djkillakraze wrote:There are so many ways to tweak a sound. i read mpc's tutor's guides. its good...but does any one have any good sites that says what each thing in detail does or which settings are good for each different sound (snare,high-hat...etc)...I have a 4000 and i dont know what the #### do to with the lfo1,lfo2,aux,envelope. (triangle,sin,...etc) DO you just play with it till the sound sounds good even though i dont know what the #### i am doing>[/color]
Hi Killakraze,
I'll give you 2 very important tip, that will allow you to actually explore
these.
1)
I would say combine an equal amount of reading to experimenting.
Sometimes the concepts that you read in regards to subtractive synthesis
(the type of synthesis that the MPC use, i.e.; LFO's, Envelopes & Filters) do
not always make sense until you've heard them. Even better, I like to
sit with the synth or mpc in front of me when I am reading these, so that
I can instantly hear what they are trying to describe with words.
2) On the MPC 4000, many of the items that you listed, such as LFO's
and Envelopes do not function until your route them to a destination.
The MPC has just a few hard wired routes and the rest you have to tell
it what you want it to do. The way that you route a source to a destination
on the MPC 4000 is via the Program Modulation window. This Window
which is accesible from the Program screen, when you press the
"Window" button when certain parameters are highlighted. Allows you
to pick the source of the modulation and what is going to be modulated
how much you want that modulation to affect the destination.
For example, you can apply LFO1 as Source, Select Filter Cutoff as
Destination and say 20 for the amount. Now what you will hear is a
the filter cutoff being "turned" automatically for you. The LFO frequency
will determine how fast the "turning" occurs. The LFO shape will determine
how the turning happens. If you pick saw, you will hear "the knob turning" go up and and down, with a very linear type of way. If you pick sine, you
will hear "the knob turning" go up and down, but it's not quite as linear.
It has a different curve, more cycilic. If you use Random or S/H (Sample and Hold) it will randomly give a different values. So you will hear the
"knob turning" or filter cutoff go all over the place. 1 Point, it's all the way
on, another it's 1/3rd way up another it's all the way down, then it's 1/4th up.
That's just 1 example. Check out the Newbies bible and we've put many
other examples of Program Modulation window.
A good book to check out is:
"Sound, Synthesis and Sampling"
by Martin Russ
by Focal Press.
Hopefully MPC Tutor or somebody else will put out a more specific MPC 4000 tutorial, but to give the 4000 justice, it would need to be 3-4 times bigger then the MPC 2000XL one, or I guess come in 3-4 differnt books.
Good luck and remember that what ever you learn in this aspect will help
you with all other synths and samplers, whether hard or soft. Some
have more modulation matrix's then others, but they usually will have
at least one, even it it's hard routed to your modulation wheel or pitch wheel.
Cheers,
Dave
