Best way to get started (to the new cats)

Im just going to say this quick and i think its very important for every noob to lern this.

when you buy an mpc and start makin beats your going to fall in love with it. and then your going to read the forums and your going to want to get the full set up. and if you have doe what your going to do is buy what you need to create your daw, then your gona feel complete got your synth interface nice monitors.

my advise DONT DO THIS. your going to ruin your come up to professionalism or lets more slow down drasticly..

all you need as an mpc and headphones or shitty speakers, learn how to use the machine , master on the shity speakers what this will do is by the time you upgrade to good speakers your masterings going to be crazy TRUST ME..

DONT worry about oh i need to buy this equipment need to start get my beats into my computer, if you really want to upgrade focus all your time in the beginin on simply the machine..

iv had shitty speakers for like 1 year and its sharpen my ear to a **** because its even hard to get the beat right..

argueable because some hardware and effects can be used in order to allow more creativity when changeing sound instead of mastering but really

if you buy an mpc all you need is a turntable and mixer to get the sample and that will make a drastic difference in your coming up.. so remember dont get atracted by the fansy shmansy it wil come just work on sound patterns and analyzing the pros instrumentals on youtube and what they do TRUST ME

yeah, keep it simple.

but...turntables and vinyl were the cheap shit of my generation. every home had a record player and i could walk down the street in new york and buy a pile of 50 records for $5 or 10 from a crack-dependent street-dweller.

now those things are expensive. a cartridge costs more than a record player used to.
the cheap shit nowadays? cd players and cds. they can't give them away. there's your gold mine. tape decks and tapes are even cheaper. you want gritty - go 8 track!

take society's crap and turn it into gold with your mpc.
get off your behinds young folks and stop imitating what we did 25 years ago.

sorry for the rant, but it's early in the morning and the nurse hasn't given me my medication yet.

I agree to a point with the above comments, but an MPC will not cater to all the essential needs of a producer. You could even argue that if you buy an MPC along with a good DAW then you will kill a few birds with one stone, and ultimately speed up your rise to success!

Some people forget that not everyone samples from vinyl... that includes myself. I need my PC and DAW to enhance my projects, but I certainly don't need a big desk and rack of outboard to obtain a good sound.

Coz wrote:I agree to a point with the above comments, but an MPC will not cater to all the essential needs of a producer. You could even argue that if you buy an MPC along with a good DAW then you will kill a few birds with one stone, and ultimately speed up your rise to success!

Some people forget that not everyone samples from vinyl... that includes myself. I need my PC and DAW to enhance my projects, but I certainly don't need a big desk and rack of outboard to obtain a good sound.

i half agree half dont if your new to the producin world and you decide to by a home studio set up.. mpc with daw equipment ,your your excitness is not going to be enhanced purely on the mpc your going to want to track your stuff and have beats been saved already .. to me the first couple weeks of using your first mpc is vital instead of tryin to read several manuals at a time as well

everyone has that urge to have a complete studio and this often drifts them from the point that they really dont gota worry about havein a complete home studio.. i belive you should really just first lern all you can about the mpc then go to the next step for this will be alot more benifical in the long run because you have a really strong base before you move to learn how to record the stuff in your comper

It might sound contentious, but with what you are saying you could easily replace "MPC" with "Fruity Loops", or "Reason"... or whatever.

The basis of the points raised here I completely agree with, but times are moving.

When I started out I used an MPC and nothing but for 3 years, and it did me no harm at all, but when I got into the whole DAW thing it took another 2 years before my beats sounded as tight as just the MP on its own!

I personally think it is really tough to offer newbs the right advice, because it all depends on what they want to produce.

I agree but i want to add something. This shouldnt just be about the MPC. In all reality you should really try to learn the capabilities of each piece of gear before you move on to the next. So many cats waste money on buying new gear for features their current gear just may have already. There shouldnt be a rush. Its a craft and if you take your time (and rtfm ) it will pay off significantly in no time. Good thread tho.

I just started about 2 months ago...

