Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By oldest toddler Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:34 pm
Hello, i'm a new person.

Been trawling the internet looking for some advice and guidance on using Acid Pro 5 with my MPC2000XL.

This place looks the most promising of all...

I know a lot about Acid but not too much about the MPC. I wanted to know if there's a way of transferring songs/tracks that have been made and sequenced in Acid over onto the MPC??

So far I have just been copying sounds from pc onto zip disk and then putting them onto the MPC and having to start sequencing from scratch - this is a ball-ache as sequencing on the pc is a hell of a lot faster.

My main aim is to be able to take the tracks i've made on Acid into a live environment on stage and trigger sequences and sounds live.

I saw De La Soul perform with just an MPC, mixer, and 1 deck and thats what i wanna get to!!

ANY help would be much appreciated.

Cheers
mark

By mpc3000 Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:14 am
"sequencing on the pc is a hell of a lot faster"

That is fine and dandy if that is all you have ever known your entire limited life. Most people here, being avid MPC users, would argue otherwise. It's an age old 1st year psychology student study. If you grew up somewhere that never heard of automobiles, would you miss them? The idea is that society does not structure itself around what it does not know. If you grew up somewhere that never heard, or knew of, hiphop, would it be missed? If you are too dense to figure out, the answer is no. If you still doubt the observation, then just think about the fashion, technology, music of the future, If we we able to travel to the moon as easily as we travel across town, how could we miss it now?

As far as your question about transferring to the MPC, I had spent the better part of a year working on an application that would convert Acid projects to MPC formats. I started this under Acid 1.0. It is already difficult enough to reverse engineer and undocumented format for which the company refuses to provide any sort of documentation for, but in the same period of time they release Acid2, Acid3. It did not take too long for me to realize that they were changing the file format faster than I could reverse engineer them. After that, I said s.c.r.e.w Sonic Foundry and their uncooperative commercialism and ditched the project.

By oldest toddler Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:35 am
(please note: there is quite a lot of sarcasm included in this post)

Hi thanks for replying.

I cant remember which part of my message slagged off your mum or warranted such a reply that you gave, hell, this IS a 'tutor' forum.
If for some reason my daughter grows up with learning difficulties and I hire a 'tutor' to help her with her studies and he/she reacts the way you did to a honest and open question I'd knock the mother f***er out, and then fire him.

anyway, I'd like to challenge you somehow... I'd put my mortgage and everything i own, that i could make a song, with 4, 8 or 16 tracks of samples, with some breaks and cuts in there on Acid Pro quicker than you could produce the same thing on an MPC. period (and i aint american when i say period)

I really want to learn more about the MPC, thanks for helping me.

Regards

mark :)
User avatar

By MPC-Tutor Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:06 am
Hi, welcome to my forums. Please don't get offended by the previous poster - most of us would never assume that you've had a 'limited life' without ever meeting you and having a face-to-face conversation with you....

I'm afraid you can't transfer sequences from Acid to the MPC, so you'd need to recreate everything manually. I must admit, it can be pretty quick to come up with a rough demo in Acid just by dragging and dropping a few loops - we've used this program to make some of the demo mp3s on mpc-samples.com.

I've found Acid a good 'notebook' - load up several loops, mix and match until I get something that sounds fairly good and then transfer to the MPC where I feel a lot more comfortable and creative and start getting down to some 'real' work. But I do perceive Acid as a bit of a toy - no doubt avid Acid users would disagree!

By oldest toddler Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:25 am
Hi mpc-tutor, thanks for clearing that up for me. I've used Acid for a while now and i'm trying to get away from the precise sound of pc software and more towards a raw, human touch that i reckon the MPC can provide.


As for the previous post, i'm not offended, just jealous of the time that guys got on his hands!! I've got a kid, and any free time i get is spent working on my music or learning a new skill, not disescting innocent peoples posts.

