Help me understand MPC workflow

So I am new to the MPC world but am very strongly considering getting an MPC 1000 to program some weird sound effects/beats on. I'm a little unclear of the workflow of MPCs though and some of you MPC pro's might be able to better help me understand what I should be expecting. I'm not a big fan of computers because they slow me down when inspiration hits so I like the idea of a hardware device like an MPC...

Let me first say this - I'm not looking to make hip-hop. I grew up on hip hop, but I don't listen to it as much these days or attempt to compose beats anymore. In fact, after forays into blues, country, folk, and jazz, I now focus my efforts in a playing indie rock...been in a few bands mostly playing guitar, keyboards, and bass(play lots on instruments - master at none) - even got on a respected indie record label with my last band. I have a few very good instruments around the house and am primarily a "live" instrument player - sequencing is realtively new to me....but I find myself listening more and more to bands who have sequenced drums - TV on the Radio, Cibelle, StereoLab(Dots & Loops), Broadcast, Hot Chip, The Books, Cut Copy, Madlib(I love everything in the Stones Throw catalog actually), etc...

Anyway, I am looking to do some home demo type stuff and would greatly like to introduce elements of electronica into my music - have an elektron monomachine for nearly a year now that I LOVE but the drum sounds are kind of limiting...was thinking of finding something to add decent non standard drum sounds to my demos(like how Cibelle built a drum track from coffe cup, saucer, and ice in a glass sounds on Mad Man Song) and I thought as an added bonus a sampler could come in handy in my newer rock band by triggering samples of ambient sounds I had recorded live in another environment(maybe some feedbacky delay part I can bring in with my left hand easily while I bang away at the keys with my right).

So here is my question - Can the MPC trigger longer samples(say 10-20 seconds) internally or is it primarily for short drum parts(3 seconds and less)? Would I be better off getting a dedicated sampler and have the pads trigger a sound there instead(is there a lag/delay if you do that?)? Secondly, I assume the MPC can compose in a "loop" setting where you can just overdub with the pads in a live setting - ie. lay the snare & kick, then add accents with other parts of the kit as you hear it being looped back...but I want to know if the "loop" can be set to larger pieces of time - like let's say 4 minutes for a song that is that long and needs a constantly evolving "drum line". The reason I ask that is not because I want to add 4 minutes of drum beats, but rather if I have a 3 second sound effect I don't want to trigger in a looped repeating fashion, I want to be able to sequence it to play maybe only once in the frist verse, and three times in the final verse or in some other non-standard fashion.

Can mutiple samples be triggered at the same time - ex. can a crash and kick be triggered at the same time? The monomachine won't let me do it within a "track" since it's a "mono" synth. Irritates me sometimes that I have to waste two of it's 6 tracks on a drum part that only occasionally has to trigger to samples on the same beat. That's tough when you have lots of melodic ideas.

...also, can you set up I guess you would call it a poly rhythms in sequencing mode? I guess what I'm going for, is maybe one 6 bar loop, and another 8 bar loop played at the same time so they don't really match up conventionally.

Thanks for all the help you guys can provide. I'll more than likely use the MPC for standard 4/4 drum use most of the time (can you program it to do odd time signature like 5/4?) but I figure I ask these questions because I like to really mix things up where I can and sometimes use things in non-standard ways....run outs through effects pedals, reamp into crappy "mini amps" and record, etc. I love screwing with sounds and I hope the MPC will allow me to take those impossible to recreate live sound effects and bring it into the live environment as a playback device.

One final question - as a newbie to MPCs - does the 1000 sound like a good choice for me? I like the digital compatibility since I have lots of digital files I would prefer to edit - I don't have much vinyl. Something about Zip disks and SCSI of the other MPCs don't appeal to me too much for the long term. The 2500 looks great, but I wonder if I should be investing in something that expensive when I don't know squat about MPCs yet and should get my feet wet on a cheaper model. Plus I'm somewhat of a DIY guy so the thought of replacing the drum pad contacts on the 1000 don't mortify me(been reading this forum a lot recently) since I sometimes fix my own amps, effects, keyboards, guitars, etc.

