polyphony issue?

i know i have read about a similar or the same issue i am facing now somehwere here, but cant find it again

i ve sampled some motown beats, chopped them and made a programm with the single parts

but now i can i only play one pad/sound at a time, hitting the next pad kills the previous one...
this ends up in unnatural drum sound in most cases..

is this a polyphony issue? and how to fix?

thoughts:

-the first thing that come to my mind is, the origial samples were quite long (like 4mb size) because i did run lots and lots of motown beats through my reel to reel and didnt want to stop everything after every single drum hit...

so i started working on quite long loops and chopped the single hits from there (in fact some are rather double hits like HH following a Kick etc)

may that somehow be connected to my prob?

- the otehr sing i treid was setting the pads to NOTE ON, but that did not help



any ideas?







PART 2:

some other questions i am facing beside the above mentioned issue
1) should i always save the programms WITH samples or is that unnessecary and when i load up a programm it will load the samples from the internal HDD by itself?

2) how can i put an effect on only ONE sound, or lets say on PAD 5 + PAD 8 but not on any other? somehow that doesnt work for me

3) that well known (swing quantize?) like in many of madlib`s beats for example... how does that work in fact? is it done after you playing in the drum sequence or allready set like that while playing? how to do it?

4) is there a way to automatically adjust the tempo of a phrase to the tempo of my beats?
but if so, how to manage to keep the phrase (for example strings) sounding real an natural and not totaly time stretch-manipulated?

5) is there a way to move around samples and prog`s etc inside the HARD DISK ? like throwing a few samples in other folders later? but well i guess the easiest way would be though USB connecte to the computer nad moving them from there with the mouse!?


i hope for some input, i am quite new to the mpc
thanks

Quite a bit to tackle here, but some of your questions are pretty easy to deal with. First off, you need to go into the Program mode and in the upper right hand corner switch from Mono to Poly. This will solve your problem with samples being cut off. As for saving, just make sure to always save in seperate folders. I almost always just save everything. CF cards are cheap as hell now, so I have stopped trying to save space. As for the effects only on one pad, there is en effects mixer page in the effect mode. Here you can send each pad to either effect or turn it off. This way, each pad can have its own setting. Thats good for now. I understand where your coming from, being new to the Mp, but you really need to take some time and just mess around with the thing. There are many ways to answer questions 3 and 4. Often there are several ways to acomplish any one function. Some times with different results, and sometimes with the same results. You need to experiment to find your way of doing things. You may want to look on youtube for beat making videos and tutorials. Very soon someone will tell you RTFM. If you do not know what this means... You will. Good luck, and get ready. It gets good.

RTFM - Read the **** Manual

Although it may sound rude or harsh. That is actually the best reply anyone could give you as the manual is the true answer to every question you may have. I read the manual and basically put it into effect as I was reading it. Dont get frustrated just practice and get a feel for the machine. Also develop a workflow that works for you. I might do things a different way then let say the next MPC user But its because my method has proven to be better for the way I work.
Just remember this very important tip I will give you....

1-Always Make a new folder when saving Because, being organized will help you out alot.
2-Label your samples in a way to remember who the sample came from.
3-Backup the hard drive from your MPC regularly as you could lose lots of work due to hard drive failure.
4-If you get frustrated just leave it alone and just come back to it later on. Frustration hinders your learning.

And the rest is just trial and error... Good Luck and I hope you build of that.

100
Sosa

oh well i hear RTFM all the time, dont worry haha


thanks a lot for the input!


yes yes..please dont mention had drive backup.... man please.... i just lost around 500 GB of sampling/audio data a week ago due to physical damage.... but well once again....a new beginning (...)


anyway i have a several years production background, but new to mpc and and i have to say i freakin love this mashine!!!! of course 1st of all for beats... what a pain it was to do beats in software/keyboard/or even midi drum pads with lots of alaising... : ) good buy!





...one more question for today.... : what to do to smooth out single hits when even tough they are chopped correctly, they sound too mechanic,cutted
PLEASE dont say reverb..i dont wanna do 80s

I had asked the same question and someone in this forum by the name of NYM helped me out...

Nym's Reply:

here's a great way to do it.

turn the program to MONO.
set each sample to ONESHOT.
enter TRIM. set each sample to ALTERNATE LOOP.
set the loop point so that it loops the tail as smoothly as possible.
adjust the release (jjos2) to 20-30
set the attack to 0 (make sure your crosspoints are smooth. if not, set it to 1)
record your performance. get your timing right.
turn your program to POLY
set each sample to NOTE ON
enter SEQ EDIT. select DURATION, and select TO NEXT NOTE
still in SEQ EDIT, select DURATION and hit SUBTRACT something like 1-3 ticks depending on your resolution.

play with your release until the transitions are smooth. don't go much past 30 or you'll kill your polyphony. you want your release to be as little as possible without hearing transitions in between your samples.

this way you can adjust the tempo to anything and your sample will play back. too slow, and you'll start hearing the altloops, but you can stretch it a good far distance before that happens. you can also tune the entire pgm at one time while preserving the playback rate of your samples.

search youtube for my "non-pitch shifting and non-time stretching" video

PGM TRIM mode will become your friend.

^ ion: well worded questions and a great attitude. don't balk at nothing, save often (multiple copies of the project just to have a couple backups as you go) and explore the submenues

remember that you can create copies of your programs - this way you don't have to worry about effin em up irretrievably.

1) should i always save the programms WITH samples or is that unnessecary and when i load up a programm it will load the samples from the internal HDD by itself?

i save entire memory every time, i find it way simpler than saving all my pgms into their own spots. remember, you'll have TONS of space on whatever medium you're working on - you don't need to worry aobut multiple copies of the same 10kb-1mb sound on your medium.

4) is there a way to automatically adjust the tempo of a phrase to the tempo of my beats?
but if so, how to manage to keep the phrase (for example strings) sounding real an natural and not totaly time stretch-manipulated?

chop those suckers up to 1 note per pad and recreate the sample. hands down, this will let you mangle the tempo without losing realism as you get better at stringing them together. watch that vid of mine that sosa posted.

yes that was the post i meant originaly

okay, but i ve to say that sounds like always a long way to go until the beats are fine
what exactly are the advanatges of doing those detailed steps mentioned by NYM compared
to just going from mono to poly in the beginning allready?

i guess there is no way to at least halfways template this eh?



okay but i understood... and will experiment more with this monster...

thanks again!

another interesting method of artificial tailing is to use the destructive chopping in the trim mode screen (make sure you save your sample to a hard drive or cf card first) create decent chop points for your samples by slicing your region points as close to the beat or hit points as possible. then you go into the edit portion of the chop screen and create converted slice samples to a program keeping the release between 10-30... once you create your program tweak your adsr envelopes to tighten up the transitions between your samples add some filtering to rid any clicks and mask obvious artificial tail and voila! you get a decent sounding totally functional set of sliced samples to muse with... nyms way is better but this way is a good excercise in utilizing as many tools the mpc has to offer with minimal effort. hope this makes sense for you.