MPC Live: ways to "fill" for performance

Hey,
The effects routings on the Live are pretty amazing - I've never had a standalone unit that has such flexible options. The XY grid is extremely useful in this way.

I plan to use the Live for live sets. I'm always looking for "hands on" options. The XY is great for this of course. Set on the master, it gives a lot of potential for playing spontaneous "fills" and so adds to the flexibility in a live show.

In this thread, I'm hoping you can share your ideas about improvising in combination with pre-prepared material. Pad mute and track mute are other obvious options (Ie temporarily taking stuff out of an arrangement to change it up). Also, if you have ideas for this with hardware. For example, I use a Roland Scooper in my mix so I can jump in every now and then with glitchy stuff. And a Kaoss Pad is on my list of needs for the same reason. How would you put these in your signal chain? Pass the whole mix through them, or have them as an insert on a mixer, or even use them as an insert in the MPC? Random questions. . .

(This is one of the reasons I wish Akai would put some menu selection on the pads with some button combo, like the MPC 1000, so that you could jump around quickly between menus. . . possible on the touch screen but a little bit fiddly).

Tricky one really. Lots and variables, what the venue has for you to set up into, space, your workflow etc.

Ok. .... first thing I'd want to use the assignable outs from the mpc, the kaoss pad and the scooper shouldnt be handing your main sound. The kaoss pad can and works great looping from the mains of the mpc but you have the extra outs and should use them as the mpc itself will sound better especially if you route the sounds you want effected to the right machine. Ideally you would get a mixer for that setup, see another variable lol, run the three stereo pairs it to thier repective machines and back out to the mixer or in case of the main run it directly into the mixer.that way you can seperate and get the right levels for each. Or just hook up the three stereo outs to the mixer and use the two effects boxes on the aux send and returns. Just make sure you have your channels right, either way it's all on if you want the effects in series or serperate from each other.

The downside is the prep work needed to set all that up. It wouldn't be just jamming and tweaking the boxes as you go, you would need to plan a lot out in terms of samples and routing. I can see jamming on the kaoss pad and the live being pretty straight forward, the eurorack device would be weird to me in the middle. I know what your getting at but you want things to sound good as well. I see issues using the scooper on the full mix of the outs.

No matter what your going to need a lot of samples and loops to rock a live gig.

I did a lot of gigs with just a mpc, kaoss pad and Roland 404. Was never a " pro" but played a lot and had the most fun in my life.

Edit: I see a lot of potential using one pair of the aux outs going to the kaoss pad and back into the main sampling input of the mpc. Have the monitor on and you should be good. Same concept for the scooper, but the kaoss pad would offer more.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah what you're saying makes a lot of sense. I already use a mixer - had a similar setup with my MPC 1000. I probably wouldn't have gone direct into the effects - there's a send on my mixer and of course on the MPC so there are several options. I also normally set up a synth and (also) clock out a machinedrum. The machinedrum I just use for ad hoc layers which I make up on the spot.

I'm thinking more about the internals of the MPC itself. Obviously finger drumming, the XY, and pad mute give a whole bunch of possibilities for making a dynamic performance. But what about new stuff on the Live? Anything special for this kinda thing? I haven't really checked out clips yet. . .

What would be better imo is some sort of hybrid macro pgm where you can assign Mpc functions to some pads , pad simult to trigger pads from other pgms .. next and previous seq etc ... track mute etc ... or the ability to use external midi controllers to control specific modes .. a mpd could be assigned to track mute , another one to next seq