I got:
Akai MPC500
MicroKORG
Cubase Essential 4

And thats all Im going to stick to for years.... If anything I will upgrade my MPC in about 2 years.

But still plan to buy a $100 condensor mic and thats it.

I havent really played with my mK either and thats because Im still trying to master my drums and making kits and all that good stuff. Cuz without drums a beat can really suck.

i only had my mpc alone with some headphones for 2 months then got a mixer and turntable and thats all i got and some high class computer speakers lol but its decent enough to be analyzed properl and thats the key to saving money for the real equipment you need after saving up no point buy a low class equipment when you can spend the time your saving money workin on your production smartest person would prolly save 1000$ before purchasing mean time workin on mpc lol ok that might be much but you get my point save al that money the boom

^ exactly. That's the best piece of advice ever. Know your gear through and through.

Forgot to mention that I own two different sets of turntables with mixer. I been Djing for 6 years so when I bought my MPC I already had the samping setup but honestly the cheapest and best way to sample is online using your PC.

I have only about 200 old vinyl to sample but then I got about 3000 records that are all dated back to 1999 hip hop. =)

But I usually just download songs from Rhapsody and sample them so I aint gotta waste money on vinyl.

I say what it really boils down to is what kind of producer are you trying to be? Are you a gear junkie so that you have unlimited sound sources, and you know enough to coax all the secrets to make them do what they're capable of doing? Or are you hardly scratching the surface of one unit while you're in a rush to go out and buy the next? Let's admit one thing. There is NO gear out there that does it all. While any groovebox or MPC out there is all you might need to get started, it's won't have everything. Does a MPC have a keyboard? No. Does it have it's own 32 channel mixer built in? No. Does it allow you to do everything ProTools can? No. But it does allow you to sample a beat, melody, song, kick drum, or whatever, and get creative. A producer just starting out might say "Ah, but I need a keyboard so I can do some chords, or notes on top of my sequence". And fine, go out there and find one that will have you covered with a budget you're comfortable with. But if you're really out to collect gear, ask yourself why do you need it? Because you know how to use it, or your favorite beat maker has one? Have you tried it? Are you ready to drop some serious cash to take it home? Will you really use it, or will it just sit in a corner, doing nothing, because you don't know what to do with it, or you're more focused on something else?

It's okay to dream big. You can ask yourself "What would life be like if I owned all this classic gear"? But if you don't appreciate it when you get it, then why did you buy it? I don't care which MPC you own. From the most basic 500 or 1000, to the 5000. But keep it simple. They're pretty powerful studios in one box, and there's nothing wrong with adding a simple laptop or desktop pc to them. There's nothing wrong with just adding a effects unit, compressor, mic-pre, and keyboard controller, and nothing else. But don't buy gear just because it came out, or because you think you won't be any good if you don't own it. That's just crazy. If you're making buckets of money and you can afford to, then that's another story, but still, keep in mind if you buy the same gear everybody else uses, you better sit there and learn how NOT to sound like everybody else. That's what it's about sometimes. Making something original out of nothing more than your imagination. Some people think if you have to sample other people, you're not doing anything original, but yet if you know what you're doing, you can prove them wrong. But you won't get there if you just bandwagon when it comes to gear purchases.

Explicit- wrote:
But I usually just download songs from Rhapsody and sample them so I aint gotta waste money on vinyl.

Bah and you dont feel like a cheap **** after you sampled mp3's you didnt even pay for?

64hz wrote:

Explicit- wrote:
But I usually just download songs from Rhapsody and sample them so I aint gotta waste money on vinyl.

Bah and you dont feel like a cheap **** after you sampled mp3's you didnt even pay for?

Why would I??? I dont sell my beats, I dont make a living off this sh1t... I do this as a hobby so why would I blow money on it???

Either way Im sure I got one of the biggest vinyl collections here. About 4,000 singles and about 80% of those I have doubles for.... So lets just say some where under 8,000 records. =)

Bah? Move on sheep.

W/e i still find it cheap....