akai Akai Professional MPC1000 Black, Akai Professional MPC1000 Beat Making On The MPC1000

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Keep Up-to-date!

Before you begin, please note that this book has been written to take into account all the new features available in the latest operating system from Akai, version 2.10. This offers significant improvements over the older OS (1.7 ) and hence if you only have OS 1.7 in your machine, you need to upgrade the OS straight away in order to gain full benefits from your MPC1000.

To check your OS, press MODE (so it lights up) and then press pad 10 (OTHER). At the top, you should see the OS ‘Version’ which is installed. If you do not have at least 2.10, please refer to chapter 005 – Loading Part 2 for information on how to update your OS via the Akai web site.

Beat Making On The MPC1000 – Contents In Brief

Preface i How to use this book

Section A - Fundamental Skills 16

001 Audio Connections 17 002 Understanding MIDI 23 003 Memory & Storage 29 004 Loading Part 1 33 005 Loading Part 2 40 006 Saving 45 007 Naming Samples 55 008 Sampling Sounds 56 009 Understanding Mono & Stereo 61 010 Editing Samples Part 1 62 011 Editing Samples Part 2 67 012 Looping Samples 71 013 Programs 76 014 The Internal Mixer 85 015 Recording Sequences 88 016 Editing Sequences Part 1 97 017 Editing Sequences Part 2 103

Section B – Manipulating Drums & Break Beats 111

018 Filtering & Tuning Samples 112 019 Chopping Samples Part 1 114 020 Chopping Samples Part 2 119 021 Chopping Part 3 – Patched Phrase 123 022 Chopping Part 4 – Stutter Chopping 127 023 Layering Drum Sounds 129 024 Rebuilding Decay Tails on Snares 133

Section C – Building Drum Kits & Breaks 135

025 Emulating Timbre Changes 136 026 Building Drum Kits - Pure Kits 141 027 Building Performance & GM Kits 146 028 Creating Realistic Drum Performances 152 029 Basics of Laying Down a Drum Beat Part 1 154 030 Laying Down a Drum Beat Part 2 158

Section D – Advanced Techniques 161

031 Fitting an Instrument Loop to a Beat 162 032 Understanding Effects 168 033 Effects & Settings 171 034 Sequencing Tricks Part 1 181 035 Sequencing Tricks Part 2 187 036 Multisampling Part 1 189

037 Multisampling Part 2 195 038 Looping Instrument Samples 198 039 16 Levels 201 040 Using Blue Box 203 041 LFO, Slider & External Sound Manipulation 206

Section E – Building Songs 213

042 Understanding Song Mode 214 043 Song Arrangement Ideas 218 044 Recording Your Beats Part 1 223 045 Recording Your Beats Part 2 228 046 Recording Your Beats Part 3 233 047 Compression Part 1 237 048 Compression Part 2 240

Section F – MPC1000 Studio Environments 244

049 Looping Multisamples in Soundforge 245 050 Using Recycle with your MPC1000 Part 1 252 051 Using Recycle with your MPC1000 Part 2 258

Beat Making on the MPC1000 – Contents In Full

Preface i How to use this book

Section A - Fundamental Skills 16 001 Audio Connections 17

• Outgoing audio connections 17

• Connecting to a hi-fi system 17

• Connecting to a studio mixer 18

• Connecting to a DJ mixer 19

• Incoming Audio Connections 20

• Sampling Directly From a CD player 20

• Sampling from a turntable 20

• Sampling from a microphone 21

002 Understanding MIDI 23

• What is MIDI? 23

• Controlling MPC pads with a keyboard 24

• Connecting Synthesisers 25

• Adding Sound Modules 26

003 Memory & Storage 29

• What is Memory? 29

• What is Storage? 29

• Which Memory Card? 30

• Upgrading Ram 30

004 Loading Part 1 33

• Overview 33

• Viewing the contents of your card 34

• Autoload 34

• Folder Loading 35

• File Loading 36

005 Loading Part 2 40

• Manual Disk Transfer 40

• USB Transfer 40

• Emptying Memory Cards 41

Preparing Your Card 42

•

• Updating the OS 44

006 Saving 45

• Saving to memory card and hard drive 45

• How to name files and folders 47

• Creating Backups 52

• Saving to internal memory 52

007 Naming Samples 55

• How to name sounds 55

• File naming conventions 55

008 Sampling Sounds 56

• The sample screen and settings 56

• Signal to Noise Ratio 57

• Should I add Effects While Sampling? 59

• Sampling Your Sound 59

009 Understanding Mono & Stereo 61

• Mono rules? 61

• Creating Stereo 61

010 Editing Samples Part 1 62

• The TRIM screen 62

• Setting Start & End Points 63

• Trimming Your Samples 63

• How Good is the MPC Waveform Display? 65

011 Editing Samples Part 2 67

• The DISCARD function 67

• EXTRACT 68

• DELETE 68

• SILENCE 68

• NORMALIZE 68

• REVERSE 69

• The Sample Screen Functions 69

012 Looping Samples 71

• Understanding Loop Points 71

• Looping Drum Breaks 71

• The Loop Screen 72

• Setting Start and End Loop Points 73

• Checking For Clicks 74

• Locking the Loop Points 75

013 Programs 76

• Understanding Programs 76

• Assigning Sounds to A Program 77

• What Are Banks? 77

• Changing Program Parameters 78

• Changing Global Pad Sensitivity 80

• Filters 81

• Voice Overlap 82

• Play Mode 83

014 The Internal Mixer 85

• Using the Internal Mixer 85

• Controlling Multiple Sounds 86

• Changing Outputs 86

015 Recording Sequences 88

• Overview 88

• Changing Tempo With Tap Tempo 89

• Sequencer Parameters 89

• Recording a Drum Performance 91

• Endless Recording 91

• Erasing Notes 92

• Note Repeat 93

• Adding Another Track 93

• Recording MIDI tracks 94

• Why Don’t The Pad notes run in musical order? 94

• Recording Mixer Changes 95

• One Sequence or Many? 96

016 Editing Sequences Part 1 97

• Changing Notes in Step Edit 97

• Navigating In Step Edit 99

• Step Edit Options 100

• Note Parameters 101

• Editing Recorded Mixer Settings 101

017 Editing Sequences Part 2 103

• Copy & Paste 103

• Events 103

• Bars 105

• Track Move 107

• Copying & Deleting 108

• Inserting Program Changes 109

Section B – Manipulating Drums & Break Beats 111

018 Filtering & Tuning Samples 112

• Filtering Kicks 111

• Tuning Breaks 113

• Tuning Down Without Dropping Pitch – Vinyl 113

019 Chopping Samples Part 1 114

• Methods For Chopping Breaks 114

• Zone/Slice Function Overview 114

• Adjusting Regions 116

• Slicing 116

020 Chopping Samples Part 2 119

Fixing the End Slice 119

•

• Chopping It Further 119

• Adding More Slices 119

• Using Only Your Best Samples 120

• A Word of Warning 121

• Using Extract To Create Slices 122

021 Chopping Part 3 – Patched Phrase 123

• Overview 123

• Calculating BPM 124

• Patched Phrase In Action 126

• Patched Phrase Editing 126

022 Chopping Part 4 – Stutter Chopping 127

• Overview 127

• Creating Stuttered Chops 128

023 Layering Drum Sounds 129

• Layering Drum Sounds 129

• Changing Parameters 130

• Resampling Your Outputs 131

• Filtered & Tuned Layering 132

024 Rebuilding Decay Tails on Snares 133

• Re-building reverb/decay tails on snares 133

Section C – Building Drum Kits & Breaks 135

025 Emulating Timbre Changes 136

• Dynamic Sample Variation 136

• Using multiple samples 136

• Creating your own variations 138

• Timbre variations on one pad 139

• Utilising Layers 139

• Using Q-Link sliders 140

026 Building Drum Kits - Pure Kits 141

Why build kits in a standard layout? 141 ‘Pure’ Drum Kits 141 Building the Kit 142 Filling the Gaps 143 Making It Stereo 144

027 Building Performance & GM Kits 146

• Overview 146

• Building The Kit 147

• GM Kits 148

028 Creating Realistic Drum Performances 152

• Real time or step edit? 152

• Turn Off Full Level 152

• Using Quantise 152

• Keep it varied 152

• Lining Up Samples (or not) 153

• Drummers and Limbs 153

029 Basics of Laying Down a Drum Beat Part 1 154

• Overview 154

• Steps in laying down a beat 154

030 Laying Down a Dr um Beat Part 2 158

Creating Drum Rolls 158

•

• Ghost Notes 159

• Recreating Grooves From Other Records 160

Section D – Advanced Techniques 161

031 Fitting an Instrument Loop to a Beat 162

• Overview 162

• Matching up Grooves 162

• Matching Tempo by Tuning 163

• Pitch Shifting 163

• Time Stretching 164

• Finding Pitch/Key 165

• Major or Minor? 166

• Patched Phrase 166

• Chopping both Loops 167

• Hints on Improving Tempo Matching 167

032 Understanding Effects 168

• Understanding Effect Co ntrols 168

• Master Effects 170

• Saving Effect Sets 170

033 Effects & Settings 171

• ‘Jazzing Up’ Rhodes 171

• Tremolo 172

• Flying Pan 173

• Combining Effects 173

• Chorus 174

• Flanger 174

• Delay 175

• Reverb 176

• Bit Grunger 176

• 4 Band EQ 177

• Compressor 178

• Changing Effects Via Step Edit 179

• Getting Around Limitations 179

• Master Effects 180

034 Sequencing Tricks Part 1 181

• Boosting The Bottom End of a Loop 181

• Filter Sweeps 181

Changing Sequencer Resolution 185

•

• Creating Delay Effects With Your Sequencer 185

035 Sequencing Tricks Part 2 187

• Echoes 187

• Turntable Stops 187

• Fade Back 188

• Putting It All Together 188

036 Multisampling Part 1 191

• How Do We Multisamples 191

• A Sub Bass Program 191

• MIDI notes and the MPC 193

• Tuning 194

• Controlling Note Length 195

• Controlling Decay 195

037 Multisampling Part 2 197

• Overview 197

• Converting a loop into a multisample program 197

• Monophonic Multisampling 198

038 Looping Instrument Samples 200

• Overview 200

• Extending note length with looping 201

• Creating a drone 202

039 16 Levels 203

• Overview 203

• Practical usage of 16 levels 203

040 Using Blue Box 205

• Downloading 205

• First Steps 205

• Musical samples 207

• Chromatic Programs 207

041 LFO, Slider & External Sound Manipulation 209

• LFO Overview 209

• Tremolo Effect 209

• Mimicking Vibrato 209

• Creating Bass Lines with LFO 210

• Real Time Controls 211

• Q Link Sliders 211

• Manipulation of External Sounds – Input Thru 213

Section E – Building Songs 215

042 Understanding Song Mode 216

• Overview 215

• Using Multiple Sequences 215

• Song Mode 216

• Converting Songs to Sequences 218

043 Song Arrangement Ideas 220

• Overview 220

• A List of Arrangement Ideas and Techniques 220

044 Recording Your Beats Part 1 225

• Overview 225

• Recording a Rough Demo 226

• Going To A Studio 227

• Doing It All Yourself 228

• A Mixture 229

045 Recording Your Beats Part 2 230

• What Is A Multi Tracker? 230

• Synching & MIDI 231

• MPC as Slave With MIDI Clock 232

• Mono & Stereo Instruments 233

046 Recording Your Beats Part 3 235

• Using Effects While Tracking 235

• Dry Recording 235

• Wet Recording 235

• Using the MPC Outputs 236

• Multitracking to a Standard Mixer 236

• Recording Via A Mixer 236

• Assigning Outputs 236

047 Compression Part 1 239

• What is a Compressor? 239

• Types of Compressor 239

• Compressor Controls 239

• Graphical Representation 240

• What Can Compression Do For My Music? 241

048 Compression Part 2 242

• Hooking it up 242

• Limiting a Signal 242

• Compressing a Vocal 243

• Smoothing Out a Bass Line 243

• Adding Punch to Guitars 243

• Increasing Guitar Sustain 243

• Compressing Snares 244

• Cymbals 244

• Compression as an Aux Effect 244

• Suggested Settings 244

Section F – MPC1000 Studio Environments 246

049 Looping Multisamples in Soundforge 247

• Background 247

• Getting Started 247

• Setting the Loop 249

• Adding Loop Markers 250

• Crossfade Looping 252

• Limitations 253

050 Using Recycle with your MPC1000 Part 1 254

• Overview 254

• Getting Started 254

• Slicing Your Beat 255

• Previewing Your Slices 256

• Adding a Slice Point 256

• Envelope Settings 258

• Exporting Your Slices 259

051 Using Recycle with your MPC1000 Part 2 269

• Background 261

• Blank.pgm – a recap 262

• Assigning Slices – Method 1 262

• Fixing the Open Hat 262

• Assigning Slices – Method 2 262

• Changing the Tempo 263

Introduction

Thank you for purchasing ‘Beatmaking on the MPC1000’, I hope you gain a lot of knowledge out of this book, and most importantly, have fun learning your new sampler!

I wrote this book because I thought the manual that comes with the MPC1000 was very poor and assumed a lot of previous studio knowledge. Personally, I did not have this knowledge when I first bought my MPC, as it was the first piece of studio equipment I’d ever bought – so basically it was a lot of late nights and hair pulling for the next few months – I always wished a book like this was available at the time, so I hope this book makes some people’s live a little less stressful!

The aim of this book was never to replace the manual, I just wanted to take the most important functions of the MPC1000 and explain them in the simplest way possible using step-by-step tutorials and audio examples to get the points over more clearly – hence there will always be some elements of the MPC1000 that are not covered in this book, but I feel I’ve covered all the important aspects that people w ill need to know in order to create great beats with their machine.

I hope this book will answer all your questions, but if after reading this book y ou are still struggling, you may want to post your questions on my MPC dedicated forums found at

http://www.mpc-forums.com

These forums are the centre of MPC knowledge on the internet where you’ll find over 22,000 fellow MPC users who’ll try to give you a helping hand with your problem.

Hope you enjoy the book! MPC-Tutor PS. I have no affiliation to Akai, so please do not email me with technical support

questions for your MPC1000! Support questions should be sent directly to Akai as they have a dedicated team to handle support for their products. Akai tech support can be found at the following URL

http://www.akaipro.com/contact.php

Preface – How to Use This Book

Overview

This book contains over 50 step-by-step tutorials that in my opinion should be read in the order they are presented. Of course, if you are an intermediate MPC1000 user, you may want to skip the ‘Fundamental Skills’ section and dive straight in to the more meaty sections of the book. That said, you may be surprised at some of the additional knowledge you pick up from the early chapters as there are so many little features that tend to get skipped over by even experienced users.

My advice is to go through each tutorial a few times so that you completely understand all the functions explained within it – remember that many of the more advanced tutorials actually require a strong knowledge of the earlier chapters.

Tutorial Files

Many of the tutorials in this book have associated files that are used to explain the concepts more clearly to you. All tutorial files are included in folders that came with this book and each folder is clearly labeled with the tutorial number and name so you should have no problem finding the files you need. There are nearly 700 tutorial files including WAVs, PGMs, and SEQ files files, so not only will these help you with the tutorials, you’ll also have a nice sample library to use for your own tracks! Make sure you extract all the files correctly within a program such as Winzip (www.winzip.com) as this will ensure that all the files are kept in their correct folders.

Searching

The beauty of a PDF is that you can search its contents very easily from within the free Abode Acrobat reader. I recommend you install the full version (it’s still free ) which is available from here

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

To search this Ebook, simply go to ‘Edit’ and select ‘Search’. Alternatively, if you have a PC just press ‘CTRL & F’.

Fundamental Skills

Before you start learning all the flashy tricks on your MPC, it’s essential that you first master the basic techniques needed to use all the main functions of your MPC1000. This section covers all the essential elements such as editing and sampling, and recording sequences.

001 Audio Connections

Knowing how to hook up your MPC for sound is perhaps the most vital step for beginners – in this tutorial we look at the major options available to you.

Outgoing Audio Connections

In order to sample and play back sounds on your MPC, you'll first need to hook up the audio outs to your sound system. You may already have a small home studio with a mixer and amplifier/speaker system already set up - or perhaps you just have a home stereo system. It's not too important at this stage how advanced or basic your set up is, just so long as it allows you to hear your MPC in all it's glory.

I. Connecting to a hi fi system

Whether you have a single unit system or a set of hi fi separates, you'll need to locate the 'AUXILLARY' input - typically, this is called 'AUX' and on most sound systems will consist of a set of white and red RCA female connectors located at the back of the amplifier. This is the best place to connect the audio outputs of your MPC.

Unfortunately your MPC does not feature RCA sockets. RCA connectors are the standard connectors used in domestic audio and video systems, while your MPC features 1/4 inch jack sockets - these jacks are more

typically found on semipro and pro audio equipment. The solution is to buy an RCA - 1/4 inch jack lead (which features two RCA connectors at one end and two ¼ inch jack connectors at the other), or buy two RCA-1/4 inch jack conversion connectors, which look like the picture to the right.

Remember, you need two connectors as your MPC outputs sound in stereo. Your MPC actually has several outputs – the two stereo outs (STEREO OUTS), the 4 individual (mono) outputs (ASSIGNABLE MIX OUTS) and a digital (stereo) output (DIGITAL OUT). We will look at all the outputs later, but initially we’ll look at what we would consider the ‘main’ outputs of your MPC – the STEREO OUTS. These are two unique outputs that carry separately carry the left and right hand output signals of your MPC and are the default outputs that are used.

What does stereo and mono mean?

A mono signal is simply a single channel of audio, with no panning information. A stereo signal is actual comprised of 2 mono signals, one panned hard left, the ot her panned hard right – this is the signal you will hear when playing a record or CD and by using two channels, we can play with the panning of sounds so that they appear louder on one side compared to another – for example, in a drum loop, you may notice the hi hats are louder on the left hand side – we say the hi hats are panned more to the left in the stereo signal. We’ll look at this in more detail later in the book.

