MPC 500 + Computer Work Flow

I've been having a bit of trouble recently figuring out how to use the MPC along with my computer for my production. I have been going through a lot of producers block at the moment and nothing decent is coming out of the speakers, however I wanted to know how everyone combines the MPC with their software.

I use Ableton Live and Logic 8 as my main software, and I find chopping samples really really easy within Ableton but the drums from my MPC always sound a lot better. I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach my beats so I don't get too bored easily and have a steady workflow.

Any ideas or hints?

Cheers,

QL

I use my mpc mainly for 'sketching' drums and creating drumsounds etc.. Its really fast to, for example, to lowpass and compress a sound, then re-record it in as a new sample and put it as a new layer to the original sound etc etc.. If you're getting something really nice done with your mpc and dont wanna waste time recreating it in the sequencer software theres an option to save the sequence as a midi file.

When moving my rhythms from mpc to pc I load the samples in battery. I haven't yet tried loading the midi sequence file from mpc but I will soon..

When I just cant start creating anything I just start jamming with my keyboard without the intension of putting something in the sequencer. If theres nothing coming up that needs to be saved right away I won't save anything. Try to do something and at the same time relax and dont force the inspiration to come..

I've noticed that bad drum sounds make me to do nothing..if you're tired of polishing your snare sample then try to find really good ones to sample.. Just dont sample anything before you know it sounds good in your ears, sometimes its good to be a bit picky

I have this habit that if I've already picked a bad sample, Im obsessed of trying to make it work somehow..
Sampling is like a relationship, sometimes it just doesnt work.
Get rid of it and try to find better one

Quartz Loque wrote:I've been having a bit of trouble recently figuring out how to use the MPC along with my computer for my production. I have been going through a lot of producers block at the moment and nothing decent is coming out of the speakers, however I wanted to know how everyone combines the MPC with their software.

I use Ableton Live and Logic 8 as my main software, and I find chopping samples really really easy within Ableton but the drums from my MPC always sound a lot better. I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach my beats so I don't get too bored easily and have a steady workflow.

Any ideas or hints?

Cheers,

QL

One way would be to keep Ableton Live as a sampler sound module/slicer/effects processor to create loops and one-shots to then transfer them into the MPC and have the MPC be the sequencer, also using internal sounds for drums. Once you got something worked out, track it out to Logic.

Jali wrote:Sampling is like a relationship, sometimes it just doesnt work.
Get rid of it and try to find better one

This is genius

Quartz Loque wrote:

Jali wrote:Sampling is like a relationship, sometimes it just doesnt work.
Get rid of it and try to find better one

This is genius

I agree... I will never forget that