Help

[KillaWailz]

Hello,
I just joined this forum, I've had an MPC500 for about two months now and I'm sorry to say I'm completely lost. I'm an accomplished turntablist, love manually playing samples and have a knack for samples so I thought the transition to a sampler would be relatively painless, however, this could not be farther from the truth. I know how to take samples but once I have them I'm completely lost to be able to do anything with them, or to put the samples together and I'm beginning to get very frustrated. I've watched numerous youtube videos to no avail, and I'm sorry for being such a noob, but I'm desperate for help. Can anyone offer any friendly advice?
I'm grateful for anything,
Thanks

[bedouin]

What do you mean exactly? What can't you figure out precisely?

[KillaWailz]

What are the differences between the Sequence mode and the Track mode. For instance, when you have samples that you like, so you simply assign them each to their own pad and then play them out or..... I"m just lost as to what you're supposed to do in the sequence mode.

[tapuno]

sequence-an arrangements of samples and tracks to create a melody, ususally measured in bars.

Track-an arrangement of samples within a sequence, I.E. track 1-hi-hats, track 2-snare, track 3-kick, track 4-guitar, so on.

[bedouin]

Think of tracks like tracks on a 4 track cassette recorder.

You could assign drums to one track, or perhaps each drum individually to its own track (kick = track 1, snare = track 2). You can have 48 tracks with totally different note data that can be muted and unmuted. So usually how this is going to play out for me is:

1) Track 1 = Chop a sample up, program it here.
2) Track 2 = Drop drums up, program them here
3) Tracks 3-4 = Perhaps spreads kicks, snares, and hi-hats across different tracks for more control
4) Track 5 = Sample used only in a hook
5) Track 6 = A low pass filter of the same sample to beef up bass
6) Track 7 = Perhaps a horn sample
7) Etc as needed . . .

Sequences contain note data and every sequence can contain different track arrangements.

So sequence one is a 4 measure beat on track one and a loop on track two (both are unmuted).
Sequence two is a 2 measure drum roll on track one with no loop on track two.
Sequence three is identical to sequence one but contains a pitch shifted rhodes sample you play on track three

Each sequence will remember which tracks were muted and unmuted.

When you finish the basics of a beat you want to turn it into a song, so you start chaining sequences together in song mode.

So if you want the beat to start out with a drum roll, 16 bars for a verse, and 8 for a hook you would then chain your sequences together like:

Seq 1 > Seq 2 > Seq 2 > Seq 2 > Seq 2 > Seq 3 > Seq 3 > End

Convert to song to sequence if you want later and add some more stuff on top if you want for a live feeling.

The big thing is that each track can be assigned its own program group. So if you've got a program of 48 drums chopped, and a sample chopped 48 times, and then a synth you're sequencing from the MPC each of those would have their own individual programs, assigned to individual tracks.

Which adds in another component: tracks and sequences do not necessarily have to contain sample data, but they can control external devices through MIDI.

Writing this makes me wonder why I'm trying to learn the RS7000 when I'm clearly an MPC guy -- but that's another story.

[tapuno]

umm yeah what he said

[KillaWailz]

Wow, thank you so much for that in depth, detailed description. No joke that truly helped a lot!! I can't believe you switched from the MPC when what you just wrote sounds like it was taken right out of a textbook. I have just one more stupid question how does someone "chop" up a sample, I've been taking prolonged samples of singing, or string progression, how do I chop that up into small little samples that I can then play around with?

[tapuno]

well, since the 500 doesnt have waveform display, it would be a little more complicated. Usually, when you enter TRIM mode, there will be "zone" or "slice" feature, and you utilize to take a sample and assign different parts of that sample to pads. That should be covered extensively in the manual. But, because the MPC 500 can be hooked up to your computer, I would use a sound editor such as SoundForge, or even Audacity to cut out the parts of sample you want. After they're trimmed, export em, save em on your flash card and assign to pad.

[bedouin]

If I'm dealing with files on my computer I want to use on the 500 I usually chop them in Recycle and export to 500-friendly files with REX2MPC.

Vinyl I tend to just do on the 500.

[KillaWailz]

Great, thanks so much, it's really starting to click, you know what's up!