Connect your left MPC output to the white AUX input on your hifi, and connect the right output to the red AUX input. Make sure you set your hi fi to output sound via its AUX output (refer to its manual). Now the main stereo output of your MPC will play through your sound system.

What if my Hi Fi doesn't have an AUX connector?

If you have a separate amplifier, you can connect your MPC to any line input. Typically, this is any input such as CD, Tape or Tuner - but not the phono inputs. Most hi fi systems do have a line input of some description but if yours does not, then you will have to buy yourself a system that can cope with this. I recommend the system described in the following section

II. Connecting to a studio mixer and amplifier

If you are seriously thinking about producing your own mu sic at home, it's a good idea to get yourself a dedicated amplifier (power amps, such as a Samson Servo 120), studio monitors such as Tannoy Reveals and a

studio mixer such as a Mackie VLZ 1202 or the one of the budget

Behringer mixers. A studio mixer is similar to a DJ mixer, except they typically have 8 or more individual channels (as opposed to 2 stereo channels on a DJ mixer) and have many more sound controls built in. This mixer acts as an interface for your audio signal - in this case, it is

the mixer that is connected to your amplifier, not your MPC.

All studio mixers have 1/4 inch jack inputs so you can hook up your MPC using a standard audio cable available from any music shop. Your mixer will have two types of input channel - single (mono) or stereo. A stereo channel will only have one set of eq and pan control for two jack inputs.

If you have a spare stereo channel available, simply connect the main stereo left output of your MPC to the left input socket of this ch annel using a jack lead. Then connect the right stereo output of your MPC to the right input of the mixer channel. If you only have mono channels available, simply pan one hard left and the other hard right using your mixers pan pots – this will give you exactly the same set up as

using the single stereo channel. Then as before, it's left out into left in (hard left

channel) and right out into right in (hard right channel).

Later in this book, we’ll look more deeply at how to use the additional individual outputs, but for the moment, you could also wire these up to your mixer. Simply connect each of the 4 outputs to 4 available mono inputs on your mixer. A typical set up is shown below:

III. Connecting to a DJ mixer and amplifier

The procedure is similar to above as basically, a DJ mixer is just a specialised studio mixer designed for mixing together turntable (as well as line signal) inputs – a common hip hop scratch mixer is the Vestax PMC05 Pro. This time, you will probably find that you have to use the RCA cables mentioned in the first section of this tutorial. A DJ mixer features both phono and line inputs - phono inputs are only for turntables, so make sure that you connect your MPC to a set of line inputs (left to left, right to right). Finally, make sure yo u switch your channel from 'phono' to 'line'. Now your MPC volume can be controlled through your DJ mixer and can be used during a mix just as you would a turntable or CD player.

Incoming Audio Connections

To sample sounds into your MPC, you will need to connect an audio source to the RECORD IN inputs found at the back of your MPC unit. As in the previous sections, the type of cables you need to use are dependant on your sound source and the connectors it uses. We will discuss actual sampling technique later tutorials.

I. Sampling Directly From a CD player or similar sound source

All domestic CD players have RCA outputs so make sure you have your jack-RCA conversion arranged as described in the previous sections. Simply connect the left CD out into the left MPC in, and vice versa for the right input. The same procedure applies for computer sound cards, video players and DVD players.

II. Sampling from a Turntable

You cannot sample directly by plugging your turntable into the MPC outs - a phono signal is not strong enough and will sound puny and quiet when plugged in directly to your MPC. The signal needs to be amplified to line level using either a DJ mixer or a dedicated RIAA pre-amp. These preamps are built into all DJ mixers and in most cases, it works out cheaper to buy a low cost DJ mixer than to buy a dedicated preamp. First connect your turntable to your DJ Mixer as you normally would and simply run the outputs of your DJ mixer into the inputs of your MPC.

'What if I use my DJ mixer as my only sound mixer?'

You cannot sample from a sound source and at the same time use that same source as your MPC sound amplifier - it would cause a feedback loop. The solution here is to connect your turntable/DJ mixer to your MPC record ins but do not connect the MPC audio outs to anything. Instead, you will have to use your headphones to monitor the sounds - just plug them into the headphone socket on the front right panel of your MPC. This is why it is better to have a dedicated studio mixer to control your MPC output signal and not rely on a DJ mixer.

III. Sampling from a microphone

There are two types of microphone - dynamic and condenser. Condenser mics need some form of pre-amplification to raise their signal, while dynamic mics like a Shure SM58 function without amplification (but have limit ed use in a studio environment and are better suited for stage performances). In both cases, you should really use a dedicated microphone preamplifier/compressor such as this DBX model. With a condenser mic, like the AKG 3000B you can use this preamp to raise the mic signal and then use the built-in compressor to limit and squash any peaks - this means that if your vocalist shouts too loud, it will not distort your recorded signal. With a dynamic mic, you just use the compression without the amplifier (although the end result will not be as good as dynamic mics are more suited for stage work).

Simply connect your mic to the compressor unit, then connect your compressor output to the MPC input. As vocals are a mono source, you only need to connect a single output to your MPC, standard practice is to connect to the left input. Please refer to your compressor manufacturer’s manual on how to set up your compressor for limiting a signal.

Personally, I recommend recording vocals and other performances such as scratching and guitar playing to a multitrack recording system first, then you can sample your sounds at your own leisure from these recordings at a later date

What about the digital connections?

The digital output sends out the same signal as the stereo outputs, except it is in digital format rather than analogue. This means the quality of sound will be much better. So, if you have a mixer with a digital input, you could use the digital output as your main output method. To hook this up, you’ll need a coax ial cable – you can buy ‘special’ digital coaxial cables from any music store, but much of the time you can get by with a standard audio coaxial cable as described at the start of this chapter. Many digital multi-trackers feature some form of digital input and output so your MPC digital connectors will come in very handy when recording and sampling with these multi-trackers (see later in this book !).

Equally, you can sample into your MPC using the DIGITAL IN connector – hence, if your sound source has a digital output, you will benefit from higher quality digital recordings with less hiss.

Note that the MPC only has coaxial digital connectors, while some digital machines such as CD players or minidisk recorders may only have an optical digital interface. If so, you will need to purchase a conversion box – these are not too expensive and will happily convert between various types of digital signal.

002 - Understanding MIDI

Initially, the concept of MIDI can be confusing, but hopefully in this tutorial you will realise that MIDI is pretty simple and has many uses.

What is MIDI?

Many people know that the MPC is a sampler capable of recording audio from a variety of sources. But in reality, sampling is perhaps the weakest part of the MPC the main use of an MPC is its sequencer.

What is a sequencer? It's a device for recording data about musical events, rather than audio. With a sequencer, you do not record the actual sounds from the performing instrument, you simply record note data, which can consist of pitch, volume, length etc as well as the timing of that note in relation to other notes. These instructions can be used to play the sounds from any compatible sound source (such as a sound module, another sampler, a keyboard synth, etc).

So, an example of sequencer information in plain English would be something like this:

"At the start of Bar 2, play a low C note for exactly one bar, at a volume of 50" This information is what your MPC will store in it s sequencer (but in a different, more

mathematical format!). But as you can see, the above information is very generic and is certainly not audio! So, to make a sound from this information, you have to send this information to a piece of equipment that is capable of reading this data and knowing that this data is an instruction to play a 'C n o te'.

A standard form of information transfer was developed that allows instruments and sequencers to talk to each other - it's called MIDI . MIDI stands for Musical

Instrument Digital Interface. It's very important to understand one thing - Midi does not carry audio, merely instructional data.

The MPC can transmit and receive MIDI signals. It can also record incoming MIDI signals in its sequencer. Once that data is saved into the sequencer you can hook up any MIDI instrument that is capable of emitting sound and get the MPC sequencer to 'command' it play the notes saved in its sequencer.

So why do we need MIDI? Well, let's look at synthesizers and sound modules. If you have a synth, it will have a built in keyboard so when you hit a key, a sound will play depending on the sound patch you have selected. But if you have a sound module, you do not have a keyboard built in, you have to control the built in sounds using a MIDI controller.

The most common MIDI controller will be a MIDI control keyboard. These keyboards do not have sounds inside them, all they do is transmit MIDI signals. When hooked up to a sound module, it's these MIDI control signals that tell t he sound module which note to play. So, press a C note on the control keyboard and it sends a MIDI message to the sound module to play a C note and then the sound module outputs an audio sound in the key of C.

If you hook up the control keyboard to your MPC and press a C note, your MPC wi ll receive this MIDI data and record it to it's internal sequen cer. At some point later, you could then connect your MPC to a sound module and press PLAY on your MPC. The recorded MIDI information will be transmitted to th e sound module and the C note will be played (out of the sound module audio outs, not the MPCs!). Now the MPC is acting like a MIDI controller. At no point in this situation does the MPC output any audio sounds - only the sound module will output sounds - remember, MIDI just carries the instructions (sorry, but this is a misconception that arises A LOT!).

What About Internal Samples?

The MPC can be set to either play external sounds via MIDI connections to sound modules, or you can sample (or load) sounds into the MPC and use the sequencer to play these. In fact you can have the 'best of both worlds' - you can use you MPC to play MIDI devices and play internal samples. So for example, you can have a sampled drum loop playing that is stored inside the MPC and you can have a bass line being played by a sound module controlled by your MPC. We'll describe all this in much greater detail in the forthcomin g tutorials.

Main MIDI Situations with an MPC

There are several uses of MIDI in relation to our MP C and we shall look at the main ones now. Do not worry if this sounds a little confusing - you can always refer back to this section when you need it later. Before we look at the more complex uses of MIDI, we'll first look at a way we can use MIDI signals to control samples th at we've loaded into our MPC.

Controlling the MPC pads with a keyboard

This is the simplest MIDI set up. As I'm sure you know, your MPC is a sampler, which means you can sample sounds into it and play those sounds by pressing the rubber PADS on the right hand side of the machine. But, we do not have to play these internal MPC sounds with the PADS - we can use a MIDI controller keyboard instead. As I've already mentioned, a controller keyboard is simply a keyboard with no sounds inside it that is used to instruct sound modules to play their internal sounds. Well, in this case, our MPC can be considered a 'sound module' - i.e. it's a machine capable of receiving MIDI instructions, and these instructions will tell it which internal samples it will play.

Set-up is simple. All you do is connect one end of a MIDI cable to the MIDI out port of the control keyboard and the other end to the MIDI IN port of the MPC (I would connect to MIDI port 1 by default).

Notice in the above diagram that there is no audio connection to the MIDI control keyboard, there's only a MIDI connection to the MPC. In this situation, the only sounds will come from the MPC audio outputs (remember to load some samples in first!)

When you play a key on your keyboard, the note you play has certain properties the note has a key represented by the 'MIDI note number', it has a volume (or loudness) represented by 'velocity' and it plays for a certain length of time - this is represented by it's length. There are other properties that can be represented but we don't need to worry about those at this stage. All this in formation about the note you are playing on the control keyboard is sent down the MIDI cable to your MPC and can be stored or recorded into the MPC’s sequencer (as we shall see in later tutorials).

So, as long as the key you press on the keyboard corresponds to a sampled note in your MPC, your note will be played and will come out of the MPC audio outs. We'll look at how to assign sounds inside your MPC in a later tutorial.

Connecting up a keyboard with sounds (synthesiser)

If you have a keyboard with its own sounds, like a Korg Triton for example, you can still control the MPC samples as you did in the last example. This is becaus e any synthesiser keyboard will transmit MIDI information. Just remember that the main difference here will be that your keyboard in this situation can also emit sounds itself

- so make sure you turn off the synthesiser's volume control, otherwise you'll not only hear the MPC internal samples, but also the synth's sounds as well!

The main thing I want to show here is that a synth not only has a MIDI out, it also has a MIDI IN - hence it can not only send MIDI information, it can also RECEIVE it. Equally, our MPC not only receives MID I information, it can also TRANSMIT it. This means that we can send a MIDI information signal to our synth from our MPC and this signal can (amongst other things) tell our synth to play a particular note. How do we send a MIDI signal from our MPC? Well, the PADs all have a unique MIDI note

number so when you press a PAD, it's the same as pressing a key on a MIDI

keyboard. For example, PAD A1 is by default MIDI Note 37 - if a MIDI synth is connected to your MPC and you press PAD A1, it will play MID I note 37 (C#) in our synth.

This time, as well as connecting the keyboard MIDI out to the MPC MIDI in, you connect the MPC MIDI out to the keyboard MIDI in. This is called the MIDI 'handshake'.

So, press a PAD on the MPC and a MIDI instruction travels from the MPC MIDI out to the synth MIDI in. Upon receiving it, the synth plays the appropriate note which in turn is outputted as audio through the synth's audio outputs.

Equally, you could press a key on the synth and this will transmit a MIDI instruction to the MPC. Upon receiving this instruction, the MPC could play an internal sample (should one exist at that MIDI note number) which would be outputted out of the MPC audio outs (if connected).

MIDI channels

For the MPC to play the sounds of a keyboard we need to understand MIDI channels. Each MIDI cable is capable of sending data over 16 individual channels. In our keyboard, let's say we assign a bass patch to MIDI channel 1, and a piano patch to MIDI channel 2. Now, in our MPC, let's assume we have a track in our sequencer and it contains one track of note data. If we assign that track to MIDI channel 1, the MPC sends data through the MIDI cable to our keyboard on channel 1 only, and you'll hear a bassline played from your keyboard as this was the sound assigned to MIDI channel 1 in our keyboard.

If we then change the MPC track to output on MIDI channel 2 instead, we will not hear the bass sound anymore, instead we will hear the sound our keyboard has assigned to MIDI channel 2 (that was a piano sound).

If we add a new track to our sequence and assign this to channel 1 (along with the track on channel 2), we'll hear both a bass line and piano at the same time. This is because our MIDI out tracks of note data in our MPC, we could assign each track a unique MIDI channel number (1 to 16) and hence be capable of instructing our sound module to play 16 different sound patches (as long as we had assigned a sound patch to each MIDI channel within our sound module).

We'll look at how to set MIDI channels in your MPC and the specif ics of recording MIDI note data later in this book.

Hooking up a sound module and using a keyboard to play its notes into the MPC

Let's say you have a sound module like a Roland XV2020. It has no keyboard so you need to play its notes with a control keyboard.

In the above picture, the control keyboard sends MIDI information to the sound module which in turn plays the note as audio out of its audio outputs.

So how do we record a MIDI performance of these sounds into our MPC? Well, this time we need to set up a MIDI chain. As before, the keyboard controller MIDI out

goes into the MPC MIDI in, but this time the MPC MIDI out goes into the module MIDI in.

Again, make sure you have your MIDI channels set properly and the audio out of your module connected to an amplifier. Now, when you play some notes on the keyboard, it sends info to the MPC via the MPC MIDI IN, and the MPC then sends this same information via the MIDI OUT to the module's MIDI IN - and you should hear some sounds from the module - at the same time, if you se your sequencer to record, you'll be able to record all the MIDI information into you r MPC.

Adding another module

You can add as many modules to the above set up as you like. Simply connect the MIDI thru from the first module into the MIDI in of the next module and the MIDI thru of that module into the MIDI in of the next module. Just make sure you set each module to a different MIDI channel. So let's say to have a JV1010 and a Korg Electribe hooked up, it would look like this

From here, you can see that when you play the keyboard, the MIDI signal is sent to the MIDI IN of the MPC. That same signal is then sent out of the MPC MIDI OUT into the JV1010 MIDI IN. That signal is then passed on via the JV1010 MIDI thru to the Korg MIDI IN. But to hear our modules we have to set the correct MIDI channels first.

Setting the Channels

Set the JV1010 to MIDI channel 1, and the Korg to channel 2. When you want to record a sound from the JV, set your keyboard to MIDI channel 1, and set the track you wish to record on your MPC to channel 1 also. When you wish to record the Korg, simply set your keyboard MIDI channel to 2 and select the MPC track you wish to record on to channel 2 also. Upon playing back your sequence, your MPC will send messages to both MIDI channels 1 and 2 and you will therefore hear both modules at once (as long as both modules are connected to an amp via a mixer).

Hooking Up and Synching to a Multi Track Recorder or a Computer

In order to record your MPC songs onto CD, it is likely that you will need t o first record your individual MPC tracks to a multi tracker or a computer. To do this you will first need to connect your MPC to the multi tracker/computer via both audio and MIDI connections. We will talk about this in a lot more detail in tutorial 045 - Recording Your Beats Part 2 - Recording to a Multi-Tracker.

003 Memory & Storage

A common area of confusion for beginners in the sampling world are the concepts of memory and storage. In this chapter we’ll look at these concepts and give you an overview of how your MPC handles this area.

Memory

Memory refers to the computer chip inside your MPC that dynamically stores sample and sequence data while your MPC is turned on. So, when you sample or load a sound into your MPC, it is the memory that keeps it available to you to use it in your song creations. Your MPC actually contains two different types of memory:

Standard RAM – this type of memory makes up the bulk of memory in your MPC and by default, there is actually 11.4MB of RAM available for sampling usage – this can be upgraded to 128MB using additional memory chips. There is also a small portion of RAM that holds sequence data, 1.6MB. The main feature of standard RAM is that when you turn off your MPC, all data stored in the RAM is permanently lost. This type of RAM is the same kind of RAM found in laptops and computers.

Flash Ram – this RAM differs as it is able to remember its content even after turning your MPC off. So any samples saved to your Flash RAM chip will sti ll be available to you when you turn your MPC back on. There is approximately 5MB of Flash RAM in your MPC. When you buy a new MPC1000 it will actually be filled with samples already – we’ll look at how to load these up later in this book.