Once again, thanks. I'll definately be back with more questions ;)

cheers
mark

By dennison Mon Aug 08, 2005 10:41 am
avid acid user disagrees. :(
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By metafor Mon Aug 08, 2005 2:42 pm
Same here Dennison. To each their own. I love Acid Pro 5 :lol:

By scalez Mon Aug 08, 2005 10:47 pm
I also started my production career using Acid and then moved to the MPC (though I use the ASR-10 mostly now). There's no quick way to do this, but the easiest is probably to bounce each Acid track down using Mix To New Track and then load those up as samples in the MPC and trigger each on a different sequence track on the 1. Then just make sure your tempo matches the original tempo in Acid and you're there. This way your kick track for example, will already be sequenced how it was in Acid without having to sequence from scratch on the MPC.

Yeah, this will take a minute. Good luck.

By mpc3000 Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:15 pm
"then fire him."

Fire me. My advice is exactly worth what you paid for it. You completely entitled to a refund. :)

My only point, which was not intended to be an attack, was against your notion that working on a pc was faster. My advice, if you want to do work like you described, is to ditch Acid.


Apologies for the confusion.

By jimisteele Tue Aug 09, 2005 1:01 am
In my opinion acid does not have a sequencer first you chop the sample then drop it in and it timstreches it automatically to fit with other samples. I dont understand how you make beats with individual drum hits. in acid you have to use drum loops. if you have kicks snares and hats its not like the matrix in the mpc 001.01.00 i have to have the numbers 96 clicks per quarter note or i cant hang. and 0 through a certain number in the trim screen in acid its very vauge i mean its like '1 ! ' 2 ' 3 '4 '5 you have these points but it wont give you an exact number like the exclamation mark is it at 1.375 is it at 1.41115 where is it its not specific enough. people who use only acid in my opinion are a joke, posers that invest no time and just through loops together that automatically timestretch together its weak. i get my samples to a certain bpm then chop and take elements of the sample to fall the same place they play in the loop but now they start at multiple places through out the loop. chopping then putting the pieces back in a sequence. i guess theres a couple things u could use it for if you get plug in effects etc.

By dennison Tue Aug 09, 2005 5:44 am
jimisteele:

you don't know what you are talking about. you do not have to work with loops in acid you do not have to have your sounds timestretched. You seem to of not spent much time understanding the program. I make beats all the time using one shots just like when i worked with the mpc. You have a grid that can be divided into all kinds of different incriments. Dont sound like a doofus and speak about acid pro if you don't know what you are talking about. :wink:

I do just like you all, I sample into acid from vinyl or I play my own instruments to a metronome. Acid can do all kinds of things that are great I have never felt limited by acid in any department except midi. But thew midi functionality is an afterthought and I don't use it anyway.

now this is my opinion but in fact if I had to choose between an mpc and acid pro 3.0 I would pick acid 3.0 in a heartbeat.

By dennison Tue Aug 09, 2005 5:47 am
you can chop like a fiend in acid.

sure some poeple are wack who use acid. they buy the pre assembled sample cd's and just paint them on the sequencer but that is not how everyone works. It is certainly not how any serious acid user works. I have never once used any acid sound cd's or stock acid sounds.

By dennison Tue Aug 09, 2005 5:49 am
then sometimes I think "let everyone think acid is wack and it is just a toy." I hope you never even try Acid just go on thinking that it is for posers. Meanwhile I will be making some great music. :lol:

By dennison Tue Aug 09, 2005 5:57 am
oh and finally you are saying acid pro users are posers? weren't you on here a bit ago asking what software was needed to record sound into your 1/8" input on your computer. :roll:

By oldest toddler Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:27 am
i seem to have started something here...

i think its all a case of what you know best, and none of us can say which is better, because i suppose its down to the individual and the ideas they have, both Acid and MPC are just tools and its how we work them thats most important!!

ps jimisteele: man, you can do some amazing things in acid, i sample in something simple like goldwave first and trim my loop, so its easy to work with, then i place it in acid and zoom right in and start erasing areas, then rearrang the areas that are left, also i use the ctrl c and v function with hits or snippets of loops together with the + and - pitch keys to recreate new instrument-type sounds...
never would a serious acid user just put 2 samples together and leave it like that!!

anyway thanks for everyones input..i learnt some stuff :)