How would you create two Parallel Channels on the MPC Live?

I have an MPC Live and want to be able to route the audio out from a midi kit to the input of another track.
I find submixes, returns and routing a bit confusing and I think that's where I need to be to pull what I'm trying to do off.

I'm trying to do what the guy in the video below is doing with his kick drum.
Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

first thing first: even tho he's using a midi track you have to understand he's routing AUDIO signal into the other track, not midi information.
in the mpc live you cannot do it exactly how he does because of some routing limitations.
usually to do parallel processing on the mpc you just open a send (let's say send 4) on your kick , then put your effects on the return 4, this way you have your original clean kick on its channel and the effected kick on the return channel, BUT! you cannot then route them together into a submix because return tracks can only be routed to master outputs. So, the most similar way to the video would be to route both original kick and return4 to a different master (say, 3,4) and then put whatever effect or processor is needed on the mix of original kick + effects, then use a mixer or different inputs of a sound card to gel back together the kick with the rest of the song.

there are workarounds tho:
i think the best solution would be this: you copy your kick pad to another pad. in program edit, on the original pad you enable simultaneous play and point to the copied pad, so that when you hit the kick pad, it will trigger both pads. the original you keep clean and you put the effects (100% wet) on the copied pad. then you route both pads (original + copied) to a submix and put the gluing processors on the submix.

Hyena's workaround is better than the original IMO. Why does the rumble channel need to be fed the exact same audio as the unprocessed kick? If the rumble channel's input is independent, you can modify it with envelopes and other parameters, or even use a different sound if you want.

So it does NOT have to be like this



It could be like this:



To reproduce what's shown on the video, use the same sound as KICK 1 and KICK 2.

In case the processing chain introduces latency, method 2 is better.
You can have an altered Version of Kick-1 with the amount of latency in silent samples ahead of sound data.

Techno on the mpc? My man.
I have recreated the exact same video on my live II standalone and what I do is I duplicate the kick pad and play them simultaneously. One is the kick and the other has all the rumble effects as described.

I create a chain with delay, reverb, one or two distortions (all the effects go to the pad inserts, not program. That allows me to quickly flatten the pad with all the assigned effects rendered)

Once I get it right, I flatten the rumble pad, convert it to mono in sample editor and then add a bit of low pass filter and mother ducker w chain compression with the main kick

Other way of doing it is by using a send channel and set it close to 0db,so you will have a parallel channel almost. Add your effects to the send return channel.

I actually prefer the AIR Pumper effect over Mother Ducker, because I want it to pump all the time anyway, even when the actual sounding kick isn't playing. In Ableton I have to set up an extra drum track that isn't routed to any buses and only drives the pumping compressors and serves no other purpose. But the Pumper is even better IMO.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:I actually prefer the AIR Pumper effect over Mother Ducker, because I want it to pump all the time anyway, even when the actual sounding kick isn't playing. In Ableton I have to set up an extra drum track that isn't routed to any buses and only drives the pumping compressors and serves no other purpose. But the Pumper is even better IMO.

in ableton you can achieve something similar to air pumper in many ways, one of the easiest is use the autopan, put the phase to 0 degrees (it becomes a tremolo instead of autopan) and mess with the waveform and shaper until you get it right. the air pumper is in fact a glorified tremolo plugin.

another one is the autofilter, using a low pass filter instead of an amplifier, using the internal lfo (here too phase 0 degrees).

Nice thread! (That Underdog guy is awesome BTW. Great video on how to achieve that sound).

I also did a pseudo A/B workflow comparison of Ableton and MPC Live for techno kicks after watching that video. I found I could get pretty close to my Ableton results using a mix of send/return and then sampling/flattening. I felt like I actually ended up with more varied results from the MPC workflow due to much more frequent resampling.

yah, and you can expand on that using the drum effects (second effects page on program edit of drum programs) before flattening. resampling sounds can be an art form
another trick to try: copy your pad, on the copy alter the pitch by some semitone, filter out the low end, apply effects, flatten, layer the new sound with the original. sometimes it spits out very cool stuff. you can preview how they will sound together before flattening by just using simultaneous play from the original pad to the new one, tweak the new one until it sounds right,then flatten and layer.