So, two types of RAM. Flash RAM is great for keeping some of your favourite drum kits constantly in memory and the standard RAM’s job is to hold all y o ur other samples that you need to work with at any one time. So, let’s say you are working on a track that uses a program of bass sounds, a drum kit, a piano program and some sound effects, you need to load these sounds into your MPC’s standard RAM so that they can be assigned to pads and recorded into your sequencer. So, if you do not have enough RAM in your MPC, you’ll find that you can only have a limited amount of samples into play with at any one time – if you run out of space you’ll need to delete sounds from memory, or accept that you must upgrade your internal memory fast!

So remember, when you turn off your MPC, standard RAM gets wiped - you can save your songs and samples to Flash RAM, but this isn’t very practical as you’ll soon have

gigabytes of sample data! So, this is where storage comes into play. Storage

The main form of storage in your MPC is your memory card. This is the card that fits into the slot on the front panel of your MPC and you should have got a 32MB memory card when you purchased your MPC1000. Your memory card is similar to a floppy disk or zip disk – it’s a form of removable media meaning it allows you to save data to it and then remove it to ‘take away’ – you can then place this disk back in your MPC and load up your sounds from the disk into your internal memory. A memory card can be wiped, browsed, files can be deleted, added and renamed, just like a floppy disk.

So, the process works like this. You turn on your MPC and sample some sounds into it. You make some programs and sequences and finally you have a cool beat forming. When you decide to finish up for the day, you place your memory card into the slot, save all your work to the memory card and the next day you turn on your MPC, load up your song from the memory card and carry on workin g.

Eventually you’ll have more than one song on your memory card (don’t worry, just like a computer, everything can be placed in separate folders – more about this in the following chapters). You may not fit that many on a 32MB card, so eventually you’ll have to buy another memory card – you can get lots of different sizes up to 2GB.

But remember - it doesn’t matter how large your memory card is, you can only load up sample data up to the size of your internal memory. So by default, only 11.4MB of RAM can be loaded at any one time into your MPC unless you upgrade your memory to the full 128MB.

Which memory card?

There are many types of memory card, but the one used by your MPC1000 is called a Compact Flash Card or CF Card – do not confuse this with the Flash RAM, as the memory card is a storage medium, not memory.

In theory, any flash card should work in your MPC, but it’s possible that some makes of CF card will not work. Members on mpc-forums.com have stated that 512MB cards work fine (these cards were made by Kingston) and Akai state on their web site that 2GB cards have been tested and work correctly – please note that technical limitation of the file system used by the MPC1000 mean 2GB cards are the largest possible that can be used. The MPC reads both type 1 and 2 CF cards

Dan Elec 2GIG CF TYPE I Card Kingston 512 Mb SanDisk 2GB CF Kingston 1gig CF card Dan Elec 1GB CF CARD TYPE II Viking 256mb Compact Flash

Basically, anything by Kingston seems to do the trick.

The HDM10 Internal Hard Drive Kit

You now have an additional storage option for your MPC1000 in the form of an internal hard drive. While not available by default in your MPC, you can easily install an internal hard drive yourself using the HDM10 kit ( a vailable from Akai and other music equipment retailers). With this kit you can purchase a standard 2.5” internal hard drive (the ones built for laptops) and install this drive directly into your MPC, giving you up to 80GB of storage space.

Upgrading Your RAM

To upgrade your internal RAM, you have two options:

1) Buy the official Akai EXM128 128MB RAM module

2) Buy ‘unofficial’ RAM from a computer store. Option 1 is the safe option, but in the end, EXM128 is just standard computer

memory, it has no special ‘MPC Specific’ features, and man y people have bought laptop RAM and successfully installed it into their MPC1000. Currently the Akai module is 3 times the price of standard memory bought from an online memory retailer, so it’s up to you whether you go the unofficial route and save yourself around 60-70% on the purchase price. But, a lot of people on MPC-Forums have bought their own memory and it works just fine.

Now, the following information is just that – information. We don’t officially endorse the use of unofficial upgrades to your MPC1000 and please be aware that by installing RAM other than the EXM128, you may be invalidating your warranty. We take no responsibility for any damage you may cause to your MPC in using this unofficial RAM and do not take any responsibility for RAM purchased that does not work in your MPC1000 – okay, got the disclaimer out of the way…

According to fellow MPC1000 users on our forums, the RAM used by the MPC1000 has the following specification:

PC 133 144PIN CL3 SODIMM 256MB

Also important is the configuration of the chips on the memory board – a 32M*64bit module organisation is required.

In theory, any brand of memory should work, but of course, this may not be the case, although I‘ve yet to see a report of the above memory specification never working – the only times I’ve seen reports of failed memory is when it did not meet all the specifications above.

Note that you have to buy 256MB RAM to give your MPC the full 128MB RAM. I won’t bore you with the technical reason why this is the case, but suffice to say, your MPC only utilises half the RAM on the card. And no, buying a 512MB memory stick will NOT give you 256MB RAM – the maximum the MPC1000 can use is 128MB, so I don’t even think the 512MB modules will work!

The following memory has been reported to work with an MPC1000 – I cannot verify these claims, but they have been made by members of the MPC-Forums community.

Samsung 144pin 133mhz CL3 256mb SODIMM HYNIX PC 133 144PIN CL3 SODIMM 256MB PNY 256mb pc133 144 pin sodimm Samsung 256MB PC133 SODIMM 144 Pin CL-3 MEMORY Kingston PC 133 144PIN CL3 SODIMM 256MB 256mb Infineon 144pin SODIMM PC133 SDRAM CL3 Samsung 144pin 133mhz CL3 256mb SODIMM (for laptops)

Some people have also installed a 128MB chip – remember the actual available memory is halved, so if you do this, you will get 64MB of working RAM.

To install the RAM is very simple. First, unplug your MPC and remove both the power cord and any other cables plugged into the unit. Turn your MPC upside down and place it on a cushion (this will protect the front from scratches etc).

You will see a small metal plate with a couple of screws holdin g it in – carefully unscrew this and remove. Here you will see a slot – this is where your memory chip will be placed.

Before you touch your memory chip, discharge any static electricity you may be carrying by touching a grounded metal object. This could be a computer or a radiator. Now you can safely remove the chip from its packaging, holding it only by the side edges – do not touch the black chips and do not touch the gold contacts!

The memory chip can only fit into the slot one way. Once you place the chip in, push down until it clicks into place and screw the base plate back on again.

Upon turning on your MPC the new memory is detected and you should see the comforting message ‘128MB Installed’. If there is a problem, the screen will tell you so – this will indicate either an incompatible or damaged chip.

004 Loading Part 1

Before we do anything in our MPC, I suggest we perform a little tweak. Basically, your MPC comes with 5MB of built in sounds stored in the Flash RAM. By default, these sounds are set to automatically load every time you turn on your MPC. Very annoying.

To turn off this feature, we need to go to the LOAD screen. To access this screen, press the MODE button (it will flash green), and then PAD2 – you will see the following:

To turn off the autoload from Flash memory, press the ‘up’ cursor (just under your jog wheel) twice so that ‘Load from:MEMORY CARD’ is highlighted. The WINDOW button will now light up – press this and you will see a new screen called ‘Load Set Up’. Set ‘Autoload:’ from ‘INTERNAL MEMORY’ to ‘OFF’ by moving the jog wheel to the left. That’s it – now each time you turn on your MPC, the sounds in the Flash memory will not automatically load (I’ll show you how to completely remove these sounds in a later chapter).

Just to confuse matters, there is actually another ‘autoload’ feature, but we’ll look at that a little bit further down in this tutorial…

Before you begin sampling with your MPC, it’s a good idea to first understand how to use your compact flash card. With this card you’ll be able to create folders, save sounds and load sounds, plus be able to move your sounds from your MPC to your computer.

In this chapter we’ll be using the 32MB compact flash card that comes with your MPC. Remember that this already contains a collection of sounds and programs, but by the end of this tutorial, we will show you how to empty this card completely (but keep these sounds backed up for later use). If you bought your MPC second hand, it may not have the compact flash card with it – if so, just buy yourself a card such as the ones recommended in chapter 3.

First take your memory card and carefully push it into the front memory card slot on your MPC. Akai warn you in the manual that you should be careful as incorrect insertion could accidentally bend the internal connector pins. To be honest, Akai do not help matters by using what is in my opinion a very poorly designed memory card reader in the MPC1000 – it’s very hard to get the card into the slot, so patience is needed.

Once the card has been pushed in, the little black eject button will automatically pop out indicating that your card is ready for use.

Viewing The Contents Of Your Card

To see exactly what is on your card, you will need to access one of the disk screens in your MPC – the LOAD screen. As already mentioned, to access this screen, press the MODE button (it will flash green), and then PAD2. You will see the following screen:

You know you are in the LOAD screen as this is the highlighted tab along the bottom of the screen. At the top of the screen, your MPC tells you what storage source is currently selected. By default, your MPC will always use the compact flash memory card (even if it isn’t in the slot).

‘ROOT’ refers to its position in the memory card. Root actually refers to the ‘main’ part of the card, before we’ve browsed into any sub folders and by default, your MPC will always begin in the ROOT of your disk.

‘FILE’ is the currently selected folder or file on the disk. ‘View:’ let’s us narrow down which type of file we want to view – so if we wanted

only to view program files, we would set this to program. ‘Wave Free’ tell us how much sample memory is available in the internal MPC RAM

(not the disk). ‘Seq. Free’ is the amount of free memory in the internal RAM that is solely dedicated

to sequence and song data. As you can see (assuming you have the factory issued memory card), there is at

least one folder on view, this is called Autoload. This contains around 11MB of samples and sequences that Akai have provided as part of your MPC1000 purchase. Now, we can load any of these samples or sequences in a number of ways – let’s take then one at a time.

Autoload

You might not want to do this, but trust me, it’s fun. Switch off your MPC, but leave the memory card in the slot. Now turn it back on.

As you probably guessed by now, the ‘Autoload’ folder has lived up to its name! Upon turning on your machine, the entire contents of the Autoload folder are loaded into memory – in this case lots of samples, sequences and programs. What’s important to note is that even though you turned off ‘autoload’ previously, this form of disk autoload still occurs – that’s because we are only able to turn off autoload

from the internal Flash memory, not from disks. If you ever use a disk with a folder called ‘Autoload’ this will always autoload on start up – the on ly ways to avoid this is to not have an autoload folder on your memory card (in the next chapter we’ll show you how to do this) or to not have a disk with an autoload folder already in the memory card slot when you turn on the machine.

Anyway, as we’ve now loaded some data into your MPC, let’s have a listen. If your MPC is connected to your sound system, press the white PLAY button and you’ll hear the first demo sequence play.

Now, the Autoload folder can contain anything – so if you want you can delete its contents and add your own sounds for autoloading. You can even create an autoload folder on all your disks just by creating a folder with the same name (only one per disk though). Creating autofolders will be tackled in our chapter on ‘Saving’.

Folder Loading

Now take your memory card out of the slot and turn off your MP C. Now turn on again, place your card back in the slot and return to the LOAD screen (press MODE & PAD 2) – notice that the Autoload folder didn’t autoload this time as the disk wasn’t in the card slot upon power up.

We’re now going to load the entire ‘Autoload’ folder manually. If you refer to the previous screen shot, you’ll see that by default, the first folder on our disk is already selected – i.e. it is highlighted next the ‘File:’ field – you know it’s a folder due to the small folder image next to it. Unlike previous MPCs, the MPC1000 is happy to load entire folders in one go (as long as you have enough memory available).

To manually load the ‘Autoload’ folder, just press the white F6 key which correspon ds to the DO IT tab on the screen. You will see the f o llowing screen:

This screen tells you that your MPC is about to load all the programs, samples and sequence/song data contained within that folder. The ‘Replace same files in memory’ option dictates whether the MPC will overwrite files with the same name if they already exist in memory. So, it you have a sample called ‘snare34’ and this folder also contained a sample called ‘snare34’, by leaving this set to ‘NO’, the original sample will not be replaced.

The ‘CLEAR’ button (F2) will load the folder cont ents and at the same time will also wipe any existing files in memory. This option is good if you want to start with a clean slate if you existing memory contents were not needed any more – if you select this option you will first be asked whether you are sure you want to do this!

So, to load your entire folder, you can press DO IT (or CLEAR). After loading, you will be returned to the main loading screen.

File Loading

Most of the time when using your MPC, you’ll be probably be loading individual files, not entire folders. Your MPC recognises a number of different files, so let’s look at each one in turn:

This represents an individual audio sample file (.WAV or .SND). Your MPC can read the standard computer audio file, a WAV file, as well as the old MPC3000/MPC2000 SND file format.

This is an individual sequence file (.MID or SEQ). When you record a sequence in your MPC sequencer, you save all the note data into this sequence file. As we shall see later there are two options when saving individual sequence data, one is to save a .MID file which is actually a standard MIDI file as used by all MIDI equipment (contains no MPC specific sequence data), and the other option is to create a SEQ file which is similar but does contain sequence information that can only be read by an MPC1000. Reloading either of these files will recreate this sequence information in your MPC. Please note that no sounds are saved with this file, just sequencer event information.

This is a program file (.PGM). A program is a collection of sounds assigned to particular pads (see the Programs tutorial), so loading this file will load all the samples in that program as well as their pad assignments and parameters.

An .ALL file contains all the information about sequences and songs in memory at the time of saving. Unlike the MID file wh ich only loads a single sequence, an ALL file will save all sequences currently stored in memory (up to 99), plus any songs you have create with them (a song is simply a set of sequences played in a particular preset order, we'll discuss this in later tutorials).

This is a project file (.PRJ). A project file is a single file that wh en loaded will load all sequences, songs, samples, programs and effect settings associated with that project.

This is an INPUT THRU file. This file is used when manipulating external audio signals in our MPC - we’ll look at this in chapter 039.

So, let’s look at how we can load individual sounds from the memory card (or indeed the optional internal hard drive option if you have it). Please note that if you don’t have the pre-populated memory card that should have come with your MPC, initially skip through to the end of this chapter as we will show you how to transfer sounds from a computer to a blank memory card.

So, make sure you are on the load screen (MODE & PAD2). You should see this:

First, let’s get ‘inside’ the Autoload folder. To do this, simply ensure the Autoload folder is selected (i.e. it’s got a dark rectangle around it) and press the purple right cursor (arrow) button to the bottom right of the jog wheel. By pressing the right cursor we enter any selected folder – and by pressing the left cursor, we can leave it (as long as ‘File:’ is selected).

At this point you should see the following (or similar, the initially selected file may differ):

In the example above, we have an audio file (note the arrow icon) selected called ‘18CRS39A’. We also know that the size of this file is 213KB, and you’ll also see that rather than saying ‘ROOT’ as the currently selected folder, it now says ‘Autoload’ – i.e. we are now inside the Autoload folder.

Before you load this file, you can preview it by pressing PLAY (F5). To load this file, we would just select DO IT. When you do this, you may be warned that this file already exists (because it was loaded wh en you manually loaded the entire Autoload folder). For the moment, if you get this screen, select REPLAC (F2) which will simply override the existing sample. You also have the option of renaming this sample so that the old version and the new version can co-exist in memory at the same time – we’ll look at how to name samples in the next chapter.

Usually though, when you load a sample in this wa y, you will see the following screen:

On this screen you can choose to assign this sample to one of the MPC pads – you can do this simply by tapping the pad it needs to be assigned to. We’ll look at programs in a later chapter, so for the moment, leave this set to OFF – this will assign the sample into memory, and will allow you to assign it to a pad in a program later.

By pressing PLAY (F2), you can listen to the sample. If it’s the one you want, press KEEP (F5) otherwise press DSCARD. You’ll then be returned to the main LOAD screen.

So, how do we browse the entire Autoload folder? Well one way would be to make sure our ‘File:…..’ is selected and simply turn the jog wh eel to the right – this will stat displaying all the files in order, one by one. A better way is to press the orange WINDOW key. You may have noticed that sometimes this key is lit, sometimes it is not. Well, whenever it lights up, this indicat e s that you have further options if you press this button.

So, press the WINDOW key and you will see the following:

Using the window key, you can see up to 4 files at a time. You can then scroll down and up using wither the jog wheel or the up and down cursor buttons. To preview a sound, press PLAY(F3). When you find a file you like, press the LOAD button (F5). TO return to the main LOAD screen, press CLOSE (F4).

If you scroll through the file list in Autoload, you ’ll see there are lots of files, some of which are not samples – for example there are some program files (

). To make your life even easier, it is possible to only view a particular file type. So on the main LAOD screen, select the ‘View’ parameter – to do this, press the ‘down’ cursor key to move the selection from ‘File:’.

By default, standard view is for ALL FILES. By turning your jog wheel to the right, you can select a specific view type to use. For example, the first option is PROGRAMS and by selecting this, only program files will now be displayed – so you can now

scroll through the file list (either in the main LOAD screen or within the WINDOW sub-screen) and only view programs. This is great if you have a folder with dozens of files and it’s hard to find exactly what you require.

So, let’s load up the Dance_Kit program. Simply select and press either DO IT (if in the main LOAD screen) or LOAD if in the ‘Directo ry’ sub-screen). You will see the following:

By default, ‘Load: WITH SAMPLE’ is selected which means that the program and all the samples within it are loaded into memory. If you jog wheel to the left, this will change to ‘PROGRAM ONLY’, which as the name suggests will load the program without the samples.

With ‘Replace same samples in memory’ set to NO, any samples in this program that are already in memory will not be loaded at all and your MPC will just keep the existing ones. Set this to YES to instead use these new samples in their place.

Pressing CLEAR (F2) will wipe the memory of the MPC of all program and sample data except for this new program you are loading. If you want to load this program and keep all other samples and programs as they are, make sure you press DO IT instead.

As with loading a single WAV file, if your program file already exist s in memory, you will get a warning to allow you to cancel, replace or rename. We’ll look at using programs later in this book, so for the moment, let’s just leave things as they are.