Anyway, thanks for all your help and Happy New Year!

ps - sorry for the long post...I get carried away.

I'm thinking that, as a live instrumentalist, you will be better off with the MPC2500 as it supports live recording while a sequence is playing.

That way, you can sequence your MIDI synths and your acoustic/electric instruments concurrently.

you can trigger longer samples. the only thing that limits you on the sample's length is the RAM. 2500 and 1000 are both designed to be used in the studio as well as live, so either one of those two would be a good choice for you.

wow...

Well, a lot of your questions (and probably a lot more) might be answered if you read the manual of for example the 1000 or the 2500, which you can get on the Akai homepage. These two are probably the most recommendable for you anyway, and they are very similar softwarewise.

benmeza wrote:So here is my question - Can the MPC trigger longer samples(say 10-20 seconds) internally or is it primarily for short drum parts(3 seconds and less)?

You can trigger samples as long as you want, as long as they fit inside the RAM of the MPC.

benmeza wrote:Would I be better off getting a dedicated sampler and have the pads trigger a sound there instead(is there a lag/delay if you do that?)?

I think an MPC would be better for your needs, cause they have a much easier workflow than a rack sampler with something to trigger it. There shouldn't be any delay though when triggering one via MIDI, provided the cables are not too long.

benmeza wrote:Secondly, I assume the MPC can compose in a "loop" setting where you can just overdub with the pads in a live setting - ie. lay the snare & kick, then add accents with other parts of the kit as you hear it being looped back...but I want to know if the "loop" can be set to larger pieces of time - like let's say 4 minutes for a song that is that long and needs a constantly evolving "drum line".

If you want to work that way, you can set a sequence to any length you want. It is basically only limited by the number of events the sequencer can handle. You can estimate yourself how far you get with 100.000 notes, it should be sufficient.

benmeza wrote:...also, can you set up I guess you would call it a poly rhythms in sequencing mode? I guess what I'm going for, is maybe one 6 bar loop, and another 8 bar loop played at the same time so they don't really match up conventionally.

I don't think you can do that, as you cannot play two sequences simultaneously. Maybe there's some trick to achieve what you want though.

Most of the rest should get clear if you study the manual. As i said already, I would also recommend the newer MPCs. If you're not afraid of fixing things like you said, and you dont miss features like a tiltable screen, CD drive or larger top panel with better access to functions, you might also choose the 1000. I personally would not spend my money on hardware from which I know beforehand that it would break in too little time. But go and try them out both at a store in reality.

Peace.

you can trigger longer samples. the only thing that limits you on the sample's length is the RAM. 2500 and 1000 are both designed to be used in the studio as well as live, so either one of those two would be a good choice for you.

TheDeen wrote:I'm thinking that, as a live instrumentalist, you will be better off with the MPC2500 as it supports live recording while a sequence is playing.

That way, you can sequence your MIDI synths and your acoustic/electric instruments concurrently.

Now that's interesting - haven't even thought about it but you bring up a good point. Does the new JJ OS allow the 1k to do that? Sounds like that JJ OS is the way to go to really maximize the use of the 1k. The 2500's pads would be much nicer....

Thanks for everyone's replies. I think I'll go through the manual and read up a bit too. It's just always harder to pick through that type of stuff when you don't have the hands on tool in front of you to help you pick through it. I bought an insanely expensive amp late last year I'm selling for a cheaper vintage amp I got an eye on and I was thinking of spending the difference on an MPC. Still about a month away but I want to make sure I got the right expectations going into this.

Keep the good advice coming.

benmeza wrote:

TheDeen wrote:I'm thinking that, as a live instrumentalist, you will be better off with the MPC2500 as it supports live recording while a sequence is playing.

That way, you can sequence your MIDI synths and your acoustic/electric instruments concurrently.

