

EXPLAIN SAMPLING IN DETAIL SOMEONE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sampling is simply recording audio. What is meant by sampling in this context is that you nick a bit of somebody else's recording - this is how hiphop evolved; early hiphop DJs would have two copies of the same song, and then mix between them, so as to allow, for instance, a four bar break to carry on ad infinitum, which MCs would then toast over. When samplers came along, they recorded the grooves/breakdowns they liked into their new digital machines and loop them in there. This gave rise to a whole host of new opportunities: layering of different breaks, effects, and most importantly chopping up and rearranging a sample. I wish I could point you to some early hiphop tracks where these techniques were obvious, but I'm not really knowledgable when it comes to old school hiphop - although I do remember that Public Enemy's Fight The Power (and a million and one other hiphop, jungle, d n b, and 2-step tracks) blatantly samples the breakdown in James Brown's Funky Drummer.

Why should you sample instead of playing you own hooks? Well, you shouldn't, necesarily. But take a listen, for instance, to a sax line on a John Coltrane record, and compare it to something you play yourself on a Triton with a multisampled sax sound... not quite the same is it? What I often do is nick a melody line off a sample CD (to avoid copyright issues), and chop it into small pieces, which I then rearrange and mix and match with other snippets of melody lines. I do the same thing with drums - there is something about the sound and feel of a break played by a human being that can't be recreated with a bunch of one shot samples and a keyboard.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask - I can most likely help you with anything that doesn't relate to the MPC (I don't own one... yet...)

-Paws

okay...so then whats the difference between an mpc and a program like ACID where you use someone elses samples and just chop them up and stuff? i may be wrong, but it sounds the same to me....

sampling is not just taking someone's music and recording it, but you can actually sample intrumental sounds ie:horns,guitar,bass,kick drum,snare, etc....you can then use the sampled intruments and make your own compositions as a matter of fact most synths are using sampled sounds

ooooooohhhhhhhh THANK YOU....thats all i needed to know! so i can make my own pattern lines and stuff with just one sound....

but i still have 2 problems....what is a good way to exprt your songs since it doesnt burn to cd?
and also how am i supposed to do anything if it only has 20 seconds or so of sampling on it?

max out the memory.....you'll get more sampling time.....some big producers don't even use the full 20 sec and can make bangin tracks....

FINALLY! ONLY 1 QUESTION LEFT!!

whats a good way to export songs since it doesnt burn to cd?

Well, if you're doing everything on the MPC, you simply plug the analogue outs of that into something that records audio and burns CDs... in your case, it'd probably be your computer.

Record it into an audio editor of some sort, and use whichever burning app came to your burner to turn the AIFF/WAV/SDII files you've recorded into an audio CD... easy as pie, if you know how to do it

-Paws