New to live 2 coming from 2000xl but had decade break

Hi, can you give some advice on using ssd that’s on board versus a separate sd card or should we be optimizing with both? I come from 2000xl and never used all the modern stuff, just bounced individual tracks and midi from 2000xl songs into protools etc then worked from there. I always had a drum program of hand selected drums on 3 banks and kept 4th open for samples, which could then be deleted once bounced to save memory, and that was just the workflow for a few months before switching drums for new sound or using a separate card for different project sounds needed.

I’m unsure if I just load all these new expansions onto an ssd on live 2 then pull from there or if you just make a singular program and pull sounds from sd card every project? I have a long list of sounds I’ve saved over time in hard drives but they’ve already been hand put into folders for my own “kits” I guess you can say.

As those of you know you just never turned the old Mpc off for the most part to keep your data, with so much memory and ram now (compared) I’m guessing it’s easy to just jam it up. Is it best to make kits then keep it on the ssd and use as needed? The program swap seems similar to the 2000xl but I’m unsure with these new expansion packs and all the things I’m seeing as to how your kits are saved (or not) for on board. I prefer to keep drums in set kits I make to keep the sounds uniform for projects rather then all over the place so it sounds consistent to me and the tracks.

Trying to optimize how it works as I’m getting my live 2 this week and want to make transition simple. Was producing in 2005 and took a long hiatus since about 2013 so all this new stuff is crazy to me what’s possible.

Another question is the 16 pad chop seems similar to how you can chop a sample using record in and making a program, we could only keep so much of these though and had to finish it or use a separate storage for that song while working, so these programs have to be saved into the ssd after the project is completed to re pull them or do you bounce all that data to ssd and import elsewhere then can re load any time you wish? Do we have to delete and purge these in real time or is it better to wait till song has been bounced to software etc?

Ps I did buy a 1tb evo ssd to put on board already and have plenty of external hds, thumb drives, and compact flash or micro SDs if needed. Sorry for the essay, lot of stuff to catch up on have been deep diving ton of YouTube content to catch up and some of these aren’t mentioned much for some reason.

Set up your sound library however you want, it''s entirely up to you. Basically, chuck an SSD inside your Live 2, transfer all your expansions and sound library/kits there and load what you need when you need it. If you like to work with a specific set of kits, then just stick them inside a folder within your SSD. If you run out of memory when working in a project, purge what you don't need to free up space. No different to a legacy MPC.

Save all your work to your SSD, in a dedicated 'Projects' folder, you can even set up a regular autosave. The rest you can work out as you go, just whatever suits your needs. Feel free to ask here if you need specific help with anything, and check out my MPC Bible for workflow ideas and tutorials.

Hi thanks for the advice, yeah will be getting that seems like you put a lot of work (understatement) I’m starting to understand that the new hardware projects can basically replace the old sequence if I’m getting it right?

Before a song would just be sequence 1234 etc out into song mode, but the program for standard drums would all be on drum 1 “x program” and you would add 2-4 if needed for chips etc but those 16 pads across 3 banks was basically kept the same and the 4th (for me was importing new samples) as I understand now though you can save the project to the ssd, once that is done I’m assuming all the drums that were tweaked to the program are saved with it as well? Does the next project default to how that program was prior to making tweaks for the specific project or it would be adjusted and readjusted or “undone” every time?

As much as I love programming some drums I don’t really want to have to do it again every single time haha.

You can create a project template with all your preferred start up configuration so you can use this as a 'new project' option, or you can just create a folder with multiple 'starter' project templates which you can just load up after creating a blank new project. But you could already do that with the MPC2000XL, just create your ideal set up and save the APS and ALL files for it, this would save all the programs, sequences and songs associated with it (the equivalent of the current MPC 'project' file format). Then when you reboot your MPC2000XL, load up those two ALL and APS files and you'll have your preferred start up configuration loaded and ready to go.

Also these days, there's no 'DRUM 1, 2,3 4', you just directly assign a program to a track, no limits on the number of programs, and now 8 banks of pads per program. Plus you have plugins, keygroup instruments, clip programs etc.

"But you could already do that with the MPC2000XL, just create your ideal set up and save the APS and ALL files for it, this would save all the programs, sequences and songs associated with it (the equivalent of the current MPC 'project' file format). Then when you reboot your MPC2000XL, load up those two ALL and APS files and you'll have your preferred start up configuration loaded and ready to go."

Yeah this is exactly what I would do before, then changing the banks for samples as needed and bouncing but keeping that core drum/snd program set, would just clear sequences and start again to keep the midi and sample bases cleaned. After reading through a bunch I think I have an idea of how to organize it again. Thanks for the quick advice. I'm sure once I deep dive hands on again it'll make sense when it shows up this week and Ill pop back for more questions after digging in.