Now that's interesting - haven't even thought about it but you bring up a good point. Does the new JJ OS allow the 1k to do that? Sounds like that JJ OS is the way to go to really maximize the use of the 1k. The 2500's pads would be much nicer....

If you two are talking about the Direct Recording feature, that won't help you much live, since you have to interrupt the playback to actually insert the recorded sample into your sequence.

On the other hand, recording drum notes/pads while the sequence is playing is possible with every MPC, even without the third party OS.

Or am I missing something here?

_Stilo_ wrote:If you two are talking about the Direct Recording feature, that won't help you much live, since you have to interrupt the playback to actually insert the recorded sample into your sequence.

Ah okay... I was reading that like I could dynamically sample and playback during the same song - my misunderstanding. I'm thinking of one song my band plays in particular that starts with a little live tweaking of an oscillating delay pedal line being run through a POG harmonizer to pull out different octaved overtones but if fades out when the vocals come in. If I could record that dynamically into an MPC and assign it a pad, that I could trigger later on in the song that would be cool as the rest of the MPC is going through a drum sequence....but then again I could just sample that sound beforehand and trigger the sample at the beggining of the song anyway so it isn't of too big of an advantage other than it looks a lot cooler tweaking a whole bunch of effects on stage than hitting a simple pad once

_Stilo_ wrote:You can trigger samples as long as you want, as long as they fit inside the RAM of the MPC.

So if I maxed out the RAM on a 1k, how long can those samples be? Is it an issue of number of samples played at once, or length of each sample(or both)? I guess the RAM holds the memory of everything in the pads so it can be recalled instantly so is it one of those things where you may be able to have one long sample assigned to a pad but evrything else should be a smaller sample?

Is similar to RAM in a computer where too many songs played at once make it stutter/delay playback? That might be a cool little trick too - the broken computer effect. I like glitchy stuff too...

benmeza wrote:

_Stilo_ wrote:You can trigger samples as long as you want, as long as they fit inside the RAM of the MPC.

So if I maxed out the RAM on a 1k, how long can those samples be?

It's in the specs in the manual. Just as long as a corresponding WAV file on a PC would be I guess, about 12 Mins. in Stereo, 24 in Mono. Note that the memory is full then, meaning no additional samples.

benmeza wrote: I'm thinking of one song my band plays in particular that starts with a little live tweaking of an oscillating delay pedal line being run through a POG harmonizer to pull out different octaved overtones but if fades out when the vocals come in. If I could record that dynamically into an MPC and assign it a pad, that I could trigger later on in the song that would be cool as the rest of the MPC is going through a drum sequence...

Oh, you could do that of course, if you just need it later on. Maybe trim the sample quickly a little, if you know your machine that should be possible in a live situation as well. If, say, you want to record it, and need it replayed immediately in the next loop, that's not so easy.

The JJ oS for the MPC1000 has a feature that lets you record a live sample and then loop it on the last 4 tracks. So you can actually record 4 weird oscillating tweaks you create live on stage and then switch between them later in the song....

After upgrading the RAM, you have 128MB to play with. But you can store more samples than that on CF card or add the hard drive to the MPC1000. There are certain limits to the number of samples which can be triggered at once but you would have to be creating some super busy sh*t to reach them. I've never encountered a situation where the sample overlap programming was that dense.

The pads on the 1000 are kinda crappy, but usable as a long as you quit acting like you're DJ Hulk. Despite that the machine is incredibly easy to use, and way more interesting to work with than a computer, especially live.

electric dragon wrote:Despite that the machine is incredibly easy to use, and way more interesting to work with than a computer, especially live.

Ya, I get frustrated with working on computers - just messes with the workflow because there are normally so many options that it takes a lot of right brain thinking to capture what your left brain is doing...plus being limited can help creative thinking too...

wildchildd wrote:

...plus being limited can help creative thinking too...

LOVE the Velvet Underground icon! I worship them in a very serious way....