So, we now know how to load individual samples and programs. The theory is the same when loading sequence and project data, and we will look at this in the next chapter where we will also work with some of the sounds we have provided with this ebook. It’s important to note that you can load samples from an internal hard drive in the exact same way, except this time you would select ‘HARD DRIVE ’ instead of ‘MEMORY CARD’ in the ‘Load From:’ parameter. Equally, if you wish to load a sound from the internal flash memory, simply select ‘Load from: INTERNAL MEMORY’.

005 Loading Part 2

I’m making the assumption here that as you are reading a digital ebook, you actually have a PC or a Mac. If this isn’t that case, you’ll have to skip over this bit…

What we will do now is take some of the sounds provided with this ebook and load them into memory. So, first, go to your computer and find the folder you extracted your ebook download to. This folder will contain many sub-folders and each folder will be named after a chapter in this book.

Go to the folder in your ebook download called ‘005 Loading Part 2’. This folder contains our example files. If you go into the folder, you’ll see another folder called ‘TEST’ which contains several files.

What we want to do is get these files from your computer to your MPC1000. There are actually two ways you can do this:

1. Manual disk transfer

With this method, you will require a compact flash card reader for your computer. These are typically bought with USB connectors and can just be plugged directly into your computer’s USB port, but there are also internal version s which can be installed directly into your computer’s motherboard. These days, you can normally buy a card reader that reads not only compact flash cards, but also other types of cards such as Smart Media, typically known as a 3-in-1 reader (or similar).

Transferring sounds from your computer is simple. Just remove the memory card from your MPC and place it in the card reader on your computer. In Windows, after a few seconds you’ll probably get an automated pop up which will ask you what you want to do with this card – select ‘Open Folder to View files’ and you will be able to read the contents of your MPC memory card – you should see the Autoload folder and possibly another called ‘INTERNAL SOUNDS’ (more about this later).

So now, your card reader is just another disk in your computer, so you can drag and drop or copy and paste any files and folders you want to it (until it runs ou t of memory). So, simply copy and paste the TEST folder from your ‘005’ ebook folder onto the memory card. You can now take the card out, put it back in your MPC and you’ll be able to load the files in this folder.

2. Direct USB Transfer

You may have noticed the USB port at the back of your MPC1000 - this port allows you to connect your MPC1000 to your computer. Once connected correctly, your computer will then treat your MPC1000 as a removable drive, just like it would a USB Card Reader and hence it will be able to directly read any memory card inserted in your MPC.

Please note that connecting your MPC1000 to a computer does not allow your computer to read samples held in the MPC’s dynamic memory (nor can it read any samples in the internal Flash memory). It can only read samples that have been saved to the card – basically using this method your MPC turns into a very expensive memory card reader!

What Other USB devices can I connect?

Unfortunately none. The USB port serves only one purpose – to allow your computer to read a memory card in the MPC1000 memory card slot. You cannot attach a USB hard drive to this port and load/save samples to and from it, nor can you use t he USB post for any other form of data connection. It’s a shame, but I guess that’s why the MPC1000 is so cheap!

So, place a USB cable in your computer and slot the other end into your MPC. Nothing happens….

At this point, you need to activate the USB connection – to do this, go back to your main LOAD screen and press the USB button (F4). It should now say ‘Status=CONNECTED’ – at the same time, you may notice your computer finding and installing new hardware – this means it is now recognising your MPC as a removable drive.

If there is a memory card in your MPC1000, you should get a pop up (in Windows) and again, select ‘Open Folder to View files’ – and as before, you can copy and paste files from your computer directly to the MPC1000 memory card. So, if you didn’t transfer the TEST folder in the previous example, do so now.

It’s worth noting that while your MPC1000 is connected via USB and the USB page is selected, you cannot do anything in your MPC – it effectively locks up. To unlock it, you need to break the USB connection. Now you could just yank out the USB port at the back of your MPC, but this will normally lead to your computer crashing (blue screen of death).

So, first you must remove your MPC drive icon from your computer. In Windows, this is done by clicking the small green arrow icon in your system tray

Select your drive and you should get a pop up giving you the ‘all clear’ to remove the drive. At this point you can safely take the USB port out of the back of your MPC and your MPC will be unlocked.

So, the end result using either method is the same. Which one you choose is up to you – I prefer manual disk changing, but I suspect that constantly yanking flash cards in and out of ports can eventually increase the chances of damaging the card reader – not really a problem with a cheap card reader, but more of an issue if the built in card reader of your MPC breaks, so if you do change out the disk a lot, be careful and always slot it in gently.

Emptying Your Memory Card

At this point, you might want to start freeing up some space on your 32MB card. The easiest way to do this is by deleting files or folders through your computer (u sing either of the methods above). I recommend that you first copy the entire contents of

your memory card to a safe place on your computer, that way you have a backup of your free Akai sounds. Once backed up, you can happily delete all the sounds on your card and have plenty of free space. Remember that now the ‘Autoload’ folder is gone, there will be no automatically loading sounds wh en you turn on your MPC (although we can change that as we shall see later). Of course, you can always put any of the free Akai sounds back onto your card at a later date – and if you ever lose these free sounds they are available on the Akai web site:

http://www.akaipro.com/supportos.html#MFC1000

You can also delete folders and sounds directly inside your MPC, but we’ll see how to do this in the next chapter. You can also completely wipe a card by formatting….

Preparing A New Compact Flash Card

Formatting a disk is the process that ‘prepares’ and ‘configures’ the disk to allow it to be recognised by your MPC1000. Sometimes if your Flash card is causing problems, it may be that it needs ‘re-formatting’ to ensure it’s disk structure is the way it should be.

Most new Flash cards may work ‘out of the box’ with your MPC1000 as they will probably be formatted to the FAT file format. If this is not the case, you must first format the disk.

To do this, take your memory card, place it in your MPC and go to the LOAD screen (MODE & PAD2). Now press the UTILIT key (F3). As the screen says ‘THIS WILL ERASE THE WHOLE DATA OF SELECTED DEVICE!!’ – and it means it. Any data on that disk, once formatted, will be lost forever. To format the disk, just press DO IT. Your MPC will ask you one more time to make sure – if so, press DO IT again. IT will take a few seconds and the result will be an empty disk.

Now, while this is a way to quickly empty a disk entirely of all it’s sounds, I don’t recommend formatting for this reason and suggest you simply delete the folders via your computer. Basically, over-formatting a disk could eventually lead to the disk developing errors, so it’s best to keep formatting to a minimum. But, if your disk is not being recognised by your MPC, you’ll have to format it.

So, let’s have a look at our TEST folder that we’ve just transferred to our memory card. First, let’s switch off the MPC and turn it back on again to ensure it has nothing in memory. Place the card in your MPC and go to the main LOAD screen. You’ll initially be in ROOT and under ‘File: ’ you’ll see your first folder – this will probably be ‘Autoload’ if you didn’t delete it, or it will be TEST. If it’s not TEST, scroll until you find TEST and enter it by pressing the right cursor.

Now press WINDOW to view the contents of TEST. You’ll see several files there. First there are some

WAV files

: KICK, SNARE & HAT

Then there is a SEQ file

: BEAT

A program file

: DRUMS

An ALL file

: ALL_SEQS&SONGS

A project file

: TEST-P

An IPT file

: IPT-TEST-P

Now, our samples can be loaded individually by selecting them one by one and pressing LOAD. But rather than do that, let’s just load up the program, DRUMS – I made this program previously and have already assigned our two WAV samples to some pads. So, select DRUMS and press LOAD, then confirm DO IT.

Now let’s load up our BEAT sequence. This is an individual sequence file that will contain a small, simple beat based on the samples loaded into our DRUMS program. This time, you will see a different screen when you press LOAD:

Here you can select which of the 99 sequence holders you want to assign your new sequence. It makes sense to load it into sequence holder 1 – basically, your MPC will always default to the nearest empty sequence holder, but you can override this and even overwrite an existing sequence if required just by using the jog wheel to select it (but as our memory is blank, this doesn’t matter).

With our drum program and beat sequence in memory, let’s have a listen to our beat. Press MAIN to bring up the main sequencer screen and then press the PLAY START button – you’ll hear our 2 bar beat loop continuously.

Now, let’s see how project files work. A project file is an easy way to load up a snapshot of your MPC memory – we’ll see how to create one of these in the next chapter, but first let’s load up one I made earlier.

Go to the LOAD screen, enter the TEST folder and locate our TEST-P project file, then press DO IT. You’ll see the following:

‘Pressing DO IT will clear entire memory’ That’s okay, we want to do this, so press DO IT again. Now go back to the MAIN

screen and press PLAY START – your beat will play. So rather than laboriously load programs and sequence files as we did on older MPC’s, we can now load up an entire project in one single load. Very nice.

Updating the Operating System

The operating system (OS) for your MPC1000 is the software that makes everything ‘work’. Periodically, Akai will update this OS to fix bugs or add new features, so you’ll need to know how to update it. Your MPC1000 stores its operating system inside a small flash memory chip on the motherboard - this means you don't have to load the OS each time you use the machine.

First, find out what operating system you have. To do this, just press MODE and pad 10 (OTHER). In the top left of the screen you will see ‘Version=’ and then the version number. At the time of writing, the latest OS was 2.10.

Next go to the Akai web site and go to the support page, here you can find the latest OS.

http://www.akaipro.com/

Look to see what the latest version is – if the number is greater than the one you have, it’s time to upgrade. First download the OS to your computer and extract the MPC1000.BIN file from the zip archive (using Winzip or your computer’s built in decompression software).

Now transfer the BIN file to the MPC1000 memory card (using either of the transfer methods already mentioned in this chapter). At this point, turn your MPC1000 off.

Now turn it back on again while holding down the WINDOW key – you’ll see a message on the screen that tells you that an operating system file has been detected. You can then press the REC button – this will instigat e the OS update. Be patient as it takes a little time to complete as the OS is being written directly to the Flash RAM. Whatever you do, do NOT turn off your MPC while this is happening as it will probably wipe the RAM permanently – i.e. your MPC will never work again!

When complete, your MPC will reboot. To test the new OS loaded, repeat the MODE & PAD 10 procedure above.

006 Saving

This tutorial describes how to save your work to disk in easy, step-by-step instructions, as well as looking at backing up your work and other disk operations.

Saving to your memory card (and hard drive)

Now that you have a formatted card and know how to load sounds into memory, you can learn how to save your sounds, programs and sequences which is vital if you want to ensure all your hard work can be retrieved at a later date. All the following will work with the internal hard drive option (as with loading, simply select HARD DRIVE instead of MEMORY CARD).

Go to the tutorial files (folder 006 Saving) and extract and transfer the entire folder 'SAVE' to your memory card so that in the ROOT directory, you have a folder 'SAVE' with a bunch of files inside it. Now load this disk int o your MPC drive and press MODE and SAVE (pad 3). You'll get the following screen:

The SAVE screen is similar to the LOAD screen we looked at in the last tutorials. This time in the top left, instead of ‘Load from’ we have ‘Save To’ which allows us to select our memory card, internal memory or hard drive (if you have that option) as the source to save to. By default this would be set to MEMORY CARD, so leave this as it is.

Nearer the bottom of the screen, we have the ‘To:’ field which lets us navigate to the folder we want to save our file to.

The ‘Free’ field tells us how much space is left on the source we are saving to. As we mentioned in the last chapters, the MPC can load several types of file, and

conversely it can save these files as well. Highlight the type field, and jog wheel through the ‘Save’ types:

SAVE A SAMPLE – This will save a single audio sample, in the native WAV format. SAVE A PROGRAM - A program is a collection of sounds assigned to particular pads

(see our later tutorial on Programs), so saving this file and re-loading will load all the samples in that program as well as their pad assignments and parameters. SAVE ALL PROGRAMS & SAMPLES – if you have multiple programs and samples in memory, saving this will ensure each program and all its samples are saved individually onto your card. SAVE A SEQUENCE – This will save an individual sequence file in SEQ format (which includes MPC1000 specific events) or MID format (standard MIDI file)

SAVE ALL SEQS & SONGS – This will save an ALL file which will contain all sequences (and SONGS – see later chapters) that are currently in memory at the time of saving. SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY - This creates a project file and will ensure that all programs, samples, effect settings, input thru settings, sequences and songs that are currently in memory will be saved to disk in a ‘snapshot’ that can be re-loaded to re-create that set up exactly as you left it.

So, if you have created your masterpiece as a set of 5 sequences and 3 programs each containing a total of 50 samples, the best way to save all the data is to save the single project file (SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY). Upon reloading this file back into memory, your MPC will be returned to the exact state it was in when these files were saved, with all sounds being assigned to the correct program, all program parameters the same and all sequences loading in the position they were in originally.

On the other hand, if you have a single sample you wish to save, just select 'SAVE A SAMPLE’ and only that sound will be saved. If you have a single program that y o u wish to keep, select 'SAVE A PROGRAM'.

If you have a single sequence that plays sounds from a single program, you could save the single sequence file and also the single PGM file. Remember that a sequence file only contains event information, it does not save any actual sounds, so these must be saved separately.

Please also note that when you save an ALL file, the individual sequence (MID) files are not saved as individual files on your disk - they are incorporated into the ALL file and can only be accessed by loading the ALL file. If you need separate disk access to a particular MID file, you must save this file separately.

Let's look in details how we can save each of these file types. Whenever you save a file, make sure you have first picked a place to save it in. If you have a folder and wish to save it there, first make sure you are 'within' that folder as we showed you in the loading tutorials. To transfer to this folder, highlight the ‘To’ field, press WINDOW to open the ‘Directory’ screen, and navigate inside your save folder using your cursor keys. You'll see the following files:

• A sound called 'SNARE1’

• A Program called 'DRUMS.PGM' (this contains our snare sound on PAD A1)

• A program called 'BASS.PGM' (an empty program in this example)

• A sequence called 'BEAT ' (empty)

• A sequence called 'BEAT2' (empty) Using the techniques from the loading tutorial load all these files into memory - you

do not have to assign the SNARE1 sound to a pad - feel free to assign BEAT to sequence 1 and BEAT2 to sequence 2. With these files in memory, we can learn how to save to disk. We will also learn how to create new folders to save and organize our sounds.

To create a new folder on your memory card, press MODE and PAD3 (SAVE) and make sure the ‘TO:’ field says ‘ROOT’. So, if the ‘To’ field says ‘Save’ press your cursor key a few times to the left to progressively navigate out of that folder into

your card ROOT directory. With ROOT highlighted, press WINDOW to show the ‘directory’ screen:

The folder you are in is shown on the left (ROOT). On the right is the existing sub folder list on your disk - there may already be folders on your disk (for example, the 006 folder you’ve just transferred to disk), otherwise it will just be a blank list. To create a folder in the ROOT of our disk, simply press NEW (F5). You will see the ‘Name’ screen. It’s now time to name our folder.

How to name files and folders

Naming with the pads takes a little practice - it's a little like sending a text message on a mobile phone. To the side of each pad on your MPC are two letters/symbols there are what are assigned to that particular pad. If you wanted to write 'SN', you would press PAD A10 once (S) and PAD A7 twice (N). As you can see, as soon as you hit a different pad, your cursor moves on one letter. If you hit the same pad repeatedly, it just changes between the two letters assigned to it. If you want to write 'AB', you press PAD A1 once, then press the right arrow cursor (under your jog wheel) to move the name cursor along one stage. Now press PAD A1 twice and this will write a 'B'. Lots of fun...

By default, your MPC will enter all characters in CAPS LOCK. If you prefer lower case, press the purple ‘down’ cursor arrow and this will set everything in lower case. If you want to return to upper case, press the up arrow key.

To delete letters, move your cursor to the letter that needs deleting, and press SHIFT and the left purple arrow key. So, to delete the entire word ‘NEWFOLDER’, place the cursor at the start of the word (N), hold down shift and continuously press the left arrow key.

To insert a space, hold down shift and press the right arrow key. You can also use the data wheel to change characters – just highlight a letter and

scroll. Unfortunately, there is no way to directly enter numbers using the pads, so to enter a number you must select a letter and scroll (to the left). Hopefully in a future OS update, Akai will allow the ‘Numeric’ key to function in this screen (we’ll see later where the numeric function comes into play).

Finally, note the COPY and PASTE keys (F2 and F3). If you press COPY, the letters currently in the ‘New Name’ field will be copied to the clipboard. Later on in a session, if you are naming another sample with a similar name, you can paste your clipboard text into the name field (it will replace the text there). This is good if you

are, for example, creating many snare sounds called snare1, snare 2 etc. Just copy ‘snare1’ to the clipboard and paste it in each time you create a new sound – then it’s just a case up moving the end number up for each new sound.

So, let’s change our default folder from NEWFOLDER to TEST2. Perform the following:

• Press the jog wheel to enter the ‘Name’ screen

• Place your cursor under N and delete everything by holding down SHIFT and

pressing the left arrow until everything has gone.

• Press PAD A10 twice (T)

• Press PAD A3 once (E)

• Press PAD A10 once (S)

• Cursor one place to the right

• Press PAD A10 twice (T)

• Press PAD A1 and jog wheel to the left until ‘2’ appears.

The above procedures apply to all naming procedures in your MPC, be it a sample name, sequence or program. You might like to refer to the next tutorial (007 naming sounds) as this will give you an idea as to how to choose the name of your files.

So, to create our TEST2 folder, simply press ‘ENTER’ (F5). You will now see something similar to the following:

As you can see, our MPC1000 automatically places us inside the new TEST2 folder. Press CLOSE (F4). You’ll return to the main SAVE screen, but now anything you save will be saved inside the TEST2 folder on your memory card.

