Advice on going live

hey guys,

I'm about to embark on using the mpc live alongside a couple of DJ's - basically just jamming and improvising over their sets (minimal techno/dance styles) - and i'm looking for advice from those of you that use JJ live

Not looking for any specifics - just general tips and tricks for sequencing and jamming along - any and all advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advace.....

MCL

my advice to you is probably going to be pretty controversial, but i honestly believe the most fun you'll have with your MPC in this situation is loading up it up with some cool percussion and a couple of vocal samples and bashing on the pads.

Another favourite of mine is to get a couple of the tracks they'll be playing that night, deconstruct them and play your tiny chops back with a bit of your own twist. They can start playing the original, and then switch to you playing a funky broken beat version. Rather predictably i did this with organ donor not too long ago.

hope those ideas help just a little bit.

The first step should be to assign tap tempo to a pad.

the only thing i really use my 1000 for these days is live performance within my band. (shameless plug? http://www.myspace.com/headandneck )

i would most importantly, youre nothing without your samples. its a hassle to have to load something up mid set, so setting up some decent programmes beforehand is a must. as a result, the more ram the better.

im with what bruxism said aswell. itd be good to match certain programmes to certain tracks that way you make sure everything is in tune and everything fits together.

q link assigns of filters, pitch, volume etc add alot more dynamics to you performance

oh yeah - get an fx unit - the onbaord effects on the 1000 arent really that useful as far as im concerned. again - itll make your stuff more dynamic

what else?

oh yeah - ive found it really useful to assign no sample to one of the pads but set it up so that that one pad cuts all the sound off. kind of like a panic button. the only way you can stop all your samples otherwise is by banging the stop button 3 times which will also stop the whole mpc. using one pad to silence all samples will just cut the sound out temporarily (if youve got it as note on)

Yeah - I like the idea of having one pad cut out all the other samples - in a panic button type way - could be very useful.

I'm currently building up some programs - and gathering samples etc to use in the set, we start practicing for a live performance tomorrow - so i'll see how it goes.

Quite looking forward to it actually - i know my way around the MPC pretty well, but always used it in the studio - never used it in a live setting before, so it'll be interesting - and a new challenge.

So far as assigning a pad to tap tempo - what would be the benifit of this over the dedicated tap tempo button?

I just prefer assigning tap tempo to a pad. I feel as if the dedicated tap tempo button is gonna pop out one day after lots of usage.

Had the first practice last night - found it a challenge - but was a success (obviously some thigs were a bit ropey - but all in all it was pretty good fun)

I found it better to leave the tap tempo on the button that it has already - Didn't want to use up a pad just for that function - I found it better to leave the tempo to be controlled by Q link 1 - sort of similar to a traditional decks pitch controller.

This was the first time that i had used Patched Phrase to any sort of degree and i must admit it worked better than I had expected (pity that it is only mono though - anyone think that JJ could make these Stereo in the future? - Probably not - but hey, it's an idea)............

Hey,

I used to do alot of live sessions and other stuff, and i would always create a massive collection of sequences with different drums loops and tracks and other musical stuff using a generic program of sounds and few bespoke ones as well.

I say have some skeleton templates of music that you are working on or love the most and just jam along with everyone else.

Hope this helps...

Cheers Penfold.

Found that during the practice we had that you can't have enough samples to hand! - It was amazing how quickly you can run out of stuff to play - so i'm currently making new programs and setting them out in a logical manner, and trimming up some new samples and basic sounds from Reason that I have resampled into my MPC.

Also used the Input Thru for the first time as an easy way of incorporating my circuit bent 505, and that went well - the whole experience made me appreciate the MPC a lot more than I previously had when I just used it in the studio - really liking the new features that JJ has brought to the table, coupled with the reliability of the machine as a whole.

Hopefully going to experiment with switching layers soon so I can cram as many samples as I can into the machine (without it all becoming too confusing)

Also going to 'pre program' some sequences like you suggest - I was just playing blind before and building sequences as I went - but I think making skeleton sequences is a good shout.........