a program trick for your projects/tracking

recently i've been struggling with an issue that my songs have. as an instrumentalist, i tend to make music that many people on these boards claim that they can't really picture an emcee over. my stuff is very dense and full, and an emcee really has to know his stuff in order to penetrate it. my style is one where the emcee doesn't take the forefront, he's simply part of the orchestra.

anyway, i've been trying to make simpler stuff recently, because i think if i started offering simpler beats to underground emcees (immortal technique, etc) i might have a shot at getting somewhere. and yesterday i had a breakthrough. i was thinking - what is one of the biggest differences between older mpcs and the 1000/2500?

i picked a random one - program number.

right now i'm working on keeping all my programs down to 2 - one melody, one drums. yes, this means i spend a lot more time twisting a dial and and knob to make a program expansive enough, but i found out something.

having a fewer number of programs really makes tracking out your projects a LOT easier. it doesn't necessarily make em simpler or anything. instead, it makes you more carefully choose your sounds rather than just loading dozens of wavs up and picking out certain onces.

I noticed that myself a while ago. Now I just scroll through drum sounds instad of loading 64 kit drums and I just place the drums in the banks behind the sample and I load up 1 bass patch. I really prefer this way of working instead of loading up entire kits that won't fit what you are working on.

definitely.

i sometimes still finding myself loading tons of kits up, but after i scroll through and listen to the ones i like, i use the pad copy function to move them to my rhythm program. then i can delete the rest of the kit in my next purge. this keeps your projects nice and small, too. as if that really mattered (40 gigs...)

I'm a one program man. It keeps it simple. As far as drum sounds go, I'll go through the collection on the HD, and listen to what fits the track. Stack them, filter them, till I get the drums to bang, drums and and a bass patch typically take up bank A. Then I'll go through, chop the sample, and I just pick out the peices which I am going to use. I dont typically leave anything assigned to a pad that is not actually used in the song. Also, this way, when you save your beat, you can "purge", which will decrease the size of the file that your saving.

This way I have 3 banks for the samples/various filler's, and I almost think if you need more than that, it's not gonna be some stuff that a typical emcee is gonna feel compelled to rhyme over. It also keeps the workflow simple, cause I am not scrolling through different programs and their respective parameters. I am really learning that this is a big deal. Workflow is important.

yes workflow is the most important to me, thats why I quit Reason and CPUs and went back to a MPC and a cheap keyboard. I had way more power in my laptop, but never got nothing done.

typical emcees suck balls

I agree with the 1 program approach. I do mine similar to bhunt. Bank A is for drums, Bank B is for bass, Bank C is for my sample chops, and Bank D is either for more sample chops or sound effects, or whatever else I need. I strongly believe in the less is more approach, even more so if you intend the beat for an MC to rock over. I've always tried to keep it to 1 program, so when they added the PLAY feature in the load screen (in OS 2.1) it was a godsend for me.

bhunt wrote:yes workflow is the most important to me, thats why I quit Reason and CPUs and went back to a MPC and a cheap keyboard. I had way more power in my laptop, but never got nothing done.

I think that is well said on software and PC's (Reason and CPUs) we just need to keep it all simple. But it's hard when you have excess to alot of gear (software ie) I think I will just stick with MPC and a keyboard to, and then track to a recording software, workflow is so much easier and faster. I agree 1000% ma man.

I even got rid of recording software, didn't need all the options like surround sound, to many VST, to much of this and to much of that. I got a 16 track recorder now. I do wish I had more effects, but I have alwyays found a work around, and I like that now I really do have to plan out a track or at least commit to something early on so I have a starting point

It's funny you all mention that now. When Nym posted the info on pad param copy function I had this in mind. I would make all these different program / kits only to use a few pads from each kit. Once I finally figured out how the pad copy function worked (Not In The Manual) I made one giant program with all the sounds I like to use. I have several different kicks, snares, Hats, cymbals, percussion sounds and all kind of stuff I like. I may not use all the sounds, but they're there in on program if I need. Since then I made an autoload file with an autoload template. I'm much happier now. Turn on the lil blue box, turn on the synths and BAMM :D I'm roll'n.

In hindsight , it was a PITA loading all that stuff. Workflow is sooo much smother now, especially with the sequence template.

I'm in the process of making another single multi-sound program for different grooves / moods etc.

Putter wrote:It's funny you all mention that now. When Nym posted the info on pad param copy function I had this in mind. I would make all these different program / kits only to use a few pads from each kit. Once I finally figured out how the pad copy function worked (Not In The Manual) I made one giant program with all the sounds I like to use. I have several different kicks, snares, Hats, cymbals, percussion sounds and all kind of stuff I like.

could someone direct me to this thread... i must have been absent on that day... thanks

antonym your gonna collab with immortal tech?

there's a chance. just waiting for his forums to come back up. we had words back in the day and he said to send him something, but i am waiting til i have sometrhing that fits him.

that could def lead to some interesting brew

on a similar idea.........i havent upgraded my ram on my mpc2500

if you cant make a beat with 16mb, you are doing something wrong................obviously theres exception to the rule, like if you are orchestrating a sound track or something.

but you should only need half that really, everything else is just luxurary


I also keep 2 pgms 1 bass, 1 samples/drums (you only need 3 drums!)

my bass pgms are made from 1 bass sample too chromatically spread. I have several differant bass pgm, i can just scroll through each bass sample to find the one i like then just load up the corresponding pgm!