Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By liv4ree Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:24 pm
I know it's a bit out dated but I just recently copped an mpc2000 off some dude for $500 with some zip drives included. I have been sampling onto fruity loops and chopping in cubase or cool edit for years and I figured it's time for me to move up in the production world so I wanted to learn on an MPC.

Now heres my dilemma: I feel annoying but I really have no **** idea whats goin on with this machine. I can boot it up and record a drum pattern and assign sounds off the zip drives onto pads but I am 100% CLUELESS as far as saving a project (which I attempted to do but found it would only load the patterns I created but no sounds into the assigned pads)

The dude who sold me the unit said "it's almost as easy as fruity is". Yeah right this shit seems 100x more complex.

Well anyway heres a list of questions I would greatly appreciate any answers too:

1. I have access to a korg triton and I wanna load some samples onto the mpc and create my own sound bank, how is this done? do I use the external zip drives? Do I dump them onto a PC for backup?

2. How do you create, like, the actual main song or event. Meaning, where is the whole track from seq. to seq? All I seem to see is one single sequence with a choice of bars. Do you just select a shitload of bars and do the **** whole beat manually?

3. How do you save a project? I tried "save all sequences and songs" and "save all programs and sounds" or whatever and turned off the unit, rebooted it and it won't load my project but instead just the pattern. What I mean is I have to manually reassign each sample to the same pad it was assigned to before I shut it off.

and last

4. How do you layer the track. All I seem to see is the drum track. I can't figure out how to view the waveform itself I can only see the sequence screen. How do you like put a seperate bass and sample track over each other and assign the whole thing to one pad. I seen it on the you tube tutorial videos so you can like make the beat start out by repeating a 2 or 3 second hit a couple times to make it sound dope.

If someone could help me or walk me through this I would appreciate that shit greatly.

Please help a n****!!!
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By arg.roots Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:03 pm
use the search button my dude, your asking alot of stuff in that post and i guarantee all of it has either been asked before or is available in the manual. also if your as new to the MPC as you sound you might wana check out the tutorial book available from mpc-samples:


The Manual is your friend!

Beat making on 2000xl

this is only available for the Xl but i think the principles are quite similar.

peace.
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By BenHoughton Sun Aug 24, 2008 11:16 am
generally in this situation, the first thing to run off and do isn't to join a forum just to ask all these questions, but to download the manual and read it.
almost every piece of gear from the last 30 years has a manual you can download for free online!

sure we can help you, but you'll be better off in the long run if you go through that manual.

good luck mate!
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By DJ Hellfire Sun Aug 24, 2008 1:27 pm
liv4ree wrote:1. I have access to a korg triton and I wanna load some samples onto the mpc and create my own sound bank, how is this done? do I use the external zip drives? Do I dump them onto a PC for backup?

2. How do you create, like, the actual main song or event. Meaning, where is the whole track from seq. to seq? All I seem to see is one single sequence with a choice of bars. Do you just select a **** of bars and do the **** whole beat manually?

3. How do you save a project? I tried "save all sequences and songs" and "save all programs and sounds" or whatever and turned off the unit, rebooted it and it won't load my project but instead just the pattern. What I mean is I have to manually reassign each sample to the same pad it was assigned to before I shut it off.

and last

4. How do you layer the track. All I seem to see is the drum track. I can't figure out how to view the waveform itself I can only see the sequence screen. How do you like put a seperate bass and sample track over each other and assign the whole thing to one pad. I seen it on the you tube tutorial videos so you can like make the beat start out by repeating a 2 or 3 second hit a couple times to make it sound dope.

!


I'll answer your questions in short. Not going into detail since the manual does that.

1. Midi! Buy some midi cables and connect the Triton through midi. Send the Korg audio output to the same mixer receiver as the MPC. In themain sequence screen, where it says DRUM at the bottom left, change that to Midi and select the proper channel and Midi port for the Korg patch you wanna use.

2. As soon as you move your cursor in a new in a new sequence, the sequence is created. It loops. It's not like FL where it will just spread out a whole page by default. It loops after whatever the amount of bars you have set. By default, the bars is set to 4. It will just loop after 4 bars and kep playing until the machine loses power or you press stop. If you need different events in the beat that may not go with the first sequence, make a new sequence and copy your first sequence to it and make whatever changes you need. If you want to just bring sounds in in out every so often, use the track mute screen. Once you have beat done and want to make it to an actual full legnth song like in FL, use song mode and make edits at the points of the song you need.

3. That is the proper way to save. If your machine shut off when trying to save the programs and sounds, then your machine is broke and I wouldn't use it until it's fixed. Sounds like you only saved the sequence. Yes you will need to reassign the sounds to the pads.

4. Overdub my *****. You can't put more than one sound to a pad. But you can make one pad trigger another or just record two pads on the same track using overdub (not record over).