Ive been reviewing your articles and came across the expansion making one. It actually is fairly cool how this tagging stuff works, would it make more sense if I want to make my kits to just do that and have them to call upon that way? Or is this more intended if youre looking to share it, seems like organizing this way could be a good system for internal using my pre made drum "programs" which is just old flash card snd and wav sounds I used for each session and backed up with the All sequence and Allprogram files in my old storage hard drives. I also have some scsi kits and flash i want to bring back out so I would Like to segment them since I already spent all the time originally organizing and grouping them back then.

I started with the mpc1000 but had some hands on with the MPC2000XL recently before parting it out. I currently use a Live gen 1, I got my live gen 1 in 2019 after a decade break and now have spent a ridiculous $ on gear lol, with a pretty decent home studio and rack gear etc. A much better engineering knowledge.

It’s hard to even compare the MPC Live to the 2000XL because the 2KXL is so primitive but let me break it down how your workflow seemed to be:

1. Your 2kXL had snd files and no usb, you had to use the sample input to record. You recorded a lot in mono to save space and didn’t worry so much about fx, it’s mostly dry drums and dope samples with sequences put together, some keyboards and maybe some processing in protools after tracking.

With the mpc live you work with wav files so you can transfer them in from your PC via an sd card or by connecting in controller mode.

You should absolutely get an SSD and put it in the space for it under the unit, don’t save any of your projects or anything on the internal SSD keep that stock.

You can get like 1TB if you want, you’ll end up using a lot more space storing high precision wav files at 24 bit.

So your workflow translates best to creating a programs directory on your secondary aftermarket SSD or sd card. You’ll either sample your 2kXL kits into the live or you’ll choose the samples you want on the drums. On the new MPC you can add all sorts of fx and use send/returns and so some really cool stuff but maybe keep it simple to still be productive and focus on learning new features with each project.

So the 2kXL you were very limited in how many drum programs you could have or how many types of programs you had, there are many on the new MPCs. In addition to drum program and midi and keygroup (can’t remember if the 2kXL had this but rack mount samplers did) there is also cv and plug-in and clips. Plug-in are builtin VST type instruments, clips are something I don’t mess with and I don’t use CV modular synths.

You’ll probably want to create either individual drum programs with just a single drum kit on them or you can do things exactly the way you were doing them before by putting everything on the same drum program on different banks.

Then you save your programs and access them that way by loading them.

One thing to note is the 2kXL did not have mute groups. You get mute groups now and a lot of other cool stuff.

The UI is going to be completely foreign to you as it was to me. Personally I just poked around which is what most people probably did. If you want a copy of the mpc Bible that’s about a year old you can hit me up, I’m sure there’s updates to it but it does a good job explaining shit

But yeah you can use your old workflow but you now have unlimited programs and unlimited tracks so you can use program mutes, track mutes etc to build your beat

interested to know what made u come back to beats? is it cos u watched an EA SKi video?

jpeg wrote:interested to know what made u come back to beats? is it cos u watched an EA SKi video?

If it was EA Ski, wouldn't he had gotten a MPC 3k or whatever?
But I also would like to know what got the OP back into music?

To the OP, you're on the right track & most of your questions will will be answered when you start using your new MPC.

This video on making a MPC template may help:

jpeg wrote:interested to know what made u come back to beats? is it cos u watched an EA SKi video?

Whats up man, sorry The thread doesn't give notifications someone posted or something I guess on here so didn't see this, have been buried in the equipment grinding back muscle memory etc haha. Am about 40 beats in since I got my machine.

No actually I never watched any content from this ski dude tbh with you, I was asked to work on a project for my cousin who is a composer for film and movies etc, he had sent me a new live 2 and asked me to start working on stuff again. So here I am caught the bug again and going deep on it it. I also just swooped the manual that week to read so have been using that to answer most questions I would have in regards to work flow. It is still frustrating at times catching myself reaching for a fader thats not there, and some of the new quirks that annoy me compared to the 2000 but overall the new modern stuff allowing me to bounce a track in like 5 minutes and email it to engineer is absolutely amazing compared to what we used to do lol. I still have my 2000 next to it so when I get fully set with live 2 and feel comfortable I may start integrating the 2 in a workflow.

B-Wise wrote:

jpeg wrote:interested to know what made u come back to beats? is it cos u watched an EA SKi video?

If it was EA Ski, wouldn't he had gotten a MPC 3k or whatever?
But I also would like to know what got the OP back into music?

To the OP, you're on the right track & most of your questions will will be answered when you start using your new MPC.

