By PhonoquO
Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:00 am
ok...here's the deal....i've been using cubase sx for awhile now, never having really messed with the mpc, i've been frustrated out of my mind trying to get them good feeling drums that bounce. No matter what quantize i use or even if i recorded unquantized, time shifts on tracks, doesn't matter; i simply can't get that mpc bounce.
Yesterday i happened to be at a thrift shop where i get my casio keyboards and stuff, and i stumble across this old atari 520 st for 5 bucks. I think, what the hell, i'll just cop it for the hell of it, i heard it was good for music anyway. Got home, plugged it in, shit worked, came with a mouse etc. I did some research on the net about the sequencers for the thing, and read lots of good things about them, comments like "this is the tightest computer timing you're going to get". I'm thinking, naw man, this unit is 20 years and it's no drummachine! But i figure i'll give it a try for 5 bucks. Couldn't get a cracked version of the old cubase for atari (which has been long out of production), but i stumbled on this sequencer which has recently become freeware called Sweet Sixteen that was supposedly good. I already had steinberg v-stack (which is a vsti and effects rack), so i figured i'll just trigger my virtual instruments in there which include battery 2. I didn't want to rely on any modern sequencer for handling the timing, just to see.
So i hook things up, sequencer is mad easy to use and has basically all sequencing features of mpc and more (minus that nice box, pads. I started banging away on my keyboard throwing together a nice quick drum loop with a few percussion elements unquantized. Hmmm. sounded good already unquantized, had a feel i wasn't used to. Then started playing with the swing and triplet feels. DAYUM!!!! This is some of the illest swing i ever heard!!! Start moving things around a bit with the track push feature, and/or delay function and i've got an instant bangin beat! I was thinking, naw, this can't be. I'd tried all sorts of tricks like this before in cubase sx, only to get a what felt like milleseconds drift in feel either ahead or behind (and it wasn't my computer configuration at all) with no success, but with this atari box i was getting what i was hearing in my head right away. Cubase is good at many things, but bouncy drums isn't one of them! Only one problem left...how am i goin to get the audio into cubase for mixing and further writing once my initial ideas are hashed? Got tapeit2 from www.silverspike.com which can be placed on any insert or send and record everything coming out of that channel that preceeds it. So i just get a rough arrangement going of all my instruments, and bounce each one (drums multitracked with additional tapeit2 plugins on respective battery channels), and fly em into cubase for further tweaking and mix. WOW, this is nutz. You get the best of both worlds here! Anybody who says they can get an mpc feel in the new sequencers is straight lying or they don't know the sound. I got my sound now, and just thought i'd let you all know about this. BTW, u can cop atari st's on the net for under 50 bucks, sequencer is free, check v-stack and tapeit2 and your set.
L8R
Yesterday i happened to be at a thrift shop where i get my casio keyboards and stuff, and i stumble across this old atari 520 st for 5 bucks. I think, what the hell, i'll just cop it for the hell of it, i heard it was good for music anyway. Got home, plugged it in, shit worked, came with a mouse etc. I did some research on the net about the sequencers for the thing, and read lots of good things about them, comments like "this is the tightest computer timing you're going to get". I'm thinking, naw man, this unit is 20 years and it's no drummachine! But i figure i'll give it a try for 5 bucks. Couldn't get a cracked version of the old cubase for atari (which has been long out of production), but i stumbled on this sequencer which has recently become freeware called Sweet Sixteen that was supposedly good. I already had steinberg v-stack (which is a vsti and effects rack), so i figured i'll just trigger my virtual instruments in there which include battery 2. I didn't want to rely on any modern sequencer for handling the timing, just to see.
So i hook things up, sequencer is mad easy to use and has basically all sequencing features of mpc and more (minus that nice box, pads. I started banging away on my keyboard throwing together a nice quick drum loop with a few percussion elements unquantized. Hmmm. sounded good already unquantized, had a feel i wasn't used to. Then started playing with the swing and triplet feels. DAYUM!!!! This is some of the illest swing i ever heard!!! Start moving things around a bit with the track push feature, and/or delay function and i've got an instant bangin beat! I was thinking, naw, this can't be. I'd tried all sorts of tricks like this before in cubase sx, only to get a what felt like milleseconds drift in feel either ahead or behind (and it wasn't my computer configuration at all) with no success, but with this atari box i was getting what i was hearing in my head right away. Cubase is good at many things, but bouncy drums isn't one of them! Only one problem left...how am i goin to get the audio into cubase for mixing and further writing once my initial ideas are hashed? Got tapeit2 from www.silverspike.com which can be placed on any insert or send and record everything coming out of that channel that preceeds it. So i just get a rough arrangement going of all my instruments, and bounce each one (drums multitracked with additional tapeit2 plugins on respective battery channels), and fly em into cubase for further tweaking and mix. WOW, this is nutz. You get the best of both worlds here! Anybody who says they can get an mpc feel in the new sequencers is straight lying or they don't know the sound. I got my sound now, and just thought i'd let you all know about this. BTW, u can cop atari st's on the net for under 50 bucks, sequencer is free, check v-stack and tapeit2 and your set.
L8R
