Akai MPCs, why so legendary ?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
starving student
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Post by starving student » Thu Nov 27, 2008 3:51 am

so chang do you ever use the two in tandem if so how?

navitus
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Post by navitus » Thu Nov 27, 2008 6:32 am

There is no reason to stick to just one thing even if certain features overlap. I have a few hardware pieces, including a Roland MC-909, which got no use for years coz i was strictly on softsynths and Logic.
These days i trigger arp patterns on the MC-909 mapped to hi hats in Guru within Logic. Gives my hats more movement. It can certainly be done within Logic, i just like the change of screen, feel, etc.

If someone can do everything on an MPC and have fun while doing it or just stick to Live for everything, theres nothing wrong with it.
I for one am convinced that an MPC along with Live would be lots of fun and very creative.
I'm saving up for an MPC1000.

Ok, so can we talk about this JJ OS please.......... i found some info on it but nothing too concrete. A comparison or feature list would be great, is it easier to use , supported, stable, more fx , control etc ???

Cheers
F

starving student
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Post by starving student » Thu Nov 27, 2008 6:41 am

couldn't agree with you more, I could never go back to just hardware or software, the hybrid way is the only way for me now.

here's a link to alot of comaprisons and goings on

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewforum.php

starving student
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Post by starving student » Thu Nov 27, 2008 6:44 am

the jj os vers. 2 is extremely popular but I myself am still on jj os version 1 -4.99, and I don't even make use of all of it, I am however going to be upgrading to the new jjos2xL when it comes out, there's so much workflow enhancements planned for it so i'm going to bite the bullet.

Chang
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Post by Chang » Thu Nov 27, 2008 10:25 am

starving student wrote:so chang do you ever use the two in tandem if so how?


No to me is a pain in the ass to do both together. One or the other to me. I used to use Mpc 2000 midi'ed to Mpc 4000 midi'ed to ASR-10 with output expander. This gave me 28 d/a outputs total. I go to my friends dads studio with big analog desk amek mozart with neve modules and was able to plug in all outputs to console and use his outboard gear aswell. I have many analog unit and computers and would sound design with them and sample into units and sequence machines then when song was finished go to his studio to mix for free late at night. 4000 master 2000 and asr10 slaves. I got sick of dragging around all this shit from home to studio to mixdown so i finally say fuck that.

I kept all my analog gear, studio electronics mostly and also computers and looked for daw a few years ago to not be such a pain in the ass. Tried out a bunch of daws but now I run tower with Live, 2UAD cards with all plugs and ssl duende rack. I make in analog gear what i need and sample each sounds as i need them into computer and just sequence everthing in live and mix down in the box using uad/duende. Same result. I watched behind the scene videos when I was young with groups like depeche mode and front 242 that showed how they program so I copy exactly what they did in all their endeavors. Depeche mode does exactly what i said already. In catching up with depeche mode album they used analogs, moog and such and would sample everything they made into Emu samplers as they created their songs. MAke something in analog that sounds perfect to them, they then sample it into sampler, sequence pattern and now with sampler playing that back in background they start tweaking analogs again to layer and layer sampling all along until their songs finished. I copied my style from watching them but switched to all daw now for sequencing. Mixing the mpc and daw together just seemed to me like unessesary overkill and redundant so i dont do it. You have mpc sync to daw problems, multi passes of 8 channel record into daw pain in a ass and time consuming creativity killer for me personally. I have all the boxes, pedals and analogs sitting around and I use them all the time, but to carefully sound design and sample what i need instead of making big midi cv mess with million cables all over the room just so giant mess can all play together. I hate that. But this is all my opinion obviously and what i do so dont take it as preached.

starving student
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Post by starving student » Thu Nov 27, 2008 6:12 pm

:lol: no preaching and no worries, I guess it depends on what kind music you make but I find that the mpc/drumrack combination is really great, I'm very much a computer oriented person but when I'm working on music on the compter I don't want the feeling of the computer which is one of the main reason i started using live a long time ago cause it feels less so, hooking up the mpc to drumracks just furthers the feeling of distance between me and the computer that much more and still gives me the flexibility in lives routing, fx and other features.

