Recording Arbitrarily Long Samples

What's the right way to record arbitrarily long samples as a song? For example, I might record a bunch of sequences and arrange them into a song using song mode. But then I want to record a melodic instrument over the entire song form, or lyrics. So no sequence is longer than 8 bars say, but the entire song is 32 bars when arranged, and I want to record a single 32 bar track to play over the entire arrangement.

Is that possible?

Another way of asking this question is: can I record an entire performance on the MPC One on top of its sequences?

Just curious if there is a reason you wouldn't want to record 4 x 8 bar tracks, or one 32 bar track?

You should be able to do all of this with Audio Tracks, though I think they are technically linked to the length of the sequence even if they can be of arbitrary length.

You might be able to get a One shot to do what you want, though I've never tried to operate the way you are suggesting.

Personally I would make a song and then bounce the song back to one sequence and start recording then.

64hz wrote:Personally I would make a song and then bounce the song back to one sequence and start recording then.

This approach makes sense to me, I guess this is probably what I'll do. But I guess one downside of this strategy is that it can't easily be used to just record a live performance before an audience. Thanks!

NearTao wrote:Just curious if there is a reason you wouldn't want to record 4 x 8 bar tracks, or one 32 bar track?

You should be able to do all of this with Audio Tracks, though I think they are technically linked to the length of the sequence even if they can be of arbitrary length.

You might be able to get a One shot to do what you want, though I've never tried to operate the way you are suggesting.

Yeah, if you use Song Mode to arrange a song with very different sequences - like a quiet intro, a gradual build, a verse, a chorus, a break, a bridge, an outro, and so on - that wouldn't really make sense as "one 32 bar track". But I often want to take a song like that and then record a long melody over the entire thing. Imagine giving a horn player a beat to explore over. So how do you record the horn over the entire song form? I think that the right suggestion is to bounce your song out and record the melody track separately. That's fine in a studio context, but if I just wanted to capture something that spontaneously happened at a live performance, that wouldn't work well. In that context, you're probably building up the different sequences live, and the horn player is exploring that with you simultaneously. If you wanted to capture that as it happened without stopping to bounce the track, you'd be out of luck.

If it's hard to imagine "capturing" these improvised performances the way I'm describing, take Marc Rebillet's work for example:

I have no problem imagining doing it... I just think that there are better ways to capture comps, long tracks, etc...

But you also gave me a better idea of what you are looking for with your post... you can record an audio track up to I believe 6 minutes long on the MPC... but it doesn't provide comping, and depending on how you edit it, will depend on if it stays in time or not. If you've got an MPC One/Live/X already, I'd suggest giving it a go. The process wasn't for me, but it might work out well for what you are trying to do.

Pretty sure if you're arranging a song in song mode, after you have it arranged you can hit the convert>seq button. It'll make one long sequence out of all of the sequences you arranged. Then you can record with that long sequence.

Why don't you just convert the song to a sequence?

Convert to sequence, this is the right answer for my use case! Thanks everyone!

Then if I want to record a potentially infinite performance over the entire structure (some unknown number of loops), I can just run the sampler and record input while I'm playing the sequence.

You looked at the looper function?

that is constrained to 16 bars (?)