Save a Sample

With the Type field selected, jog wheel to the right until it reads 'Save a Sample. Move down using the cursor so that ‘Item:' is select ed and select the name of the file you wish to save using the jog wheel - in this example w e'll be saving the only sound in memory, 'SNARE1'. If there were other sounds in memory, you could select any other them for saving.

Hit DO IT after a second (you’ll see a message ‘Saving: SNARE1’), you’ll be returned to the main save screen. Your SNARE1 sample is now saved in your TEST2 folder.

Save a program

In later tutorials we will make our own programs. Programs control how our samples are laid out on the pads and have a variety of settings that control how the pads sound.

To save a program, go to the SAVE screen, go to 'Type: ' and select 'Save a Program’ - as we have two programs in memory we have the choice to save either (you may have 3 programs in memory, a third called ‘Program01’ – this is the default blank program your MPC created upon start up – if you ever want to delete this automatically, just select CLEAR when loading the first program). For now, select DRUMS and hit DO IT. You'll get the following

In this form, you will not only save the program data, i.e. pad assignments, parameters etc), but you will also save the sounds associated with it (i.e. Save: WITH SAMPLES). Using the jog wheel, highlight 'WITH SAMPLES’ move to the left and this will change to 'Save: PROGRAM ONLY'. This will save only the program data and no sounds. In most cases, leave it at the default 'WITH SAMPLES’.

Select 'Replace same samples: YES' if you have previously saved this same program and have since changed some of the properties of the samples used within it (for example, if you’ve trimmed or looped one of the samples etc)

If you leave it at the default, i.e. 'Replace Same Samples’ set to 'NO', this is like saying "if any of the sounds in this program are already in this folder on the disk, don't bother re-saving it".

Save a Sequence

Select SAVE A SEQUENCE. In the item field, select one of our sequences in memory, e.g. BEAT1. This will save this single sequence file. Press DO IT to see this screen:

A SEQ file is the default sequence format and will save all MIDI information plus MPC1000 internal event information. It’s normally best to save this format. If you change ‘Type’ from SEQ to MID, you’ll save a standard MIDI file which will also load perfectly well inside your MPC, but is will remove the MPC1000 specific events (e.g. program changes etc). Leave this set to SEQ and press DO IT. Your sequence is saved.

Please note that if you wish to change th e name of your sequence, this would normally be done in the main sequencer screen and we’ll look at that in a later chapter.

Save All Sequences

With an ALL file, you can save all sequences used in memory at the time, as well as any songs you may have created in SONG mode (later chap ters). In our case we have two sequences to save, BEAT and BEAT2. In the SAVE screen, select 'Save All SEQS AND Songs', and press DO IT.

By default a new sequence is called 'ALL_SEQ&SONGS' - it's best to give your ALL files unique names, so turn the jog wheel to open up the 'Name' screen and name the file using your pads to the name 'SAVING'. Press ENTER then SAVE. Both your sequences are now saved in this ALL file – but note that your MP C will note save the individual SEQ (or MID) files using this method – if you want to have your sequence files available individually you’ll have to save each sequence file individually – but you’d only need to do this if you were ever exporting a MIDI file from your MPC to something like Cubase. Also note that an MPC ALL file is different to a computer sequencer ALL file!

Save Entire Memory

This will save your entire memory in one go and create a project file (PRJ ). This is probably the one file you will use the most – if you hav e created a beat with programs, samples, effects, sequences and songs your project file will allow you to load up your entire beat immediately without having to mess around reassigning programs to sequences etc.

So, in the ‘Type:’ field, select SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY and press DO IT. You’ll then see the following:

Give your project a good name using the techniques we’ve already discussed. If you leave ‘Replace same files’ set to ‘No’, when your project is saved it will N OT overwrite the existing programs, sounds and sequences in your folder. By setting this to YES, you force the MPC to overwrite the existing files, which is what you need

to do if any of the files have changed since t he last edit. Pressing DO IT will create the following files:

• A project file

• An ALL file (all sequences and songs)

• Individual program files (BASS and DRUMs, and if your default ‘Program01’

was still in memory, this will be saved too)

• Any individual samples in memory

• INPUT THRU file – a file used to control effects added to external audio inputs

You’ll also notice the ‘A.LOAD’ button (F2). Pressing this will create a folder in the ROOT of your disk (not in the TEST2 folder), and it will be called ‘AUTOLOAD’. As we discussed previously, this is the type of folder that will automatically load on power up if the card is already in the MPC card slot. So, if you want your project to always load upon start up (for example, if you are only working on that project for, say, this week), this could be a good option. Try it – you’ll notice that afterwards, your MPC returns you to the ROOT folder of your disk. To examine the contents of your ROOT, press WINDOW and scroll to find your AUTOLOAD folder.

Now turn off your MPC and turn on again. Your project will autoload into memory.

Overwriting Existing Files

If you try to save a file with an identical name to a file already in the current directory, you will get the following message ‘File name exists ! Replace or Rename?'. This will stop you accidentally wiping over the old file unless you so desire. Sel ect REPLACE if you have made changes to the original file and want to replace th e existing saved version. Select 'RENAME' if you wish to keep the original fil e - you can then give this new file a different name to avoid any conflicts.

The above only applies with files of the same file type. You can of course have a sequence file called 'DRUM’ and a program called DRUM.

Renaming and Deleting Files on Your Disk

If you want to rename any of your file or folders directly on the disk, this can be done very easily. In SAVE mode, simply enter the folder where your file resides and highlight the file (or just highlight a fo lder name if it's the folder you want renaming).

Then press 'RENAME' (F3) – and name your file/folder using the techniques describe previously.

You can also delete files and folders directly from your disk. Follow the same procedure as renaming, except select DELETE instead of RENAME. You will be asked to confirm your decision, so either press CANCEL or DO IT. If you press DO IT, then your file will be deleted. If you delete a folder, the entire con tents of the folder will be lost.

If you delete a sound that is part of a program, when that program is loaded, it will simply ignore the missing sound and leave any pad that had that sound assigned to it blank.

Naming Sounds

Before you start saving you might want to look at our tutorial 007 Naming Sounds as it covers quite a few things you may need to know about naming conventions.

Creating Back ups

Don't bank on your disk being 100% perfect, and never underestimate your own stupidity in accidentally deleting or overwriting y our masterpiece one night after you’ve had a few too many beers – we’ve all done it! If something goes wrong, you'll lose all your hard work so it's vital you create backups. The easiest way in the long run is copy the content of your memory card onto your computer on a regular basis – you may have to do this anyway to conserve space on your card. Then once on the computer, you could burn off a data CD for long term storage.

If you don’t have a computer (how are you reading this then?!) I suggest you have another Flash card and after you save your beat, put your second disk in your MPC and save your beat to this disk also.

I also suggest you save on a constant basis – every 5 minutes, just get into the habit of saving your work to the card – you might have a power cut, you might accidentally delete a sound from memory or similar, so at least you’ll have a current backup to fall back on.

Saving To Internal Memory

You can also save sounds to your internal memory – as we discussed previously, this means you’ll always have these sounds inside your MPC, whenever you turn it on – although you’ll still need to manually load them in to ‘active’ memory (unless you have set the autoload from memory option we discussed in an earlier chapter).

Space is limited in the internal memory chip, and it’s already filled with the factory sounds given by Akai (which are a selection of the sounds that came on the memory card when you bought your MPC). But when you save to th e Flash Ram, you will erase the sounds in memory completely and replace them with your new programs and sequences.

So with your favourite sounds in memory, go to SAVE, select ‘Save To INTERNAL MEMORY’, select SAVE ALL PROGRAMS & SAMPLES and hit DO IT. You’ll get the warning that all programs and samples in flash memory are to be erased – good – hit DO IT. Then hit DO IT again, because Akai want to make sure you don’t delete stuff you don’t want to!

Your flash memory will be wiped and replaced with your new programs and samples. Repeat the above procedure for ‘SAVE ALL SEQS & SONGS’ – now your internal memory will be filled with your favourite sounds and sequences.

How Do I clear the internal memory completely?

You can’t. The best you can do is save a program containing a single sample – if you try to save with no sample present, you get an error message!

007 Naming Sounds

It's a good idea to use an organised system to name all your sounds - in this tutorial we look at the problems with using long names and also a method to keep track of all your samples and where they came from.

How to Name Sounds

When it comes to naming the sounds you create in your MPC, you must ensure that you create a disciplined naming system - this will mean you will never have any difficulties finding the sounds you need in the future. It's a good idea to keep your file names no longer to 8 characters in length if you ever plan on moving your sounds around between older MPCs - see below for more on this.

File Naming Conventions

When giving a name to a sample, common sense should prevail - obviously you'll want to name a snare something like 'SNARE' - but it's no good having 3000 snare samples in different folders and disks all called 'SNARE', as you'll have trouble whenever you want to mix and match all these different snare sounds in one program.

It is much better to give each sample you ever create a unique name. This is even more important if you spend a lot of time sampling copyrighted music. While working in your bedroom studio, thoughts of fame and fortune seem a long way away - but when you do eventually get some interest in your music, the people wanting to give you money for it will want to know where your sounds came from so that they (or you) can get sample clearance on them.

The obvious answer is to name each sample with the name of the song included in the file name - of course, that's a lot of work and will take us beyond the 8 letter naming convention we mentioned earlier. A much more neat and tidy way of doing things is to create a file naming system in which each sample is referenced by a number - this number can then be stored in a spreadsheet or even just a ring binder and paper. In this system, you simply have a table with the song name, artist, album and a comments column should you wish to add something extra. Next to each entry in the system, you assign a unique number

- this is the number you attach to the sample. So for example, you may have the following:

Ref Artist Song Album Comments

0001 John Coltrane Blue Train Blue train Used this on

‘Phat Dreams’

In the above example, we know that any sample labelled with a 0001 will be off the John Coltrane song, Blue Train - I've also made a comment reminding me which beat I used this on (a beat called 'Phat Dreams'). So, if you've sampled a piano chord from this song, give it a name like 'PI0001', where PI stands for PIANO. It's a good idea to create a naming convention for all instruments and keep a record of this convention also. For example

SN = SNARE KI = KICK CH = CLOSED HI HAT OH = OPEN HI HAT CY = CYMBAL TO = TOM

And so on. If you sample more than one, say, snare sound from a song, then add a letter to the end, e.g SN4925a, SN4925b etc. This may all seem a little excessive, so just use your own judgement.

If you have a PC running Microsoft Excel (or a spreadsheet program that can read Excel spreadsheets), I have included a ready made spreadsheet for you to fill in which can be found in the folder ‘007’. I've also included on sheet 2 of the same spread sheet, the beginnings of a name coding system, which you can use for your own file naming system. Of course, you can use your own system - in fact as we will see in later tutorials, I use a variety of systems depending on the application and source of samples - although you may prefer to just use one single system. In the end, it's all about making your life easier, so do what seems right for you.

Using Punctuation

Just a quick note about using hyphens (-) in your file names. I have discovered that MPC4000 users may have problems using such file names with the software Ak-Sys (usually by loading from CDROM). Therefore I suggest avoiding punctuation if possible - therefore a name like 'SN0236a' will be compatible in all situations (as it also keeps the 8 letter filename convention).

008 Sampling Sounds

In this tutorial, we shall look at how we can sample sounds from various sound sources using an MPC1000 - we'll also look at whether we should sample with effects and terms like 'signal to noise ratio'.

The Sample Screen and Settings

One of the main functions of an MPC1000 is the built in sampler - with this you can sample from any audio source and create your own source of unlimited soun ds. In this tutorial I will assume that you have connected your sampling inputs to the output of a CD player, but of course, it can be any sound source - refer to ‘001 audio connections’ for advice on how to connect the equipment up.

Go to RECORD (MODE and pad 5). This will take you to the sampling screen.

In the middle of the screen is the LEVEL METER. This shows you the level of the incoming sound source and lets you set how high the signal will be when it is sampled. To control the level of the incoming audio signal, you can either use the volume control on the audio source (if it has one) or use the REC GAIN knob on the MPC (the white dial with red strip, on the top right of the machine).

Firstly, turn the REC GAIN knob down to its lowest setting, then press play on your CD player. The meter on the page should start falling and rising with th e music. Turn the REC GAIN button up until the music starts distorting, then edge it down until the

distortion stops. This is your maximum recording level. At the maximum level, th e

sample meter should be fluttering around the end of the scale, and not solidly sticking to the end. The main thing to avoid is distortion (where the audio signal breaks up and generally sounds terrible), this cannot be removed from a sample. This procedure is sometimes referred to as getting the 'hottest' signal possible.

You may notice that after an audio signal has passed through your sampler, the peak levels may look slightly different:

The two grey boxes have moved to the right - this merely indicates the highest level your signal ever got to, and is useful for judging whether or not your signal is reaching the 'hot' signal point. The next time you sample, these peaks will remain there unless you first return these grey boxes to the beginning - to do so, just press F1, RESET PEAK.

What About Signal-To-Noise Ratio?

You may have heard a term called 'signal-to-noise ratio'. This simply refers to the level of background noise compared to the level of the actual (direct) signal you are trying to sample. Basically, no matter what analogue source you record from, you will experience an amount of background hiss that stems from the components used in the sound source, as well as from the audio cables you use and also from the actual MPC interface.

As you increase the REC LEVEL on your MPC, you do not only increase the level of the sound you want to sample (the 'direct' sound), you also increase its background noise level. Hence it is important that you achieve the loudest sound possible from the incoming sound source - typically by increasing the output volume of the sound source. Unfortunately, many CD players do not feature such a volume control, so you have to make do with the volume given to you.

To help decrease the background noise, you should use high quality audio cables and if your equipment has digital outputs you can increase recording quality further by recording via your MPC’s digital inputs using a suitable digital cable.

You may think that trying to amplify the CD level before it gets to the MPC would be a solution - of course this would involve the introduction of a third piece of audio equipment into the chain, which, just like the MPC REC GAIN, will just increase the inherent noise level. So, if your sound source has no volume control, you have to make do with the MPC REC GAIN to increase the recording levels to peak. (Of course, your sound source may be quite loud, so you may not need to increase the REC GAIN at all).

If your sound source does have a volume control, use it wisely as there will probably be a point where the units own signal-to-noise level starts to increase - use your ears and listen for excessive increases in hiss.

What if your sound source is so loud that no matter what settings you use (both MPC and sound source), the level meter still distorts? In this case, you have to decrease the volume of the sound source by placing a mixer between the sound source and the MPC record ins. You can then use the mixers volume controls to decrease the overall signal volume. When reducing signal levels, you'll find the problem of background hiss is also reduced somewhat.

Let's look at the sample screen. Our input is set to ANALOG which means that the sampling screen will be monitoring the incoming audio f r om the standard L and R recording inputs. If we were sampling in digital (through the digital inputs) we would set this to digital.

Next is MODE. This determines whether or not we sample in mono or stereo. Remember, our CD player outputs a stereo signal, but a stereo signal is made of 2 components - a left and a right channel. To discover more about stereo and mono, you should read ‘009 Understanding Stereo and Mono' mini tutorial.

If your sound source is truly stereo, then set it 'Mode:STEREO'. On the other hand, if your sound source does not need to be stereo, set it 'Mode:MON O L'. This will only record the information coming into the MPC left recording input . Setting it to MONO R will obviously only record the right recording inpu t.

Threshold

The Threshold level helps us automate sampling a little. Most of the time, set it a little above the noise level (noise level is usually 2 or 3 squares long). When you press RECORD (F6), this 'arms' the sampler - basically it puts the sample in 'ready' mode and it waits for an audio signal that exceeds the level you have set. Once that signal appears and the threshold exceeded, the MPC sampler automatically starts recording.

To set a threshold level, just highlight the Threshold parameter and jog wheel to the threshold you desire. To manually sample, you can press RECORD (F6) twice in succession very quickly, this basically disables the threshold function. The method you choose depends on the situation. Sampling a succession of single hits from a sample CD would benefit from a correctly set threshold level. To sample a section from a song, the manual method works best. Choose the best method for the situation you are in.

Sampling Time

The 'Time' field shows you the maximum sample time you are dedicating to this particular sampling session. If you have no memory expansion in your MPC, you have 2 minutes 16 seconds of stereo sampling time, or twice as much is you are sampling in mono. By default, this field is set to 10 seconds, but if you high light it, you can jog wheel it to the maximum time available to the system. After sampling, the time will be reduced accordingly so if you set the time to 40 seconds stereo and sample for 10 seconds stereo, you will have 30 seconds left showing on the screen.

Sampling time is very useful if we are sampling notes from an in strument and we want them all to be say, 5 seconds long. Simply set this to 5 seconds and the MPC will only sample each note for that specified time. Don't forget to set a Pre-Rec to ensure that the start is not clipped!

If you are simply sampling long passages, or maybe performing something direct ly into the MPC (like a vocal), I find it best to set the sample time to it's longest available setting. Then each time you sample, you can see exactly how long you have left, and also you'll never experience th e MPC cutting you off in full swing.

Displaying Total Sampling Time and Memory Remaining

Whenever you are in the sampling screen, press the orange WINDOW button and you will be shown the total amount of sample time available in your MPC (as well as the amount of memory installed).

Monitor

The monitor setting in the top right of the screen allows you to set which outputs you can use to monitor your sampled sounds. If set to ON, it will output the sampled signal through the main L/R outputs. The good thing about this setting is that is also has an 'OFF' option. In this situation, no sound is output from your MPC while sampling - which is ideal if you are recording a performance from a microphone (vocal, guitar etc) otherwise the outputted sound from the MPC would cause a feedback loop with your microphone.

Should I add effects while sampling?

Do you sample with effects added to your sound? Well, ideally, no. Sample the clean, unaffected sound and for a start, you'll save memory. If you add a delay effect to a sample, it will probably treble its length - so why waste memory when you can always add the delay effect to the sound when it leaves your MPC outputs (or even use the MPC sequencer to create the delay effect as we'll see in later tutorials ).