This video on making a MPC template may help:

Hey thanks, yeah I consumed about 200 hours of youtube content tbh with you catching up to everything waiting for my machine, now that I have it it is all making sense again for sure, still a lot of new terminology and tech im getting used to as I hated software when I made music back then other then pro tools and now its so accepted I'm having to incorporate it some haha. It is a process for sure, I feel like encino man coming out the block of ice in this new beat world lol.

I havent even started using my asr again or my old motifs, just trying to do everything possible in the standalone and grind out like 200 songs by end of next month to speed my production back up to where it feels like im comfortable with the equipment again. Once thats all good I can start implementing the old tools I know already and not use them as a crutch is my logic.

Damn 200 beats by the end of next month.

You get notifications by clicking on the eye icon on top right of the thread next to the Star icon. It was recently fixed. That how I got your message here.

Ah ok, yeah I see that now to follow threads. Tbf these aren’t dr Dre level compositions 200 of them haha, but I’m a grinder so I’m dedicating about 3-4 hours at the end of my days to music every single day so I can usually knock a 2-3 set out for sure.

Would you mind linking or referencing this ski video? I’m curious to see it if it’s something people thought would be bringing people back into production haha.

Nino_Allah wrote:Ah ok, yeah I see that now to follow threads. Tbf these aren’t dr Dre level compositions 200 of them haha, but I’m a grinder so I’m dedicating about 3-4 hours at the end of my days to music every single day so I can usually knock a 2-3 set out for sure.

Would you mind linking or referencing this ski video? I’m curious to see it if it’s something people thought would be bringing people back into production haha.

Ok that makes sense. Oh, the Ski thing was more of a joke. He's the dude that said the new MPCs doesn't sound good like the older ones. I totally disagree, but whatever. Look him up if you like wasting your time or want a good laugh reading the comments

Smokeychuck wrote:I started with the mpc1000 but had some hands on with the MPC2000XL recently before parting it out. I currently use a Live gen 1, I got my live gen 1 in 2019 after a decade break and now have spent a ridiculous $ on gear lol, with a pretty decent home studio and rack gear etc. A much better engineering knowledge.

It’s hard to even compare the MPC Live to the 2000XL because the 2KXL is so primitive but let me break it down how your workflow seemed to be:

1. Your 2kXL had snd files and no usb, you had to use the sample input to record. You recorded a lot in mono to save space and didn’t worry so much about fx, it’s mostly dry drums and dope samples with sequences put together, some keyboards and maybe some processing in protools after tracking.

With the mpc live you work with wav files so you can transfer them in from your PC via an sd card or by connecting in controller mode.

You should absolutely get an SSD and put it in the space for it under the unit, don’t save any of your projects or anything on the internal SSD keep that stock.

You can get like 1TB if you want, you’ll end up using a lot more space storing high precision wav files at 24 bit.

So your workflow translates best to creating a programs directory on your secondary aftermarket SSD or sd card. You’ll either sample your 2kXL kits into the live or you’ll choose the samples you want on the drums. On the new MPC you can add all sorts of fx and use send/returns and so some really cool stuff but maybe keep it simple to still be productive and focus on learning new features with each project.

So the 2kXL you were very limited in how many drum programs you could have or how many types of programs you had, there are many on the new MPCs. In addition to drum program and midi and keygroup (can’t remember if the 2kXL had this but rack mount samplers did) there is also cv and plug-in and clips. Plug-in are builtin VST type instruments, clips are something I don’t mess with and I don’t use CV modular synths.

You’ll probably want to create either individual drum programs with just a single drum kit on them or you can do things exactly the way you were doing them before by putting everything on the same drum program on different banks.

Then you save your programs and access them that way by loading them.

One thing to note is the 2kXL did not have mute groups. You get mute groups now and a lot of other cool stuff.

The UI is going to be completely foreign to you as it was to me. Personally I just poked around which is what most people probably did. If you want a copy of the mpc Bible that’s about a year old you can hit me up, I’m sure there’s updates to it but it does a good job explaining shit

But yeah you can use your old workflow but you now have unlimited programs and unlimited tracks so you can use program mutes, track mutes etc to build your beat

Hey I missed this when you said it but yes this is pretty much been my experience since I got the live 2 and been going in on it last few weeks, I had already read up about the ssd etc and that was a no brainer for me as like you said I wouldve killed for that type of storage to be drawn up in a click before haha. You pretty much nailed the old 2k experience yes lmao. That rudimentary confine allowed for you to really get creative with less options though to be fair! How you described the new work flow is exactly how I have translated it just messing with things. I have not yet adopted the controller mode stuff but have gotten a few expansions for some on board keys and the keygroup stuff which is pretty dope to have without plugging in a diff synth every time I want a sound. I have not yet messed fully with all the mute group features etc but am slowly incorporating all the new stuff as I get it where the old stuff is second nature on the new equipment again. Thanks for the info.