Reviews and questions about the entry-level MPC500
By Lion of Judah Sat Apr 14, 2007 5:12 pm
I was only able to get the MPC to send MIDI messages to Reason, which would then play various sounds. The problem I have is that the MPC won't record the MIDI events or the sounds themselves.

When I press play on the MPC (with or without MIDI sync) the sounds will play from within Reason, but there are no MIDI events on either the MPC or in Reason. Could it be some kind of bug?

All of it seems really weird.

I was inspired to try this after seeing sparq's video doing this with the MPC1000. Maybe the MPC500 isn't even able to do this? Which would be strange, since it shows how to use the sound module of a keyboard in the manual.

I was planning on writing a tutorial on how this is done after I (finally) get it to work.

Has anyone successfully done this with the MPC500?

Thanks in advance!
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By SimonInAustralia Mon Apr 16, 2007 4:52 pm
I think you need to work out what you are actually doing first, and what you want to do.

If you press the MPC pads, do they trigger the sounds within Reason? If so, then you should just be able to record the MIDI notes, that the pads are sending from the MPC to Reason, into an MPC sequence. You should then be able to playback this sequence and the MPC should playback the sounds from Reason.

You say that you press play on the MPC, and that sounds play from within Reason, but there are no MIDI events. This can not be right, the MPC has to be sending MIDI notes to Reason for Reason to playback any sounds, or the Reason sequencer is playing back the Reason sounds.

You mention that you want to record the sounds from Reason into the MPC. You would probably only do that if you wanted to record sounds into the MPC, to playback as samples inside the MPC.

So, work out what you want to do...either playback and record a MIDI sequence from the MPC that plays sounds in Reason, or record Reason sounds into the MPC to use as MPC samples.