Noobie w/Noob Questions and Noob Aspirations

Hey what's good people?

I'm new to these boards, and new to this MPC equipment and functions....

I been messing around doing beats on my computer for about 3 years, so it's about damn time I start going hardware. Anyhow, Im buying an MPC 1000 next week and I needed a few pointers pertaining to the following questions...

1) This may sound really retarded, but I'm not too familiar with all these technological terms, so I'll try to put this as clear as possible....

If I played a sample/note on my keyboard (some cheap 400-500 dollar equipment), I can transfer it to the MPC and play it on one of the keypads. Am I correct? And if that is correct, how do I assume that it's going to play the entire length of the sample - do I have to hold down on the pad until it finishes? Or should I just input the samples I play on my keyboard into the computer and basically use the MPC 1000 as a drum and bassline kit?

Any input at all would be greatly appreciated. By the way, I'm loving these boards....

you can either

1, record the sample through the record inputs of your mpc

2. import a wav of the sample from your pc via usb to the mpc

or

3, midi up your mpc/pc and trigger the sample to play on your pc from your mpc

on the mpc 1000 your can set each sample to play 'note on' (to play as long as you hold the pad down) or 'one shot' (hit the pad to play the whole sample)

that's a good question, thanx for putting it clearly::

the thing about your keyboard, is that you can hold down a key, and the note plays forever, right??

so to just make a sample of that, if you want the same ability, the sample would have to be infinite length. So that's not possible.

The way around that is to loop a small part of the sample (the sustain part). Some samplers have tools for doing that, while the 1k.. um, im not sure if it can do it at all . (anybody?)

Now of course that's the picky way... The 'close-enough' method is to just sample notes from your keyboard for a decently long time. Then you can play them on the mpc up to that limit. And you can choose so-called 'note on' mode, then the sample will cut off when you release the pad. (Or if you don't want to hold down the pad, choose '1 shot' mode... the whole sample will play, up to the length u recorded, even if you let go of the pad half way thru.) So you can come close to replicating the keyboard sound, just not exact.

The whole procedure we are talking about here is called melodic multisampling... and the mpc series are not so much designed for that, except the 4000. mpc's are more for 'drum sampling' and 'phrase sampling'. But its no big deal actually... I do play melodic samples on mine, the way i explained, and its fine for most things.

Enjoy your 1k, i love using mine.

WoW! Thanks a bunch guys! I really understand it now....

I'm so amped to get my mpc 1000. Gotta wait till I get my paycheck by Friday.

Anyway, you guys throughly explained everything to me. I'm going to test it out right when I get my mpc.

Another question though: You think it would be more simple for me to record my sample from my keyboard to my PC. And then just create my own drum patterns using the MP -->Then transfer the drums to my PC. And basically mixdown the two....

Eitherway, I'll test out all these methods.

Thanks for the insight