When you chop a sample...

or even when you cut up a break... do you cut it into even musical notes, or do you cut it into clean individual sounds by zooming in on zero crossings?
When I cut into 1/8 notes or 1/4 notes I get sounds cutting off before the beginning or the end...
When I cut into clean individual sounds/hits, I get samples that are not exactly the same length.
Either way it gets messy when you put the chops back together.
Rookie question I know but someone has to feel me on this, how do you work around it?

Try one musical note per slice if you want intruments. And try maybe one bar riffs or melodies and zone and cut in half for a half note. Count out the number of beats in the break and set the zone for each. If you can try Recycle Program it is very handy for chopping up breaks and transfer it back to your MPC. Also very important find the start and zone to the end of note just before the beginning of the next. Check out Loops and Grooves Machines Book on amazon also.

Peace out

Blue Haze

Actually, there have been some times when I just let the MPC chop up zones without zeroing in on start points and have come up with some weird phrases. It's led to some creative stuff I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Can't do that with Recycle. But if you're zoning drum beats, etc., then, yes, I would recommend doing it manually in the zone window.

Also check out the tutorial pages on MPC-Tutor.com on chopping. I have to admit that Recycle has some nice evelopes, filters, and pitch changes, and you can set the cuts how you like with the pencil tool. Plus send it back with the sequence set up for your on the MPC.

Blue Haze

Yeah I used to use recycle and now I switched to strictly hardware for personal reasons it's just more fun to me. So that's what I'm adjusting to, doing what I'm used to doing in a wave editor with just the zone function on the MPC.
With software I would cut it up at zero crossings, then I could use pitch and timestretch to make all the slices the same length (1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, whatever), or I could leave them different in length to retain the funkiness of the original sample, but when I would sequence them in Acid, you can just stick the next slice after the one before it. But when I sequence on the MPC I use step edit more than I record myself banging on pads (I bang on them to get the idea of how I want to arrange the samples, but then I plug that arrangement in manually in STEP) so the outcome is that I have to put each slice on whatever interval I have the Time Correction set to... So it gets kind of quantized, you feel me? I can't get the sound on one pad to start right where the sound on the last pad ends, the way you could just insert them in Acid.

i usually dont chop breaks for hip hop tracks... i chop shit when i do jungle and i usually do that by kick, snare, shake.... but the thing is you gotta match your bpm with the bpm of the break you chopped... then i take like a full 4 of the break and get the division number of like 4 or 16 zones so i know how big each zone is.... but then i just chop a kick and snare, and a kick and snare with the hats attached on the end, but for the shake i measure the chop for a 4 or 16 so it fits right... are you puting all your chops on mono in the program screen(i dont remember what the screen is called-after you program the pad with the sample, then you can mess with the attack,decay,filters,etc.)... if you do that and then write out your new break... they chop each other off so you can tell if you need to change bpm up or down... get me? if it sounds gappy and you hear the sample ends speed up your bpm so the samples are closer... ya know?

I take a loop for 2 bars
Cut it up into 8 zones
I usally let the mpc cut em up or fine tune em a little bit
then play them back on the pads

Yo you ever chop them and play like this

13 14 15 16
09 10 11 12
05 06 07 08
01 02 03 04

Say these are the pads

when you cut a break, to play the break back just like it was you would play, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

To f*** it up but make it tight I play like
1,2,7,8 then 1,2,3,4
or
5,2,7,8

or
1,6,7,4

You just play the cuts in order, but always go from left to right.
Think of it like colums and rows

1---2--3--4
-- -- -- --
13 14 15 16
09 10 11 12
05 06 07 08
01 02 03 04

for a 2 bar (8 zones) drum loop
play a pad from the column but always go right to left.
ex.

1,6,3,4
or
5,6,3,4,
get it?
play a pad in the 1st row
play a pad in the 2 row
3 row , then 4th.

Just go left to right 1 2 3 4 <---- rows on top of pads

when i chop a break, i dont set it to the same tempo of the break at all. i just use the individual drum hits at the desired tempo that i want to set.

as far as melodies. ill just sample something, and count how many sounds are located within the loop. slice the sound and experiment, leave some sounds on poly, change some to mono, some to note off. see what happens.

i dont have a formula.sometimes i follow the bpms, most the time, i dont.

its really hard chopping your samples per note specially if it is busy. Try cutting half bars, 1 bars then cut note per note only if it is solo or somethin

and when you chop you gotta mess with the END MARGIN. It starts at :30. What that does, i think, is add more to the cuts so the decay will fade out right. I dont understand it fully, but when you lower it to zero, i think the samples come out right.

bingerO, others and end margins issue!

i ve messed around with this and margins recently and imo the use of this depends whether you want to leave your loop at the same bpm, slow it down or speed it up!

i usually when usin the whole loop or the single samples made out of this splittin thing at the same tempo apply an end margin of around 30 (20-40)!

when i speed it up i usually leave it at 0,

.. and when i slow it down set it higher (depending how much i slow it down obviously!)

even though applyin a quite long end margin sometimes makes the splitted single samples quite unusable imo! therefore recently i've chosen to leave it at 0! so if i want a loop at the same bpm level stretch it down to a slower tempo before, slice it in pieces and speed it up again! the simgle samples made out of it in this way are imo more precise!

... and: i'm no expert! its just my opinion! any feedback on this is as always welcome!

cheers bro's

alto

Use your ears.

I dont even know what zoning is.