MIDI SLOP and the MPC

In Sound on Sound Volume 17 Issue 2 (December 2001) Jay Graydon (best known to me as the guitar soloist on Steely Dan’s “Peg” but I guess he produces too) says “I always record the sequencer stuff in one pass and I make many passes so I can choose the best. There is always ‘MIDI slop’ and data interrupts so things will actually feel different from pass to pass. Locking up sequenced stuff to time code and overdubbing to it will never feel good because the sequencer/synth/sampler data interrupts will never line up the same each time. We are dealing with machines and they are not listening to the other stuff recorded but simply clocking in ‘slop-land.’”
Though I myself would never have put it this succinctly, I do kind of know what he’s talking about: there does seem to be an almost ineffable difference between recordings I’ve made of the MPC “all at once” and “track by track.” Of course sometimes this can be a good thing. My question is, how do you all record your finished projects? Track by track or all at once?

All at once 90 percent of the time for me. Mabe some day I will get a digital mixer and a adat card for my computer and stream 8 tracks at a time but for now I usually will seqeunce and save my work until the song is complete then I mix it the way i like it then i record the stereo output of what I mixed into a computer.

Slop is a good thing...and is something I want in my work. To many things lining up just perfect starts sounding....too perfect. Whether it's a sequence or live take....I always go for a feel.

I dump sequenced tracks one by one to my Roland 1680...using the track mute feature on the MPC. And this may produce a sort of time shifting occasionally.

I work through the whole arrangement on the MPC, and then start dumping when I'm close to something sounding finished...which of course sometimes never happens on a track.

The real question may be quantising...now that starts sounding too locked for me...I rarely use it, 'cept on a kick to hold eveything together.

Listen to the music of Manitoba...he's really sloppy, and it's gorgeous.

Bop

Slop is a good thing...and is something I want in my work. To many things lining up just perfect starts sounding....too perfect. Whether it's a sequence or live take....I always go for a feel.

I dump sequenced tracks one by one to my Roland 1680...using the track mute feature on the MPC. And this may produce a sort of time shifting occasionally.

I work through the whole arrangement on the MPC, and then start dumping when I'm close to something sounding finished...which of course sometimes never happens on a track.

The real question may be quantising...now that starts sounding too locked for me...I rarely use it, 'cept on a kick to hold eveything together.

Listen to the music of Manitoba...he's really sloppy, and it's gorgeous.

Bop

yeah, slop can be good clean fun. Here's something to try: record your entire sequence except for the bass line (or bass elements if you aren't writing conventional drum/bass/melody kind of stuff). Now add at the begining of what you've recorded about half a second of silence and re-map the tempo of what you've recorded to include this silence. Now slave the MPC to your recorder and record the bass line. What you'll get is the bass line being just a little bit early with respect to all the other elements in your track which will pretty much sound the same but give the track a little more momentum. Of course, you could do this just as easily using the swing function, but I find tha this method adds just the right amount of "sloppy randomness" that keeps the track interesting. Plus it alows you to have a track that is rigidly quanitized (as most hip hop and electronic music is) yet still "loose."

On another note, it seems funny that electronic music is getting more "loose" and "organic sounding" while popular music is sounding more and more "rigid" thanks to the ubiquity of pro tools and auto tune.

Yeah Descarte...I use that trick...1/2 a second may be a wee bit too much for some things though. Cool idea

I think you're right about electronic music moving toward a more organic way and everthing else getting quantised to the gnats hair..

I hate what pro tools and Acid is doing to music, it's laughable that anybody can "make a track"...christ, I saw a Rolling Stone interview with one of their writers "making a track" and showing "how easy it was".

Problem is, the general public is way smarter about music, and I venture to guess that the "pro-tools" "acid" sound is gonna go by the wayside and all the idiots who are'nt musicians ..who think they're making music "tracks"...will go on with there lives and leave the art alone.

How's that for an opinion!

Bop

yeah... maybe in thirty years there will be a white stripes like novelty act that claims "I only use software and computers from the late 90's so I can get that justin timberlake style autotune sound." Not very likely, huh?