Geebag
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Post by Geebag » Sun Dec 21, 2008 9:34 pm

MPD is just as good with a decent computer now. Latency is so small as it is not noticeable.

Tone Deft
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Post by Tone Deft » Sun Dec 21, 2008 9:37 pm

Geebag wrote:Latency is so small as it is not noticeable.
completely disagree, even 10mS bugs me.
In my life
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starving student
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Post by starving student » Sun Dec 21, 2008 10:41 pm

Geebag wrote:MPD is just as good with a decent computer now. Latency is so small as it is not noticeable.
depends on the music. definitely not the case in my situation.

serge_a_storms
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Post by serge_a_storms » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:54 am

condra wrote:For every person that posts a reply here about how cool MPCs are, there's ten others who don't give a shit about MPCs.
I think it's a "to each there own" kind of thing.

Some like a bit tactile 0 latency pad bashing, others prefer computers to make their music.

If your workflow works for you, then all good.

Geebag
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Post by Geebag » Mon Dec 22, 2008 12:12 pm

Well I am running my MPD32 at 6 and have no problems. It feels instant to me.

leisuremuffin
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Post by leisuremuffin » Mon Dec 22, 2008 2:18 pm

if latency is so bad, how are people doing performances with drum pads and keyboards?


I use live as my keyboard rig for my band, excellent because i can load all of my instruments into a rack, and use chain select to change instruments and always have the controls i want available.
I don't have any problems. I don't know what people are running or what sort of shitty audio interface they are using that makes this horrible latency....



also, if you take a look at some of Kamoni's (fellow forumite Micah Frank) videos he's playing live with a roland drum pad and sticks, doesn't seem to have a problem.... So what's up?


.lm.
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fzero
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Post by fzero » Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:25 pm

I had an MPC2000 and moved over to a laptop-based setup using a Trigger Finger along with Live. I have absolutely no regrets.

That said, yeah, the MPC is quite awesome for a hardware sequencer/sampler. Mind you, mine was the non-XL version, which means your only storage option is SCSI drives (zip disks or floppies! - be VERY afraid of the click of death!) and that you have a 128-sample limit, regardless of how much RAM you have installed (mine was maxed out at... 32mb).

As the MPC absolutely SUCKS (or sucked by then) for melodic material, I also had to carry an additional hardware sampler to the stage.

And an effects module.

And a mixer. And miles of cables.

So, as you might have guessed it, I got fed up with carrying two big heavy equipment cases to places without any structure - or space! - for me to assemble my kit. Computers were fast enough by then and I decided to carry everything in a backpack.

Anyway, today's MPCs are a completely different animal and really can give notebooks a run for their money. I can even see myself buying a MPC1000 in the not so distant future, as I won't have to mess with dodgy SCSI drives and stuff like that.

But before that I have to successfully move to Canada (I live in Brazil right now and a MPC1000 costs MUCH MORE than an old-style white macbook - really). I have only the strictly necessary to make music, simply because the costs here are ABSURD.

Ableton should thank me everyday for having PURCHASED the license, by the way. In Brazil piracy is the rule, not exception.

(Sorry for the rant.)

leisuremuffin
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Post by leisuremuffin » Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:32 pm

cool, man! sounds like we had almost the same setup.


I used to gig with the mpc200xl (btw, could only store on ZIP with that too)
a rackmount sampler for phrases
a couple synths
mixer / rack effects


let me tell you, the best thing about going laptop is taking the subway to the gig with a backpack.


.lm.
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beats me
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Post by beats me » Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:53 pm

leisuremuffin wrote:if latency is so bad, how are people doing performances with drum pads and keyboards?


I use live as my keyboard rig for my band, excellent because i can load all of my instruments into a rack, and use chain select to change instruments and always have the controls i want available.
I don't have any problems. I don't know what people are running or what sort of shitty audio interface they are using that makes this horrible latency....



also, if you take a look at some of Kamoni's (fellow forumite Micah Frank) videos he's playing live with a roland drum pad and sticks, doesn't seem to have a problem.... So what's up?


.lm.
They do it by imposing limits on what they are doing. I'm sure even you would agree that you can't just throw anything and everything into a set and have low latency. Also software developers like to drive whatever the current high speced computer is to it's limits. Whatever plug-ins are released a year from now may not work too hot on today's computers.

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