Another problem with adding effects at this stage is it is very permanent. It's virtually impossible to remove an effect from a sample, and at this stage of any project, you are unlikely to know what significan ce this effect will have on the way your sample will interact with the rest of the song . That lovely lush reverb may sound great on that vocal sample now, but later it may sound excessive and t o o wet.

On the other hand, there are occasions when adding effects at this stage may be beneficial. It can force you to work with a sound in a particular state - perhaps without that lush reverb on the vocal you may have never ended up producing the ambient masterpiece that you did?

Also, let's say you are sampling from a sound module - you've created a patch and added an effect using your sound module's internal effect unit. Maybe you feel that you'd not be able to re-create this effect at a later date usin g an external effect unit, so in this case you'd probably want to sample this sound with the effect. Although in this case, I would still avoid sampling with reverb or delays; effects lik e distortion, phasing, ring modulation (i.e. sound shaping effects) would be fine.

So, in summary, if the effect you are using mak es an impact in the way you'll write your song - sample it. Otherwise, try to avoid sampling with ef fects.

Sampling your Sound

Once you have configured all the settings you can record your sound source. Press RECORD (F6) once to arm your sampler. If at this point you decide you are not ready, simply press CANCEL (F5). Otherwise, simply press play on your sound source and when the audio exceeds the threshold level, your MPC will start to record the sounds.

To manually stop the sampling at a point you desire, press STOP. To cancel while you are sampling, press CANCEL. If you have set a sampling time, you can let the MPC stop the sampling automatically.

After a successful sampling, you will get the following screen:

Press PLAY (F4) to hear your sample. If you don't like what you hear, press RETRY (F2) and you will be taken back to the main sampling screen. If you do like th e sound, here is your chance to name it and assign the sound to a pad.

Naming Samples

It's a good idea to give your samples meaningful names from the very start and I've covered the various issues and conventions involved in this in ‘007 Naming Samples’ tutorial.

To name a sound, make sure the sound name is highlighted (it will be by default) and move the jog wheel. This will bring up the 'Name' screen. Use th e pads to change the letters in the name. Once you are happy with the name, press 'ENTER' and you will return to the 'KEEP OR RETRY' screen.

Assigning a sound to a pad

Look at the 'Assign to pad:' field - this tells you were your sample will be assigned. By default, this will be set to 'OFF'. If you leave it at this setting, your sample will simply be stored in memory, and will be available for editing in th e sample editing screens, as well as being available for assignment to a program at a later stage.

If you want to assign your sample to a pad, use your cursor to highlight 'OFF' and then simply hit the pad that you wish it to be assigned to. If there is already a sample assigned to this pad, you will hear it, so just choose a different pad - if you do assign this sound to a pad that already has a sound on it, you will replace that sound with this new one - don't worry you will not lose the oth er sound, it will still be floating around in memory and can be recalled at any time. We will look at pad assignment and building programs in more detail during the ‘Programs’ tutorial.

To save your name and pad assignment settings, simply press 'KEEP' (F5) and you will return to your sample screen. Now you have created your first sample, it's time to see what we can do with it.

Let the fun begin!

009 Understanding Stereo & Mono

In this mini tutorial, we look at the differences between mono and stereo and how this affects the way you sample

True stereo involves panned elements - that is some sounds are placed more to the left, some more to the right. A song off a modern record will normally be in stereo, drum loops are too -the kick and snare are usually panned centre, but the hats and cymbals are panned slightly to one side. Mono signals contain no panning information at all. Everything in a mono signal is panned centrally. We can split a stereo signal into left and right components - and each of these components would be in mono.

If a cymbal was panned hard right in the stereo signal, and we just listened to the left (mono) channel we would not hear the cymbal, but it would be clear in the right side. If a shaker were panned slightly to the left and we listened t o the lef t and right channels individually, we'd find the volume of the shaker to be higher in the left signal. With this knowledge we can decide what to sample in stereo and what to sample in mono. It is important to remember that stereo takes up exactly twice as much memory as mono.

Mono rules

Any source that is true stereo should be sampled in stereo. Usually this would mean an entire song, a drum loop or a single sound that pans from left to right or has effects such as Leslie speaker applied (such as many Rhodes sounds). But if we are creating a drum loop from individual elements, like a snare, hat and kick, we only need to sample these in mono. It's the same with any individual sound source, like a vocal, or a piano. It's because we can create a stereo signal from these mono sounds at a later date.

Creating Stereo

If you've recorded a sequence on your MPC - a drum loop containing a snare, kick and hat, each sound sampled in mono, you simply pan the hat slightly to one side. Instant real stereo, because now your loop contains a panned element. Got a vocal in mono (well, most vocals are recorded with one mono mic after all), make it stereo by running it through a stereo effect unit (one signal in, 2 out). There's no secret to creating stereo - anyone who samples an individual kick drum in stereo is simply wasting memory - you can add stereo reverb to it later as well as including it in a panned drum kit. Even if you've cut up a stereo drum loop - as long as you've completely separated the individual sounds, there's no reason why you couldn't convert these all to mono, then pan the individual sounds to re-create stereo.

010 Editing Samples Part 1

After sampling a sound, you'll normally have to go to the Trim screen to perform the initial editing. In this tutorial we look at the main functions available in the Trim Screen on an MPC1000.

The Trim Screen

After you have sampled and named your new sound, you need to 'tidy' the sample a bit – there will usually be a small mount of unwanted space at the start and end of the sample, which we need to remove so that the sample starts at the correct point, as well as to save sample memory - we always strive to make sure samples use as little memory as possible.

You can locate the tutorial files in the folder ‘010 Edit ing Samples Part 1’ - you will find two demo samples, 'KICK4 and 'SNARE4. Please load these samples into your MPC, one at a time. If you don't know how to load samples into your MPC, please refer to chapters 4 and 5. You do not have to assign these samples to any particular pad on the MPC, so just select 'KEEP' after loading and they will both be stored into memory.

Go to the TRIM page by pressing MODE and pad 6. You'll see something like this (depending what sound you loaded last)

On the trim screen, you can select to view any of the samples stored in memory, but only one at a time. By default, you will be shown the last sample you have worked on (in this case it will show you the last sound you loaded int o memory).

To view all the other samples in memory or to select a different sample in the TRIM screen, highlight the name field in the top left of the screen and jog wheel to the right. Each sample will appear in succession. So using this method, you can move between your two different samples - each time you select a different sample, its waveform begins to appear on the screen.

What is this waveform?

The waveform is a graphical representation of the sound waves that make up sound. All sounds have a unique waveform, but each type of sound will ha ve quite similar characteristics. In the screen shot above, we have a typical snare waveform which consists of an initial peak (called the attack) which represents the initial 'crack' at the stick hits the drum skin. There then follows a fairly constant section that represents the main body of sound of the snare and then finally the waveform decreases in size to nothing - this is the decay and is the point when the sou nd fades to nothing. As

you can see, there appears to be a gap before the waveform actually starts - this is actually the silence that we want to remove from this sample.

Start and End Points

Underneath your sample name are the Start (St: ), END (End: ) and View: parameters.

The 'Start' point allows you to set the point of the wav eform where you would like the sample to start playing - the start point can be set anywhere on the waveform, it does not have to be right at the very beginning.

The 'End' point lets you set the point at which you would like your sample to stop playing. This can be anywhere on the waveform, as long as it occurs after the start point.

The 'View' parameter is used for stereo samples (i.e. two channel samples) and lets you view either the left or right hand side of the sample (as the waveforms may differ). For mono samples, the left and right view is identical.

The idea behind trimming your sample is to set the desired start point and end point, and remove the unnecessary sample data on either side of these set points, thus saving memory and generally being more professional with your sample editing.

Selecting Start and End Points

There are 3 ways to set your start and end points: Type the start and end numbers in - very impractical in most situations. Highlight

the start field using the cursor, press the ‘NUMERIC’ button (to the right of the jog wheel) and type in a number using pads (each pad has a number assigned to it in the top right hand corner) and press 'NUMERIC' to enter your desired number.

Use the jog wheel. Again, highlight either or start or end field and spin your wheel to the right to increase the numbers, or to the left to decrease. Now you’ll soon realise that trying to move your start point more than a couple of hundred samples along with take forever (and probably wear out your jog wheel). So in the next section, we’ll look at how we can speed this up.

Using the Q-Link Sliders – As of V2.10, you can use the two Q-Link sliders on the left side of your machine to change your start and end points. If you highlight the start point, go to Q1 and while holding down the AFTER button, move the slider to change the start point. Equally if you highlight the end point, you can use the Q2 slider in the same way.

Trimming Your Samples

Select the 'SNARE4' sample (by highlighting the name in the top left and jog wheeling to this sample). As you can see, it has a large gap at the beginning of the sample before the attack ‘crack’ of the snare hit comes in. We will now trim this

sample to make it as small as possible and make sure it starts a tightly to the actual start time as possible.

The Start Point

First, let's select the start point by highlighting it with our cursor. To trim the start point, we will use the slider or jog wheel to get the dark area background close to the beginning of the white waveform. This will bypass the empty space at the start of the sample and will mean our snare sample plays immediately upon striking a pad.

To get to the start of the waveform quickly, go to the Q1 slider, hold down AFTER and slide the Q1 slider upwards until you get in the vague area of the start of the waveform peak. Alternatively if you prefer to use the cursor keys and jog wheel, hold down SHIFT and press the left cursor button once. This moves the selector behind the 0, which means that when we move our jog wheel to the right, instead of moving in increments of ‘1’ it moves up in increments of ‘10’ (10, 20, 30, etc). Hold shift and cursor to the left again, and you can move up in increments of 100, etc. Holding down shift and moving back to the right will decrease the size of your increment.

Set your start point around 1800.

Then press WINDOW to reveal the Fine page. Here, you can use the jog wheel to get the perfect start point - this page shows the waveform in magnified detail.

You can use the two zoom buttons to increase or decrease the magnification of your sample – press F2 (ZOOM-) several times and you’ll see the above waveform – this is our ‘distant’ look at the sample and allows us to get a bit closer. Your aim is to get closer to the part of the waveform where peaks begin to show, so move your jog wheel to the right until you reach 1862.

You can press a pad to preview your edit so far – any of the bottom three rows of pads will play your sound, but you need to play only specific pads on the top row:

PAD 13 – this plays our sample looped, which is something we will look at in forthcoming chapters

PAD 14 – this is the PLAY TO pad and this will play all audio before our st art point (so in this case, if you press it you shouldn’t hear anything).

PAD 15 – this is the PLAY FROM pad will play your sample from the new start point you’ve set – this is the ideal pad to press, but will give you the same result as any of the bottom 3 rows of pads.

PAD 16 – this is the PLAY ALL pad – this will ignore any new st art and end points you have set and just play the entire recorded sample.

So, I would press PAD 15 to hear our edit so far. Sounds okay to my ears, but let’s get more technical. To really magnify our

waveform, first zoom right in by pressing the ZOOM+ button several times (F3), then press the F5 button (LOG) so that it shows LINER. As you can see, the beginning of our waveform is much clearer now:

As you can see, this shows us that we’re a little out, in fact we’re cutting some of the start of the sample away. So jog wheel to the left to just before the first increase in waveform appears – 1830 and press CLOSE.

Remember, as nice as the graphical display is, you always need to check samples by ear - if you hear a click when your sample plays, keep moving the start point back until the click stops. You can preview your sound throughout the entire process simply by touching PAD 15. Set ‘FULL LEVEL’ to ensure maximum volume (this is found on the top right of your MPC, underneath the ‘A’ button).

Some samples start very quietly (i.e. ones that may fade in initially), and do not show up on the display, so in these cases, your ears become your best friend - keep previewing your sound while you move the start point (jog wheel) to the right. The moment you hear the sound start to suddenly come in, you know you've gone too far and are cutting off the beginning of the fade in. Headphone can help a lot in these situations.

How Good is the MPC Waveform Display?

Well, compared to a computer based audio editor, it's not very good at all - it does not have the resolution of something like Soundforge, so you can never view your waveforms down to the minute detail. Then again, if you are used to using much older samplers, then you'll know that these samplers had no waveform display whatsoever - only the start and end numbers were visible! So the MPC is not all bad…

End Point

Repeat this process to calculate the end point of the sample. This time, things are a lot more tricky. The start point of our sample was pretty obvious to find, both visually and by using our ear, as it was so definite. But the end point on this sample is the point where it fades to nothing - certainly not something we will be able to see using the basic waveform display.

In this scenario, it's best to resort to common sense and a pair of headphones. Plug a pair of headphones into the back of the MPC, into the headphone socket. Highlight the 'End: ' parameter and use the slider/jog wheel to roughly guess where the sample ends. Common sense will tell us that it will definitely be at a point where the waveform disappears on the screen, although we cannot tell any more than this. So initially, set the end point to 9060.

By listening in detail to the sample on the other hand, you will be able to hear the point where the snare's decay tail ends and the dead space begins. This is where our PLAY FROM pad 15 comes in handy again. When you have the end point highlighted, PLAY FROM will play everything that occurs after your end point, so you can hear exactly what audio is left.

Press Pad 15 and you’ll still hear some remaining snare sound. So, us ing your jog wheel, move on your end point until you hear nothing I settled on 13660. Your samples' start and end points have now been set.

011 Editing Samples Part 2

This tutorial follows on from part 1 and looks at the various editing functions in the MPC1000 including 'discard', 'section new sound' and some of the functions available in the 'Sound' screen

The Discard Function

If you have followed the previous tutorial, you will have a trimmed sample with 'spare' bits of sample data at each end, either side of the start and end points. With these points set, we can now get rid of all that unnecessary dead space permanently

- make sure you still have the edited SNARE4 loaded into memory (i. e. with the start and end points set), or you can find it in the tutorial files for this tutorial (it's now called SNARE4_T).

To remove the dead space either side of the start and end points, first hit EDIT (F6). This brings up the Sample Edit Screen.

There are a few screens within this screen which can be found by selecting the word 'DISCARD' and jog wheeling to the right. Initially, we are only concerned with the 'DISCARD' function.

The DISCARD function simply removes all sample data outside of the start and end points that you previously set. And data in between these points shall be kept. To discard unwanted data, just press DO IT (F5), and the MPC will remove the dead space from your sample. You now have a perfectly trimmed sample that uses the minimum amount of memory. You can see/hear my version by loading SNARE4A from the tutorial files. It's important to note that the DISCARD process is

irreversible.

It is also worth noting that if you select DISCARD while in the LOOP screen, it discards the data either side of the loop start/end points (and not the trim points which may be different).

Now go to the other sample we originally loaded, KICK4 and find the start and end points of this sample, but do not DISCARD the data. I set a start point of 1806 and an end point of 20269. We'll now look at a way of creating a neatly edited sample without having to permanently lose the unwanted data, as sometimes you may find you accidentally edited a sample incorrectly, and there is no UNDO funct ion on the MPC!

Extract

With your KICK sample in the TRIM screen (and start and end points selected), press EDIT to bring up the DISCARD screen as before. Now move your jog wheel one place to the right. It should now read EXTRACT. This screen takes all the data within your edit points and creates a new sample out of them. Underneath you'll see 'New Name: KICK5'. Here you can give your new sample a name or you can use the default name (which is your original sample name with a 1 added to the end).

Pressing DO IT creates the new sample, but also leaves your original sample intact (with the start and end points you set still in place as well). So using this method you now have two samples, one perfectly trimmed and edited and one still trimmed, but with the option to change the trim points should you ever need to. You can load up KICK5A off the tutorial download to see/hear my version of the new sound.

Delete

Select EDIT and job wheel one step past EXTRACT and you’ll find DELETE. This is the opposite of DISCARD and this removed the data between the start and end points. After deletion, rather than leave silence where the deleted sound used to be, it simply joins the two remaining bits together. If you press DO IT, you get a second screen that offers you the option to overwrite the original sample (OVER_W) or KEEP, which creates a new sample leaving the original in tact.

Open up the drum loop BB29. Set a start point just where the first snare comes in (32371) and an end point just where the second main snare comes in (96857). TO remove this selection between the two snares, press EDIT, select DELETE, DO IT and pres PLAY to preview your new sample. As you can hear, we’ve simply removed the audio between the edits, and as we picked points just before the main snares, the edit points fit back together quite nicely.

Silence

This is like DELETE, except it does leave a silent space where the sound was removed. So rather than end up with a 2 bar break from a 4 bar, we get one bar, then 2 bars of silence, then another bar of audio. Again, you are offered the chance to create a separate sample or overwrite the original. Load up BB15 from the tutorial folder – let’s silence out the first snare.

Set your start point to 44140 and end point to 58984 (our snare slice). Press EDIT, SILENCE and DO IT. Press KEEP to create a new sample, or just press PLAY to preview the effect.

Normalize

If you press EDIT and jog wheel two places to the right you get the NORMALIZE screen:

Basically, normalizing will take your entire sample and make the peak waveforms as high as possible, ensuring you have the loudest audio you can without distortion (we’ll se how we can increase perceived loudness later through compression…).

Note that normalization will also increase the background noise and hiss on your sample, but it’s great if you’ve got a poorly recorded sample that wasn’t sampled as ‘hot’ as possible – of course, it’s always better to record properly in the first place!

To normalize, just press DO IT.

Reverse

Jog wheel paste NORMALIZE and you get REVERSE and as you can imagine, this simply reverses your sample within the edit points you’ve selected. Great for reverse snares and cymbals. Load up the wav file REVERSE from the tutorial folder – let’s reverse the first snare. Set a start point at the start of the snare (at 28162) and an end point just before the next kick (at 56080). This means you have a snare and the little hat/bleep sound after it.

Press EDIT, select REVERSE and DO IT. If you preview now, you’ll just hear the reverse of the section we just edited, so reset your start point to zero and end poin t to the end of the sample (a quick way to do this is to highligh t the end point and with Q2 and AFTER held down, slide from the top, to the bottom and to the top again).

