Using the 4k live for a dance set

is someone using the mpc4k for a live drum n bass, house, techno or other dance set? Lets say you have a gig from 2 hours and you only have the 4k as the main sequencer (+ other synths and stuff without sequencers. mpc4k si only sequencer). The sampling time would be no issue .... but the 4k only has 128 tracks? This is kind of limited.. Dont you think? I once ran allmost out of sequences with a normal 6 minute song.. There where lots of 1 bar loops tho, but still..
Anyway. Lets say your project is at 130bpm and you have all 4 - bar sequences, that gives you only 15 minutes of play time if you just play the sequences from start to end without looping one or another. Of course, you will use the next sequence and mute track feature and play with other stuff! So that gives you like 1 hour if you play every 4 bar sequence 4 times.
You can convert songs into sequencs so you could free up some sequence track space. But that doesnt do it, because you will loose precious 4 bar loops. And with 16 bar loops, the next sequence feature falls into the water. As a matter of fact, I wanna use 1 and 2 bar loops. That gives me much more freedom. But then I will end up with half an hour of play time because of the 128 track limitation..

How do you guys handle this?

How do you guys handle this?[/quote]

I don't think it's a limitation, it's just the way you set up your seuquences.

If you jam for 30 seconds on each sequence, that would mean 1 hour of music, jamming for 1 minute on each sequence would give you something like two hours of music.. It just depends how complicated you want your live set to be...

ikke wrote:How do you guys handle this?

I do understand your frustration, at one point I had emailed Akai an RFE request to be able to Load Samples and Sequences (Programs and Multi's already load up) during playback of the sequence, because of some of the reasons that you have indicated. I was looking at some possible 3 hours sets and wanted the ability to keep the beat going the whole while. Akai indicated that due to the timeing of the sequencer being one of the highest priorities, that they couldn't compromise loading of samples. They would look into being able to load sequences into empty sequencer spots but they have not implemented this yet. So as a Live tool, you are stuck
with 128 Sequences. As most Soft Sequences (Logic, Cubase , ProTools, Cakewalk, Ableton Live) only let you play 1 Sequence at a time without stopping, this isn't as bad as it could be for those programs.

The way that I've worked around it, is a combination of several things.

1) Track Mute's are your friend

Instead of having everything worked out via pre-programmed 1 or 2 bar sequences, you can use Track Mute's to change things up a bit. So that 2 bar loop, with changing track mutes can have several different permutations.

2) Pad Banks are your friends

I'm not sure how complicated your tracks are, but I am rarely using All 128 Tracks in the Sequence. So with Pad Banks and Track Pads you can naviigate a song fairly well. If you are only using 16 Tracks at once, you can then look at the Pad Banks as Sections of the Song, and you use Track Mute's to go to the different sections (this is where the Group Track Mute's that somebody suggested would be a great feature!!!)


3) Akai will play a sample while sequencer is stopped and you are loading Sequences.

With some foresight, you can have some interesting pads or what not that you can
play and sustain with the sustain pedal to keep some sounds going, while you load up
another 128 sequences. If you're not loading up Samples then this can be done quite fast.
Other options are to buy something like the Peavey Grabber/Red Sound Cycloops, which grabs 1, 2, 4, 8 bar loops from your last track and beat that while you are loading up sequences and samples for the next hour. Then use the TAP BPM function to match the BPM of the 4000 to what the Cycloops is doing and old fashion dj the 4000 back into the mix. The Cycloops then should start reading from the 4000's beat and your on your way...


Hope that helps a bit..


Dave

if akai would expand the next sequence/ pad mute feature, it would be allright. Now we are limited to 96 different sequences/ tracks. But that could be enough tho.. the more I think of it.. Long time ago I only had an MC303 and I giged with it once .. It only has 7 tracks and only 50 patterns and the most sh*tty sounds ever. Lets not talk about the buggy sequencer from that thing (old os)

anyway, I have made a template with all named sequences on the mpc. "snares a" "snares b" "bass a" " filters 37" etc.. 96 tracks. All arranged so that it displays nice and ordened in the "track mute" window. Its a mess in the main window but thats ok. Now I can mute and unmute kicks, snares, 303's etc on the fly.

I was thinking, if I cop another hardware sequencer (maybe an mc909/rs7000 or machinedrum or seq + sampler, shouldnt be that expensive) and sync them with midi beat clock, will they still be in sync after 3 hours non-stop playing?
Then it would be possible to use for example the MPC for the first part of the show. and the mc909 fi. for the last part. And of course mixing both devices together through a compact mixer.. But both devices starts at the beginning of the show, together using midi beat clock.

OR.. I could use an external clock (i donno nothing bout this ) and use reason on my laptop (it only has midi in signals) and mix mpc and reason like they were turntables.. Does someone has any experience with external midi clocks? How does this all work?
(edit) [YES. I think this is the best option. Laptop on the right side and mpc on the left side of the ecler hak320 . Nice n compact. And it looks pro too ]

Combine tracks (resample at will), to simplify the song, so instead of just having kick ,snare ,toms ,bass you'll have kick toms & bass on the same track (f its all samples are from the mpc, and its fits the style of music) so you're whole bass grove is one track in one program, assign other versions of these samples or other samples that are good replacement for them to the same program and mute group, now when you hit the pads live an extra kick or a bass lick comes into the grove, run a 16 bar loop or whatever and have metronome off that way you can enter recording mode (unused track) live without the crowd ever knowing, if you set your programs well it will all fit (that is if your sense timing is ok, ...


