Best Resources for a Simple Ableton to MPC backing track set

HI All,

I've just picked up an MPC One and am planning to use it as the heart of my Bands Backing track setup.

All our tracks are usually created in Ableton and previously we've just had a Backing track of instruments, and Backing track for Vocals all loaded into the drummers SPDX, and he would have a 3rd track as a click.

I'm certain the MPC will give us the more flexibility to split up some of the instruments in the backing track (maybe isolate guitars for example), and also run some MIDI to some analogue synths etc, and give us options to rearrange in rehearsals without firing up the laptop and rebouncing audio etc...

Does anyone know of any definitive guide Youtube Video's or similar they direct me to for perfecting the work flow of export and preparing an Ableton Set for Importing into the MPC - The initial workflow feels like there is quite a steep learning curve, but that's probably because I'm not used to it yet.

Thanks in advance!

Halfcut

Ouch its A LOT easier to go the other way around haha. Are you using a lot of clips/loops in Live or are you recording like real time backing tracks? For me Id pick out my riffs/sections and bounce them to new clips with all the track effects and whatnot, and drop those into the MPC. You'll have to recreate the arrangement from scratch in the MPC but if you do it with a bunch of ready to go clips, that part will be so easy since you can keep Live up on the screen and just copy the arrangement from there.

I wonder if Akai Force would be better for this?

Monotremata wrote:Ouch its A LOT easier to go the other way around haha. Are you using a lot of clips/loops in Live or are you recording like real time backing tracks? For me Id pick out my riffs/sections and bounce them to new clips with all the track effects and whatnot, and drop those into the MPC. You'll have to recreate the arrangement from scratch in the MPC but if you do it with a bunch of ready to go clips, that part will be so easy since you can keep Live up on the screen and just copy the arrangement from there.

Thanks for the reply - yeah I did think it might be easier the other way round, It's just nice getting away from Laptops on stage - That workflow sounds about how I'd expected it might be, think it'll be a bit of trial and error as I work out all the quirks and hidden features of the MPC = A guy called Tom Cosm made an Ableton video on how to prepare your live arrangements into an easy Session view for Live sets, I was hoping there might be a similar sort of one made by someone on how to do this lol

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:I wonder if Akai Force would be better for this?

In hind sight, I think you might be right - I'm still within my 30 day money back guarantee period so I've I'm hitting my head against a brick wall with the MPC, I may consider the switch

I've used the MPC One for a couple of months now, and my experience is that Ableton Live's and MPC One/Live/X's conceptual model of what there is in a project is fundamentally so different that you'll have to re-create everything in MPC's terms, and the resulting music will be different. The separation of things to sequence jails is - with all due respect - incredibly dumb and unhelpful, and the "song mode", well... convoluted kludge upon convoluted kludge. In the MPC world you just construct your music differently. There's even no complete timeline view. IMO the most natural feeling way to use an MPC is at most 8 - 16 bar loops, where you toggle tracks and pads on/off and perform live. And of course building "beats", something like 2-8 bar loops that could be rapped over. It's possible to use locators and build longer pieces as a single sequence, but it feels clunky. There are no cycle markers, so no corresponding concept for "song part", unless you use multiple jailed/separated sequences. In Ableton I tend to use named and colorized empty MIDI clips as structural markers, but on the MPC there's even no visual timeline to begin with. The way it's structured is, you're not even supposed to look at the big picture that way. You're supposed to improvise with the elements and see where it goes.

The MPC's Sequence is like Ableton's Session view, but with only one Scene, and clip length limited to per-project "sequence" length. And like if in Ableton you could quickly switch between Projects each with a single Scene. And you could copy clips from one single-scene project to another... how handy would that be!? And you could even put the single-scene Projects in some "song" order and render it all to one very long single-scene project! IMO it's brain-dead, with multiple sequences and song mode providing a band-aid/bubblegum "solution". I use one sequence per project only. Maybe I'll learn to see it differently some day.