Now preview your beat with the new reverse section. You can load up REVERSE2 for my version.

We’ve also got two other editing functions which you can find by continuing to jog wheel to the right – time stretching and pitch shifting. We’ll cover these in later in chapter 030

The Sample Screen

Changing Pitch

While in the TRIM screen with the sample name highlighted, press WINDOW to view the Sample screen:

Highlight the +00 in the Tune: parameter and while press a pad (to hear your sample) start jog wheeling to the right and you’ll hear your sample ‘pit ch up’ – you can go up to +24 or if you jog to the left, as low as -24. This is a global tune – if you have this sample assigned to many pads, this tuning will be present on all t he pads. Move the cursor to the right to highlight the last two digits – these are called ‘cents’ and allow you to fine tune the new pitch of your sample.

Pitching has many uses – dropping pitch will make your drum sounds darker, pitching up will make them sound ‘tighter’, it will make loop s play at a different tempo and it can make musical notes sound in a different key. We will be using this pitch control in more detail later in this book! Note that pitch control isn’t ‘permanent’ like discard and normalize – it can be set to something else later on if you don’t like the pitch you’ve set. We’ll look more closely at this setting in later tutorials.

Renaming

In the sample screen you can rename your sample. Just highlight the ‘Sample Name:’, touch the jog wheel and you’ll see the standard ‘Name’ screen we encountered in the saving tutorials.

Copy

Press F5 in the sample screen and you will be able to create an exact copy of your sample. Your MPC will automatically pick a new name for your sample or you can highlight the name and rename it using the usual naming techniques.

Delete

Press F2 to bring up the Delete Sample screen. On this screen, pressing DO IT will delete the selected sample from memory.

You can also delete all samples from memory. To do this, press F3 (ALL) – you’ll get a warning screen – press DO IT and all samples in memory are gone (forever).

012 Looping Samples

In this tutorial, we look at how to loop a drum break with easy, step-by-step instructions.

Looping samples is an essential skill to learn. By looping samples we are able to extend their length indefinitely, effectively turning a few seconds of audio into a complete musical piece, particularly when looping a drum break.

Understanding Loop Points

On an un-looped sample, when we trigger the sample by pressing a pad, it starts playing from the start point (A) and simply plays until it reaches the end point of the sample (D) as shown below:

On the other hand, when we loop a sample, we instruct our MPC to continuously play between a set of loop points for as long as we request it to. The idea of looping is represented in the diagram below:

When the sample is triggered, it begins to play from the master start point (A) and continues to play, passing our first loop point (B), until it reaches our end loop point (C). Upon meeting this second loop point, our sample knows that it must not continue any further and it must return to an earlier part of the sample. This is where our first loop point (B) is necessary - rather than jump back to the start point, our sample simply leaps back to our first loop point (B) and continu es playin g until once more it reaches the end loop point again(C) - and once again it returns to the first loop point (B). This process continues for as long as we hold down the pad.

Looping Drum Breaks

Drum breaks are the simplest type of sample to loop. When we loop a drum break we simply want our loop points to be at the start and end of the break - this means that the first loop point (B) is actually identical to our master start point (A) and our end loop point (C) is identical to our sample end point (D). This is represented below

So here, our loop starts at point A and plays through the entire sample until it reach the end loop point C. Whenever a sample reaches an end loop point, it must return to the start loop point, which is B (and also our sample start point) . So in t his situation, our break simply loops between the absolute beginning and end points of the entire sample - the perfect drum loop.

Locate the tutorial files (‘012 Looping Samples’ folder) and load up the drum break 'DRUMLOOP’ into your MPC. This is a nice simple beat which will be easy to loop so we will use this for our example throughout this tutorial.

If you listen to this beat, you'll hear that it is just over one bar (4 beats) long. In the following tutorial, we will loop the break perfectly for exactly one bar, giving us a continuously playing drum loop that we can use in a song.

The Loop screen

Go to the Trim screen (MODE and pad 6) to view our sample. Press our PLAY ALL pad (pad 16) and the break will play through to the end and stop - this sample is unlooped.

From the TRIM screen, press F2. This is the loop screen. This is where we set our LOOP start points and end points and also turn the loop 'ON'

In this screen, the 'Lp' point represents the starting point of our loop (marker 'B' in the example shown at the start of this tutorial). The 'End' point (140761) represents our looping end point (point C in the previous example). So once our sample is set to

loop 'ON' it will continuously loop between these t wo points shown in our loop screen.

First, let’s hear what our drum loop sounds like looped. To do this press and hold the PLAY LOOPED pad, PAD 13. If you release the pad, it will stop playing the loop. If you hold it down for long enough, you will hear the sample reach the end and go back top the beginning - doesn't sound very smooth, does it? This is because we have an excess amount of data at the end of the sample that we need to ignore. To ignore this excess bit of the sample, we have to find the end loop point.

Loop From Start To End

To turn our loop on within the sample itself, simply navigate your cursor to the far right where it says ' Loop :OFF' and change this to 'ON'. Our sample will now loop between the 'St' and 'End' point.

In order to loop this break correctly, we need to calculate both start and end loop points. Finding the start loop point is easy:

Go to TRIM and highlight the ‘St’ filed and press WINDOW. Now, using the techniques in the previous chapter, you can ensure the start point is just before the first kick drum waveform starts. You’ll find it already is set perfectly, so you are fine. If it wasn’t set perfectly, you’d need to DISCARD any excess sample data before proceeding!

Setting the End Point

The loop end point is the part of the sample where we tell the MPC to return to the loop start point, so in this drum loop, this would be the point just before the kick comes in at the beginning of the second bar, as indicated in red below:

First, press F2 to get into the LOOP screen. Using the cursor keys, highlight the 'End: ' field numbers. Now, using the techniques explained the last chapter, change the end point of the loop to approximately where the second bar starts, just before the start of the last kick, or just after it, let's say to about 119200. It should look like this:

Now press and hold a pad 13 to preview the loop - you'll hear that we've still got a small amount of the start of the second bar still audible (it seems to stutter at the loop point), so we need to get in close and correct this.

With the cursor selected on the end point, press Window so you are taken to the Loop Fine screen:

Now press ZOOM- (F2) to zoom out of your loop. To the right of the dividing line is actually the start of your sample. To the left is the end, i.e. the end point we have just set. We know this goes on for too long, so we need to reduce its size. To do this, we need to turn the jog wheel to the left. Shift and left cursor your end point to let to move your end point quickly with the jog wheel, and start moving your jog wheel leftwards. Eventually, at around 117697, you’ve notice the waveform disappears into a flat line, which in this case is an indication that you’v e reached a point in your break without any sound – i.e. you are between hits. Press PLAY LOOP now (PAD 13) to preview the loop. That’s better!

To get even finer on our loop point, now press ZOOM+ to full magnification. Now press the LINEAR key (F5) to improve the waveform display.

Set your cursor on the end point back to moving in single sample steps (SHIFT and right arrow) and start moving your jog wheel to the left until all the peaks disappear,

117652. Now preview your loop on PAD 13. Perfect. As you can see, it’s perhaps not always going to be such an exact science, as each

loop will be different and you’ll need to rely on your ears constantly. At this stage, it is advisable to check this loop point in a little more detail using an

option in our Sample screen.

Checking for clicks

From the loop screen, highlight the sample name and press the WINDOW button to see the Sample screen. As we showed you in the last chapter, here you can pitch

down your sample to make it slower – great for checking to see if your loop is clickfree.

Using your cursor, highlight the Tune parameter and change it to around -07.00. Now if you press pad 13 you will hear your sample in 'slow motion' . At th ese slower speeds, it is much easier to hear any clicks at the loop point. If you do hear a click, simply go back to the loop screen and adjust your end point. Your sample will continue to play at a slow rate - in fact this is a master setting - if you adjust the tuning in this screen it will mean your sample will always play this slow (even in programs and in the main screen) until you change it back to zero.

Trimming the Excess

Once you are happy with your loop, return to the TRIM screen and select EDIT, and DISCARD and DO IT. This will remove the unwanted second bar from our loop - so do this (EDIT, DISCARD, DO IT). You can hear my final version by loading BREAK5 from the tutorial download.

Locking Loop and Start Point

You’ll probably have noticed the little padlock in the middle of the LOOP screen – if you highlight it and jog wheel to the left, it will ‘unlock’. What this does it allow yo u to set the Lp: point to be different to the actual St: point found in TRIM.

This probably sounds confusing, an d at this point, don’t concern yourself with this, because we don’t need it for basic drum looping, But we will need it when it comes to looping instrument samples and we’ll examine this in lat er chapters.

013 Programs

After you've sampled a sound and edited it to your liking, you'll probably be wanting to start playing it on your pads. To do this, you first need to assign your sample to a pad within a program and this tutorial covers the basics behind this.

Understanding Programs

Once you have loaded or sampled some sounds into memory, it's time to start playing these sounds via your MPC pads - to do this, you must assign your samples to at least one PROGRAM.

Programs are the containers of samples in your MPC. Each program in your MPC holds up to 64 different samples which can be assigned to any of the 64 pads in each program. Once you have assigned a sample to a pad, you are then able to play this sample in a sequence and you can apply various parameter changes to it in PROGRAM mode. Until your samples are assigned to a program, you can only access the sample in TRIM mode.

Go to the tutorial files (‘013’ folder) and find the project file ‘PROGRAMS’ and load this into memory. This loads 6 programs into memory (each one is blank by the way, there are no samples within them). Go to PROGRAM (MODE and PAD 7) and you will see this screen:

This is the main program screen where you can select a program to edit. Once in your desired program, you can assign samples to pads and change the way they sound for each pad.

In the top left will be the name of the current ly active program - in this case we have ‘BASS’. To change the program assigned to this holder, make sure the program name is selected and use your jog wheel to shuffle to the left or right. You'll see the other 5 program names appear - whichever one you stop on will be the program you can edit.

Your MPC can store up to 24 programs in memory at any one time, any of which can contain 64 assigned samples. Each program can ‘share’ samples – so a single snare sample can be put in any or all of the programs. In later chapters, I’ll explain how we can assign a particular program to a particular sequencer track.

Assigning Sounds to a Program

To create a program from scratch is easy. When you actually turn your MPC on, it creates a blank program for you called ‘Program01’. But to manually create a new blank program at any time, you can do the following.

Press 'Program' (MODE and PAD 7) to enter the program screen. With the current program name highlighted, press WINDOW and F3 (NEW) - if you press this key you will be asked to name your new program – so move your jog wheel to enter the ‘Name’ screen and give it a name like 'EXAMPLE' - press ENTER and DO IT. Your new (blank) program (EXAMPLE.pgm) is now created.

Locate this tutorial’s folder (‘013’) and load the sound 'BASS’ into memory. When your sound is loaded, you will be asked the following

For the moment, leave the pad assign set to 'OFF' and press KEEP. This sample is now in memory but unassigned to any pad. Now return to PROGRAM (MODE and PAD

7) and ensure your EXAMPLE program is loaded. We are now going to assign our BASS sample to PAD A3 in our EXAMPLE program.

First ensure that you have BANK A illuminated on th e top right of your MPC (under the rec gain dial). Hence, any pad you now press will be in BANK A.

What are banks?

Your MPC has only 16 pads, but each program has the capacity to hold 64 pads of samples. So rather than try to cram 64 pads onto the body of the machine, your MPC splits these 64 pads into 4 banks of 16 pads. By default, you will always be in BAN K A – to enter BANK B just press the B PAD BANK button so it is illuminated. After pressing this, you’ll see that down the left hand side of your screen (under ‘Pgm’) the letter change from A to B.

With BANK A selected, press the pad 3. and you’ll see the following

Down the left hand side, your pad number is identified – pad A03 (try pressing other pads and you’ll see it change for each pad). To assign our BASS sample to pad A3, you first need to move your cursor so that ‘1’ is selected. Now jog wheel so that your BASS sample is showing. If you had many samples in memory, you could scroll through until you find the sample you need. You should now see the following:

Now press pad A3 and you should hear your BASS sample. You can of course assign your sample to a pad when it is loaded - instead of setting

the pad assign to 'OFF' in the LOAD screen, you could have pressed a pad and your sample would have been automatically assigned to it. You have to be careful though – if you have multiple programs in memory, how do you know which program it is getting assigned to?

How does the MPC know what program it is assigning a note to from the load screen?

The MPC simply assigns your note to the last edited or used program in memory. So if you were in the PROGRAM screen and then went to the LOAD screen, any sample you assign when loading will be placed in the program you were previously editing.

So any note assigned to a pad in the LOAD screen will get assigned to the desired pad in the currently selected program in memory. This is why many times, I prefer to set the note assign to 'OFF' when I load, and assign the pad manually within the program so I know I'm assigning it into the correct program.

Changing Program Parameters

In the Program screen, press PAD A3 to bring up our BASS sample. In this screen, there are a number of editing possibilities to look at.

First set ‘FULL LEVEL’ to ensure our sample plays at full volume when a pad is touched. This button is located under the BANK A button.

Level

In the program screen, move your cursor so that the ‘100’ is highlighted under ‘Lvl’. This is the volume (level) of our sample, and by default this is set to 100. This can be increased or decreased using the jog wheel or numeric button/pads. Try setting it to something quite low and press the pad – the volume has decreased. Set it to 100 and this is as loud as you can go. This function is good as a quick fix if one pad

needs its volume decreasing/increasing compared to the others (this can also be done using the internal mixer – see the next chapter).

Tuning

Highlight the +00.00 under ‘Tune’. This will change the pitch of our sample. Tuning is the same as the pitch control slider you find on a turntable. If you increase the tuning, your sample speeds up and raises it's pitch. If you tune down (using negative numbers), your sample will slow down and drop in pitch. Put a value of 5 into this field and play your pad – the pad now sounds higher and the riff plays faster. Now set to -5. Your sample now sounds lower. Try setting to -36, this is the lowest setting possible, sounds a bit crazy. So does +36.

Envelope

Now highlight the Lvl parameter again and press WINDOW. You’ll see the following ‘Amp Envelope’ screen:

Here there are several parameters that we can change - each one will affect the way our pad sounds or reacts to being played. It's important to understand that any changes you make here to the way a sample sounds will only affect the sound of the sample on this pad only - it will not make any changes to the actual 'pure' sample itself. This means that within one program, we have the ability t o take a single sample and create 64 different sound variations (if we want to that is!).

By the way, while this screen is open, you can change the pad you wish to edit just by pressing the pad, so no need to leave the screen at all.

Let's look at some of the most important parameters here.

Attack

Attack refers to the shape of the sound at the beginning of your sample. Attack is a measure of how 'sharp' or 'peaked' the initial sound of your sample is. A drum hit has lots of attack as it involves an initially loud and hard hit, while a synth pad tends to have little attack as it will tend to gently fade in. The attack setting on your MPC is a way of adjusting the attack transient of any sample to suit the song you are working on.

On the left of your screen, move your cursor to 'Attack: 0' so that the '0' is highlighted. Play your bass sound and listen to the start of the sample closely. Now set your attack to 50 (you can use the jog wheel) and play your sample again - spot the difference – it noticeably fades in.

We'll look at some practical uses of attack in later tutorials.

Decay

Underneath attack is the Decay setting. Decay is the rate at which your sample is set to 'fade out' at the end of play. The higher the decay setting, the more obvious and slower the fade out of your sample. All samples in MPC programs have a decay setting of 5 by default - this ensures there are no clicks at the end of your samples but there is nothing stopping you setting this to any value you like. Try setting it to 50 and press the pad - you'll see your bass sample has a very obvious fade out.

For both of these settings, you’ll see the graph change shape to indicate the way the fade in and out is applied to your sample.

Decay md

This dictates at which part of the sample the decay will ‘kick in’. By default, it comes in near the end of the sample, but change this to START and look a the graph – the fade comes in nearer the start. If you then set a low decay setting, you’ll get a very sudden fade out

V>Level

This actually changes how the velocity (volume) of your pad changes in relation to how hard your pad is hit. To see the benefit of this, you first need to turn off FULL LEVEL!

With that off, hit your pad at different levels of hardness – try a soft hit, hard hit etc. You’ll hear it’s volume change quite obviously. Now highlight V>Level: 100 and set it to 0. Now matter how soft you hit your pad, it plays at full vo lume.

So, that’s the two extremes – any setting between 0 and 100 will mean you are effectively controlling the way your pad will react to how hard it’s hit. Generally, I would leave this at 100 and instead adjust your pad sensitivity globally (see below) – although this is a good feature if you have a particular program that requires a unique sensitivity setting.

Changing global pad sensitivity

A new MPC feature is the ability to change the sensitivity of ALL pads, globally (i.e. applied to all programs in memory) – this differs to V>Level because it will affect all programs rather than just specific pads in a specific program – it also has additional parameters to play with. For years, people have complained that their MPC pads are not set up like they want, so now you can select how all the pads on your MPC will react to your hits.

Make sure FULL LEVEL is off. Go to OTHER (MODE and PAD 10) and press PAD (F4). Here you can set the pad sensitivity and velocity curve for each of the 16 pads. Pad sensitivity is similar to the V>L evel setting – a lower pad sensitivity will mean you have to hit the pad pretty hard to get full velocity (volume), while setting it high will mean getting full volume is relatively easy.

Set your sensitivity to 1 and gradually increase it until you hit a velocity of 127 at a hardness that feel ‘right’ to you and suits your style of playing.

Remember that each pad can have its own setting – although I’m not sure why you would want to set each of your pads with different settings? Maybe some people only ever use certain pads for certain instruments?