Mute window: alleging all the tracks in an originzed layout fxample:
pad 1 2 3 4 (straight row to the right) will form some basics of a track that are the same like 1bass 2bass&kick, 3bass&Kick+Toms, 4bass roil, next row 5 6 7 8 5bass2 6 kick and bass2 Bass&Kick+Snr 8Bassrool 2
zo: now you have access to 2 versions of each track and can improf,.. frees patterns locations to

track 4 could be a bass roil in the end of the pattern and be named BssRolEnd just turn in on and select your next pattern if you've done your homework it should be a smooth transsion
while track 8 could be a 2nd note one shot Bass lick/loop on every 2nd note throughout the pattern and be Named BssRRolSolo; quickly solo this anytime to stop all music and hear that base lick some honey to the floor ;)

set up tracks that have the same tempo in the same pattern so you can mix in say a hihat line form track b (set up in bank b) or a vocal drop from track c in bank c ect, so you can mix and even create new tracks life, (this will be very easy if you followed a logical structure for your tracks (^c above^) so all hhiat tracks are on the same pad for each pad bank/song, ..easy simple and good looking you are


also (obviously) the Qlinks and Q link sequences are a wicked live tools, as you can bend and twist sounds on the fly, if the pattern is set to refresh q link's (global) upon a new pattern, its can be cool to trigger the q seq on/off to get random results, even mess the sound up into oblivion and return back to earth via "next pattern" and its normal Q setting


Next Sequence Banks: set up Seq banks similar to mute in logical rows, like say you know pads 1234 are going to represent say 1intro 2main 3break 4grove while 5678 are going to be 5outro 6main2 3break2 4grove2 All for track A
track B will be on the row 9 10 11 12 & 13 14 15 16 built up the same as track A 9intro 10main 11break 12grove then 13 14 15 16... ect

Bank A represents the songs you start with, bank F will contain the songs you plan to end your sets with, so you sorta work your way though the pad banks in a b c d ...f fashion and as a bonus you have a visual representation of where you are in the set via the pad banks, this also allows you to call up grove B from Song5 into Song 3 ..that is if the crowd is not feeling song3 and switch will be smooth and even better than you though because you un-muted that baseline roil in the end track didn't ya ...

nice thread ... some more things comin up here ...

besides the ones already mentioned the loop feature is a great friend ...

imo its useful to prearrange songs for live sets to a cerain extend - for example: if your original song has 10-20 sequences - you could convert them to one song which then would be one longer sequence only in your live all seq and songs file ... at the end of it you could ad your last favorite loop of 2,4,16 bars which than can loop on foreva ... in this final loop you could mess with trackmutes, prepare stuff to be faded out from song 1 or intro stuff for song 2 to crossfade over to song/sequence 2 ...


live we wanna rokk - dont we? .... so anythin external is your friend ...

as your said a 2nd sequencer would be dope! ... but its not really needed since you can always jam on your sisters flute from childhodd ... over your mic of course - and then once in your mixer freak it into some time synced delay or such ... do a megasolo! ... whilst that the 4k has all the time to load up new stuff (... if you gotta load up new files prepare it on your hd at least so that you just have to hit load mode and do it ... things gotta loadup as quickly as possible here coz ya dont want peeps to find out that ya never learned to play the flute ... ) ... anyways - if ya dont like flutes jam on your new monstersynth or such ... but things then should be a bit organized ... before loading up the new files - at the end of your last song you could send a midi dump containing the sounds of your next song .... prepare some nice pads and whilst the 4k is loadin up hit some keys ... to do an intro to your next song for example ... sounds are already there ...


anyways ... keep rockin... so - a more experimental one: delays are your firend ...

thats a bit of a rude one again ... so know what you more or less do here in advance ... for example: freak some parts of the end of your song in a filter (optional) followed by an endless delay (must) press stop on your 4k and play over your delay with some other filters or your mixer or anythin else ... audio from your delay will be goin on foreva and whilst that you could loadup new multis, programs and sequences - 400-500 mega of new samples is a bit much here ...


as for the 96 sequence limit: imo 96 nicely organized seqs can be quite alot - but still - ya can use all sequences in the 4k by flippin the ones over 96 via main page ... as for the 96 track limit - they aint so usable as the others for jammin ... still: they are nice to use for switchin multis or to keep your midi dumps for your external gear, ... eventually even rearrange your live all seq and songs file to play stuff which you dont wanna mute at all ... or even better - let it play stuff which you can easily mute at your mixer ...


anyways - imo aranging a real 2-3 hour gig on a sequencer (without stopin and such) is still one of the taoughest produciton issues outthere ... at the end there are no rúles and everyone has his own weird method of doin things ... but one thing i m convinced is that if the 4k aint up to no other sequencer alone s gonna do it any better ... yo - hope somethin helps a bit too ...

fantastic thread guys... I'm dribbling just thinking of what i'm gonna be doin this weekend when I go to my crib...

i got a question: renegade talked about a sustainpedal! ... pedals are great - esp. live ... i use a footswitch - which is midi cc4 - wahwah which is audio, and some guiatr fxs with some other functions ... but since i aint really a keayboarder i never really understood how a susatinpedal worx .... how does it work? does it default to our sustain in our adsr? ... via midi maybe? (... and then maybe assigned program by program via mod matrix?) ... or does it work via footswitch in global - f4 - footswitch? ... and then - can i control all the stuff which is listed there? ... how does it work? does it default to tracks or to somethin else preassigned? .... if anyone could explain this it were greatly appreciated ... also - if someone could tell me a niceone to use with the 4k were great? ... they all seem more or less the same to me - arent they? ... also - volume pedals and 4k - what about them? ... can they be used to do similar things? ... i m lost here ... ... help please ...