If you find an elegant way to do what you want, it would be very interesting to learn how you organize things. As said, I'm just a beginner.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:I've used the MPC One for a couple of months now, and my experience is that Ableton Live's and MPC One/Live/X's conceptual model of what there is in a project is fundamentally so different that you'll have to re-create everything in MPC's terms, and the resulting music will be different. The separation of things to sequence jails is - with all due respect - incredibly dumb and unhelpful, and the "song mode", well... convoluted kludge upon convoluted kludge. In the MPC world you just construct your music differently. There's even no complete timeline view. IMO the most natural feeling way to use an MPC is at most 8 - 16 bar loops, where you toggle tracks and pads on/off and perform live. And of course building "beats", something like 2-8 bar loops that could be rapped over. It's possible to use locators and build longer pieces as a single sequence, but it feels clunky. There are no cycle markers, so no corresponding concept for "song part", unless you use multiple jailed/separated sequences. In Ableton I tend to use named and colorized empty MIDI clips as structural markers, but on the MPC there's even no visual timeline to begin with. The way it's structured is, you're not even supposed to look at the big picture that way. You're supposed to improvise with the elements and see where it goes.

The MPC's Sequence is like Ableton's Session view, but with only one Scene, and clip length limited to per-project "sequence" length. And like if in Ableton you could quickly switch between Projects each with a single Scene. And you could copy clips from one single-scene project to another... how handy would that be!? And you could even put the single-scene Projects in some "song" order and render it all to one very long single-scene project! IMO it's brain-dead, with multiple sequences and song mode providing a band-aid/bubblegum "solution". I use one sequence per project only. Maybe I'll learn to see it differently some day.

If you find an elegant way to do what you want, it would be very interesting to learn how you organize things. As said, I'm just a beginner.

Perhaps you should just sell it and cut your losses. Life is too short to go against the grain on a tool. Sounds like you're fiending for arrangement view of the Force, but that's never been confirmed. I had the Force first before the Live, and hated how massive and heavy the unit was, and stupidly assumed the OS was the same. Even if they shoved it into the MPC stuff, it would probably be clunky and weird too. I came into the MPC world thinking I could form it into my workflow, but it's a love it or leave it situation.

Anyways, for an Ableton and MPC live situation (i've been kicking around ideas too but none of these are tested in real life yet)

I'd consider just using the MPC as a playable pad device, and midi sequencer, perhaps an FX unit with the MPC as master clock, while your ableton session is slaved to that running the backing audio you already have setup.

You could also just render out your backing tracks of choice and make them "clips" and play them live, or arrange them in grid view.

Though, if your backing music never changes, and you are playing on top of it anyways, there's really no point in all that work. Just render each song as a stereo file, throw into an audio track in the sequences, one sequence per song, keeping it solely a midi brain. Of course, then you're limited to all your midi being a long midi sequence, which sucks. This method would probably run into memory limitations since I've only been able to load about 10-15 tracks.

jabberwalky wrote:Perhaps you should just sell it and cut your losses. Life is too short to go against the grain on a tool. Sounds like you're fiending for arrangement view of the Force, but that's never been confirmed.

No, I was trying to say that Ableton-like song arrangements cannot be done with the MPC's Sequence concept, and generally speaking, any sort of long pre-written arrangement is going to be painful. Based on what the MPC looks like to me, you're supposed to cook things live, toggle tracks and pads on/off, go with the flow and see where you end up. Which is exactly what I bought the MPC One for! But the OP had a different purpose, for which I think the Force would be better suited.

The MPC has plenty of ways to get things done, you just need to adapt to the toolset you're given. I don't write stuff live, I take weeks-months to get stuff down, and its all written from bar 1 to the end. The MPC just makes me break the pieces up into sections and spend time focusing on those before I link all the sequences together in song mode. Other than having to deal with sequences, the rest of it is pretty much the same job I would do inside Logic Pro.

The OP attempts to "import" an Ableton project into the MPC, and maybe reshuffle things around. I'm not sure if that's the best idea in the world. How would you import an Ableton project, using the toolset that's available? There is Ableton .ALS Export, but no Import, AFAIK. IMO, the only way to do anything is to import bits and pieces of something, and then re-create an MPC-style production from those ingredients.

Maybe something like, create a separate Sequence for each song part or section (that might possibly be re-ordered), and and a separate audio file for each song-part-sized track section that needs to be available as a separate track. There are only 8 audio tracks in the MPC, so that sets a limit to how fine-grained this can be.