BlueBox .pgm maker

New owner of a MPC500. Reading the manual,and messing around with it on and off all day. I am now trying to figure out how to load a .pgm file into the 500.I am using the BlueBox program. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Copy the files onto a CF card and then load in the usual fashion.

Okay,when I attempt to load the .pgm into the 500 there is no sample found.The samples work when I assign them in BlueBox. The first time I tried it worked,yet now when I assign the samples to the pads it does so yet on the "Assign to Pad/Range" screen the pops up it will not let me click on "use sample note -0 (C2)" it will only let me use the "use pad note -37 (C#1)". So when I load it into the 500 it isn't finding the samples. Thanks in advance anyone. I'll keep messing with it,see if I can figure it out. Already searched and no luck,the "help" files on BlueBox aren't in too detailed.

Are you copying the samples to the CF card? The program and samples need to be on the same level in the directory so make sure they are when you create the program and when you put everything on the card.

Yes I am dragging the samples to the CF Card.What do u mean by same level in the directory,maybe thats whats wrong.I'll keep messing with it. Thanks for the replies.

The samples and program have to be in the same folder or directory. When you try to load the program on the MPC500, what happens?

When I load the program in the 500,I can see the file folder,yet it loads quickly,unlike when I load the files that come with the 500 where you can see the whole name of each indivdual file that is loaded.Not sure whats up. Only the first time I made a .pgm in BlueBox did it work,but I only assigned a kick on 1 and a sample which I chopped in SoundForge and that was it. All the pgms after that one It is not playing on the pads. Still having the same problem on from my second post in this thread. I remember that the default was the "use sample note" in BlueBox.Now it will only let me click on "use pad note". Not sure if thats the problem yet the first pgm I recall it saying "use sample note".I am dragging the pgm into the CF card and the folder does show the pgm and the samples I am trying to load yet the pgm is a small file (11mb).Is it supposed to be bigger than that with the samples ?

Are the wav samples the right format? do they have the extension .wav? Can you build the same program with the samples that are on the card w/ the MPC500? ie. the samples that get loaded onto the CF card w/ the bluebox created program, are you able to load them individually on the MPC500 w/ load > sample?

The .pgm file should only be about 12k. If your program file is 11mb there is something wrong. Have you tried starting a new program so you can try it with the "use sample note" option since that seemed to work first?

I can't answer any questions about bluebox program creation specifically since i use pad 187.

Thanks for the help spiral. I removed the BlueBox program and downloaded it again. Everything now works.

hi folks-
just a quick question. i really like the idea of a desktop program editor and i want to download this one. the website says it's for the 1000. are there any compatibility issues with the 500?

i'm a new mpc user. thx.

None at all, as long as you remember that pads 13-16 on Bank A in BlueBox correspond to pads 1-4 on Bank B of the MPC500 and so on. Other than that, as far as assigning samples to pads and generating .pgm files, it works just fine

Hey LuFreddy,
I know you said you had solved the issue but just in case, i thought of something else:

Make sure your wav files have very short names (ideally 8 or less characters not counting the .wav) before you assign them in any desktop program maker. I just ran into this when using Pad 187: my sample names were all very long and they got trucated when the program was output so the mpc couldn't find any of the samples since they weren't named correctly.