HI and also, synth programs

Hello, gentlemen. I got my first MPC a month ago, and I've been lurking here quite frequently ever since. This place has been a VAST resource for a music producing beginner like myself, and I just want to thank everyone that contributes to this holy grail of mpc knowledge.

As I have no experience whatsoever with music production and nobody to learn from IRL, the first thing I did when my MPC arrived was to read the manual twice. Then i bought the e-book on this site and did some of the tutorials, so I think I have some overview of the machines basic functions. I also got the ram-upgrade (Kingston). And I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS MACHINE!

I've made one beat this far that I'm halfway satisfied with, it sounds like this: http://www.zshare.net/audio/1842264508f9bb24/

My main question was "Where do I find free, somewhat good synth programs for my MPC?", but I thought it would be kinda rude not to introduce myself first.

DDB

your best bet is to make them yourself. i get a lot of good synth sounds out of free reason refills. you can get a program called "refill unpacker" that will let you extract the wavs out of the refill, throw those on your mpc and make a prog. some people say this isn't legal... but who gives a shit... google "lizards microkorg refill" thats a good place to start

by the way.. .make sure you're getting some actual synth refills with the .wavs (for use in their sampler).. otherwise you just end up with useless patches.

Try googling "copyright free music", "copyright free samples", "soundfonts" and things of those nature. While searching for free refills is a good place to start, as stated, you're not guaranteed that this will lead you to samples all the time due to the format and contents of the refill files themselves. Don't be afraid to sample things from the radio, your cd collection, tv, etc... just be mindful that using copyrighted material can cause you major headaches if you chose to release something you produced with copyrighted material. If you're just looking for good sounds though there isn't any harm in it really if you're just looking to learn and have fun.

You'll also find that a lot of people on here have a turn table and decent record collection and there are many reasons for that, though I won't go in to that right now. It is something you might want to think about for the future though. Once you get used to the MPC a bit more, you might want to consider investing on some off board effects processing such as a Korg Kaoss Pad, stomp boxes, moogerfoogers and the like. A microphone is great because then you can sample just about everything around you that makes some sort of noise, but then you'll need a mic amplifier (though some gear will have this built in, just not the mpc 1000).

Although I've been progressively stepping away from music production on the computer, I will mention that sites like kvr audio lists tons of excellent free vst effects and synthesizers that you could play with and sample on to your MPC to work with.

One last thing to consider about the MPC is that it can self sample and this can be a valuable tool for constructing new sounds. By using the looping feature on a single cycle waveform (a waveform that crosses the zero point (middle line) once going up and once going down). Using this feature and the 16 levels set to tune, you can quickly create some interesting sounds without too much effort. Once you get into the envelopes and filters section you can process these sounds even more.

You didn't mention, but you might want to consider updating to JJOS 3.08 or v1 or v2 if you haven't already. There are plenty of worthy features the least of which is that many many bugs have been removed from the system that can corrupt your precious data.

here are some http://nymantics.com/instpgms/

Wow, thanks alot for the info and stuff guys. Thanks to Nym for the programs, and I'll also check out the Refill unpacker.

Peace

heheh.. good thing this conversation didn't happen earlier. i would have copped nym's progs and never bothered making mine. i'm glad i did. but those patches are nice. really good depth on the notes (most reason stuff i rip open is like 3 per octave)

they're very "thickly" sampled, which is good for some things but also they're pretty fkin big. as such when i use them i often establish what "zone" i use (notes within a certain range) and just purge the remainder (higher/lower than that zone) to free space/decrease save/loadtimes.

Okay, now I just bought JJ OS 1 + 2. Kinda overwhelming, but I'm getting into the groove as I move along. Is there an unofficial manual for this, or just for JJ OS 1? Would be nice.

there no mac version for that refill unpacker?

legs mechanical wrote:your best bet is to make them yourself. i get a lot of good synth sounds out of free reason refills. you can get a program called "refill unpacker" that will let you extract the wavs out of the refill, throw those on your mpc and make a prog. some people say this isn't legal... but who gives a ****... google "lizards microkorg refill" thats a good place to start

Word.

**valentin** wrote:there no mac version for that refill unpacker?

no

dang it!

thank you

This was a very informative thread