The velocity curve setting also sets the way the pad changes velocity with the hardness of hit. Curve A is pretty much average and a good one to stick with – at the other extreme you have curve D which requires you to really start belting the pads to get anything near 127. Again, see what suits you – but my advice is not to get too fixated on this – sometimes too many options can be as bad as not enough…

Close the Envelope screen to return to the main Program screen. Now press F2 (FILTER) to see the following:

Filter

This are the MPC's built in set of filters. Filters simply ‘filter’ out certain frequencies from your sound to change the way it sounds. There are 3 types of filter in your MPC1000 and you there are also two sets available per pad, letting you come up with some pretty nice sound effects. We’ll be using filters in a more practical way in future tutorials, but let’s have a quick look at them now.

On the left of the screen (filter 1), highlight Type:OFF and select the first filter using your jog wheel – LOW PASS. As it’s name suggests, a low pass filter only lets low frequencies ‘pass’ and filters out the higher frequencies. Thus your sounds will become darker.

Highlight Freq:100 and drop this to 20. If you play the BASS sample, it will sound more dark and booming as it has lost its high frequencies. The lower the number, the less high frequencies are allowed through until you reach 0 - at this point the filter only lets through low frequencies.

The 'Reson' function controls the resonance of the filter - the higher this is set, the more pronounced the border cut off frequency becomes. This requires experimentation and can affect different sounds in different ways. If you set your resonance to 100, you should be able to hear your BASS sample ‘open’ up more and sound more ‘shrill’.

The ATT parameter is there in case your sample starts to distort. Simply set it to either -6 or -12 and the distortion should clear up.

Now set the filter to HIGH PASS. This is the opposite of LOW PASS as it cuts out the low frequencies but leaves the high ones. Set Freq to 100 and Reso to 0. You can hardly hear anything! Now set Freq to 50 – not much bass, quite tinny sounding. Setting to 0 just effectively turns the filter off.

With Freq set to 50, set the Reso to 100 – again, your sample becomes more ‘shrill’. Now set to BAND FILTER. This filter is a little different as rather than cut all

frequencies above or below a certain frequency point like t he LOW and HIGH filters do, it only allows the exact frequencies through that you set.

So, set on 50, only frequencies at the ‘50’ level are let through (rather than all frequencies below this level in the case of the LOW PASS). Give it a go to experiment with the different frequencies.

If you now go to the second filter, you can use this as well. So for example, have filter one set on BAND PASS and filter 2 set on LOW PASS. IN this situation, filter 1 is processed first, then filter 2.

Filter 2 has an additional parameter – LINK. This actually combines both filters in to one, powerful filter. At this point, all filter setting are set in filter 1, but the output sound is very different than if you were using one filter. Try setting BAND PASS in filter 1 to Freq:18 and RESO:100 and set filter 2 to LINK. Listen to our sample, then turn filter 2 to OFF. Listen to the difference.

Basically with filters, there is a lot of room for experimentation as y ou can conjure up lots of cool sounds from a single raw sample. We will investigate filters in more detail later.

Voice Overlap

Press PARAMS (F3) to see the following:

Voice Overlap refers to the way our sample physically plays. There are two settings here, POLY and MONO. When set to POLY (default), our sample plays all the way through from start to finish and if we press our sample again while the first hit is still playing, it simply plays on top of the first one. Try pressing our BASS samples many times in succession – it sounds a real mess.

If we set this to MONO, the sample still plays all the way through, but this t ime, if we hit the pad while the first hit is playing, this will abruptly stop the first hit and it will

be overridden by the new hit, so that the sound never overlaps itself. Try it – each time you pres the pad, the sample just starts again with no overlap at all. If you want to set the entire program into MONO, just change the POLY in the top right of the screen to MONO. We look at the uses of mono in ‘036 Multisampling Part 2’.

Mute Groups and Mute Target allow us to make one pad stop another pad playing. This is useful when emulating the action of an open and closed hi hat. We’ll look at these in a couple of later chapters, including ‘026 Building Performance & GM Kits ’.

Play Mode

Go back to the main SAMPLE screen and highlight our BASS sample and press WINDOW. You will enter ‘Play Mode’.

Now, w layers refers to the fact that we are able to assign up to 4 samples to a single pad, and we’ll look at practical uses for this throughout the book – for the moment, we’ll look at one more way we can change the way our sample plays. Currently, our sample is set to play as a ONE SHOT. This means when we t o uch the pad, the sample plays all the way through without stopping. If we now change this (using the jog wheel) to NOTE ON, our sample only plays for as long as we hold down the pad.

This setting is great for when you are playing musical notes, or even loops and we’ll look at the uses of this on more detail later in the book.

Important Note:

In older MPCs, if you have looped a sample in the sample editing screens (as we did in the last chapter), any program pad that had this looped sample assigned to it would automatically be set to NOTE OFF.

But with the MPC1000, a pad is always set to ONE SHOT irrespective of whether it is looped or not. This means that a looped sample will not play looped automatically on a pad, not until we set it to NOTE OFF.

To explain this more clearly, go back to the previous tutorial’s folder and load up our looped drum break BREAK5. Assign it to pad A1.

Remember, this sample is looped – to check this, go to TRIM (MODE and 6) and then LOOP. In the top right hand corner, it should say ‘Loop:ON’.

Now, go to our EXAMPLE program, and press pad A1 to here our loop. As suspected, it plays as a one shot. To remedy this, highlight the name, press WINDOW and set to

NOTE ON. Now the loop plays for as long as you want it to – just hold the pad and it will loop continuously until you let go.

There are more functions available within the PROGRAM screen, especially relating to layering our samples together and creating multisamples, but I do not want to overload you with information at the moment! We shall cover t hese in later tutorials with some practical examples.

Purging Sounds from memory

Throughout the program screens you will see the PURGE function visible at th e bottom of the screen (F6). This function allows you to rid the memory of any sample in your MPC memory that hasn’t been assigned to a program. Let’s say you loaded up a whole bunch of samples and some were not needed (so were not assigned to any programs), to remove these from memory simply press F6 and hit DO IT.

014 The Internal Mixer

Learn the basics of the MPC1000 internal mixer, including assigning your sounds to the individual outputs.

Using the Internal Mixer

Each sound assigned to a pad in a program within our MPC can be controlled using the internal mixer. The MPC internal mixer is very similar to a 'real' mixer as it allows you to adjust the volume, panning and effect level for each pad, although there are no dedicated eq settings for each channel like you find on most mixers.

From the tutorial files, load the project PAN. It’s just a simply little beat – press PLAY START to hear it.

Go to PROGRAM (MODE and 7) to select our PAN program. Now to access the internal mixer for this program, simply press MODE and pad 8. You should see the following mixer screen:

There are 16 representations of our 16 pads. This screen lets us change both the panning setting of our sound and its output volume. Panning refers to how our sound is placed within the stereo output of the MPC. By default, all sounds will be output out of the L and R stereo outs – by changing the panning, you can make the sound come out of say, the left channel more than the right, thus giving the impression the sound is coming more from the left than the right.

In a typical drum kit, our hi hats are normally panned to the left or right, while kicks and snares stay central. So let’s take the hat in this program and pan it. Ou r hih at is on pad A3, so first select that by pressing it. Now use your cursor to select the pan circle at the top of the mixer line for pad A3 and job wheel to the left until the pan is set at around 10 O’clock. Now press PLAY START and you should hear that your hi hat is coming out of your left speaker more than the right side, thus giving a true stereo effect.

Note: Panning will only work if you have both the L an R outputs connected to the L and R inputs of your speaker system (see chapter 1). Also note that if you connected your audio cables the wrong way around, a pan to the left in your MPC may resu lt in a pan to the right in your actual speakers!

While we’re here, let’s drop the volume of this hat as it’ s a bit loud. As we saw in the last chapter, you can do this just by setting the Lvl parameter on the pad from +70 to a lower number. But this time, we’ll drop the actual mixer volume down. So, press the down cursor key to select the volume bar and jog wheel to the left to reduce the

volume of our hat. You can leave the sequencer playing i n the background while you make the mixer changes. Set the volume level to about halfway.

You can also use the Q1 and Q2 Q-link sliders to control pan and volume. Move Q1 to change pan, Q2 for volume.

Controlling multiple sounds

If you want to control more than one pad in a bank, simply hold down shift and tap the pads you want to adjust. So to control the volume for pads A1, A2 and A5, first highlight the volume control for pad A1, hold down shift and then touch pads A2 and A5. Now, all these pads should be highlighted - spinning the jog wheel now controls all three pads at the same time. If you move your cursor upwards you are able to control the panning in the exact same manner. To deselect any one pad, simply hold down shift and touch the pad you wish to deselect.

If you want to adjust all the pads in bank A simultaneously, you can perform the above technique, but there is a shortcut - just press SHIFT and the ‘A’ PAD BANK button (just below the ‘record’ dial).

Changing Outputs

By default, the standard stereo L and R outputs are used for the audio output of your MPC. You have of course 4 other outputs that can be used. To change the outputs for each pad, press L/OUT (F2) to see the following:

All sounds will be output to ST, which refers to the st ereo outs. But select the ST for pad A3 and jog wheel to the left and you’ll see it says ‘12’ or ‘34’. This refers to outputs 1 & 2, or 3 & 4.

So with A3 set to outputs 1 & 2, our hat will now be output out of both outputs 1 and 2 (try it to see). Remember you will need to set up your MPC audio connections correctly to try this out – so ideally you would have all your outputs connected directly to an external mixer.

Also note that the moment you set an output to anything but ST, it will stop coming out of the main outputs entirely.

But let’s say we only want to output our hat out of output 1 – if is after all a mono sample. Well, a mono sample is simply single channel audio, so we can easily create this by hard panning our sample either right or left. To return to the main mixer page (F1) and pan our hat hard left – i.e. all the way to the left as far as it will go. Now our hat only leaves our MPC through output 1. At this point, you will have to control the unique panning of your hat via your external mixer.

Using the same theory, you could assign another sample on another pad also to outputs ‘12’. This time though, pan it hard right – this will mean it only comes out of output 2.

So what’s the point of doing that? Well in this example nothin g really, except as an example of how to assign samples to other outputs. But generally what this will mean is you can now route your hi hat to your mixer via say, an external effect unit like reverb or delay. With all your outputs being utilized like this, you could have up to 6 unique sounds coming out of each output, all of which could be processed via external effects and filters, all through an external mixer and multi t r ack recording unit (plus a wealth of sounds all processed internally via the MPC) .

Using the outputs isn’t a necessity to create a great track, but we’ll look at this all in more detail as the book progresses to see what kind of things we can do.

Note: You can assign all pads in a program to the same outputs if you want, or you can mix it up and assign different pads to different outputs and the same sample going out of different outputs (via different pads) if you want – you can have some pads going out on output 1, some on 3, some out of the main outputs – there’s no limit to anything. As we’ll see later, it pays to be ordered about this and use common sense, but generally speaking, do whatever you want and whatever suits the song!

Recording Mixer Changes

You can record real time changes in mixer settings via your sequencer – we’ll look at this in the next chapter.

A Word About Effects

If you press FXSEND (F3) you’ll be entering the world of MPC1000 effects. Rather than try skimming over it here, we’ve got two chapters dedicated to it later in the book….something to look forward too ☺

015 Recording Sequences

The sequencer is the heart and soul of your MPC - you'll spend a lot of time constructing your masterpieces within the main screen. This tutorial goes through, step by step, how to record drum tracks and MIDI sequences in your MPC.

In order to create beats from your samples and programs, you'll need to start getting accustomed to the main screen which is where you'll do all your sequencing. To view your main screen, press the MAIN button and you'll see something like this.

Move your cursor to highlight the sequence name in the top left of the screen (Sq:01-(unused)). Using the same methods we used to name programs and samples, press WINDOW and name your sequence 'BEAT1.

Changing the default sequence name

When you press WINDOW to being up the Sequence screen, you’ll also have the option to change the ‘Default Name’. This is the default name given to any new sequence (which would normally just be ‘Sequence’ followed by a number. So, if you wanted to cease a lot of sequences with the name ‘BEAT’, change the defaul t nam e to BEAT instead.

When you turn off your MPC, the default name will return to ‘Sequence’, so your new default name is only valid for the current session.

Now using the cursor, move down and highlight '120.0'. This is our tempo measured in beats per minute (i.e. how fast our beat will play) - change this to 80 BPM by pressing the NUMERIC key and entering the numbers 8, 0, 0 using the pads (i.e.

80.0) and press NUMERIC to enter (you could use your jog wheel to change the numbers instead). We have now set our tempo to 80BPM.

Changing the tempo with Tap Tempo

Instead of entering the tempo of your beat as a number, you can tap the tempo using the TAP TEMPO button . In the main screen, highlight the song tempo and then hit the TAP TEMPO button continuously with your finger at the speed you want your beat to be. You'll see the tempo change constantly - if it is changing wildly, you'll need to adjust the sensitivity of the tap tempo function. This can be done by pressing MODE and pad 10 and F2 (MISC). Here you can change the 'Tap average' setting. The higher you set this, the less wild your BPM f luctuations will be - a setting of 4 will mean the MPC uses at least four taps to calculate the BPM (but will continue to calculate the BPM if you continue tapping).

Download the tutorial files and find the program 'DRUMKIT.PGM' an d load this into memory. We are going to record a simple drum break using this program.

Press MAIN. Highlight 'Tr:01-(unused)' and press WINDOW. Rename this track 'HIHAT'. Now let's assign our new 'DRUMKIT' program to this track.

To assign any program in memory to a track in your sequencer, go to the line ‘Type:DRUM’ and highlight ‘Pgm:’ – you can then scroll through any programs loaded into memory. Make sure that your HIHAT track is set to our DRUMKIT program. Now any notes we play on this track will use the DRUMKIT program as its sound source.

Refer back to the main screen and let's look at some of the other parameters here. Tsig: 4/4 : This is the time signature of our sequence. 4/4 means there are 4 beats

in every bar - 99% of dance and electronic music is in 4/4. Now: 001.01.00 - this represents where we are in our sequence. The first number

(001) represents the bar (i.e. bar 1), the second number (01) represents the beat (beat 1 out of 4) and the last number (00) represents the number of 'parts per quarter note' we have traveled between beats. There are 96 parts per quarter note between each beat. So at the moment, this sequence is telling us we are at the start of the sequence - first bar, first beat.

Bars: 2 - This is how many bars this sequence will play for. To change this, simply highlight and jog wheel to the preferred value.

Loop: ON - This tells us that after our sequence has played through the number of bars set in 'Bars', it is to return to the beginning and continue playing again.

Mute: OFF - This says that the currently selected track is heard whenever we play our sequence. To turn off this track, press 'MUTE' (F5) and Mute will change to ON. To only hear this track, press SOLO (F6).

Velo%:100 - this is how loud this track plays. To reduce the volume simply highlight and jog wheel to decrease the number.

Let’s look at the buttons at the bottom of the screen: Press T.C. (F1). This will open up the ‘Timing Correct’ screen:

Timing is also known as the quantize. As we just mentioned, there are 96 points within each beat of our bar. This means there are 96 places where we can place a sequenced note within each beat. If we set ‘Note value: OFF ' we will have

access to every single one of these points when we play our sequence. If on the other hand we wish to limit where are notes will fall, we apply a quantise.

Why quantise? Well, quantising allows for very tight sequencing, where everything is in 'the right place' and is ideal for a lot of dance music - it also helps people who cannot play in time very well. With our timing set to 1/16, we limit the amount of available 'points' per bar to 16 - and as each bar in 4/4 consists of 4 beats, this means we have 4 points within each beat to place a note. If we set it to 1/8 we only have 2 points per beat and 1/32 we have 8 points per beat. So how does it work? Look at this graphical representation of your 'timeline' with a quantise set to 1/16.

If while recording a sequence we play a note that falls at point A, the quantising cannot let that note stay there. Instead, it must go to the nearest quantise point which in this case is 001.01.24

With note B, the nearest quantise point is 001.01.48 and hence our note is moved there. If we had set Timing: OFF, our notes would stay where they originally were and would not have moved to the new points.

As you can see the downside to quantising is that if you want a realistic sounding performance with lots of feeling, having the MPC move your notes around to different places them can severely affect your performance. So we use quantising with care. For the moment, set our Note value to 1/16 (and make sure swing% is set to 50 – no swing).

There is another way to change TC value – while in the main screen, press and hold the NOTE REPEAT button and you’ll see the bottom row on the main screen change to show TC values – you can select one by pressing one of the F keys.

Return to the main screen and press CLICK (F2) to open up the ‘Click/Metronome’ screen.

This will let us set how the metronome will play when we are recording. A metronome is simply a click that will help you keep your timin g when recording sequences. For the moment, leave this to the default values as these are fine for

most situations – make sure ‘Count In:’ is set to REC ONLY, In play is set to NO and In rec is set to YES.

Recording a Drum Performance

In our DRUMKIT program, I have assigned a kick to pad A1, a snare to pad A2 and a closed hi hat to pad A3 - press these pads to hear the sounds assigned. Before we start, we are going to turn on FULL LEVEL. This can be found to the top right of your machine - make sure it is illuminated, if not just press it once. Full level means that all your notes will be played and recorded at their full volume no matter how hard you hit the pad - in later tutorials we will turn this off as we get more serious about our drum recording, but for now, it will make life a little simpler leavi ng this set on.

With all the settings left as they are, press and hold REC and then PLAY START. This will set our sequencer recording and it will start it from the beginning of our sequence (hence PLAY START). At first you will hear 4 clicks - this is th e metronome telling us to get ready to start recording. On the fifth click you'll see the counter in the top right start to move indicating that recording is in process, both the REC an d PLAY buttons will be lit. The sequencer continues recording until you press stop.

Press stop and then press REC and PLAY START again. This time record a hi hat sequence using our hi hat pad (A3) - any sequence will do, and remember we have quantising (timing) set to 1/16 so all your hats will be placed in the quan tise grid.

After you have recorded the two bars you can stop playing. Your sequencer will continue recording regardless - it just starts back at the beginning of your sequence. Notice that it does not erase the notes you have just played though. This is because after making one successful 'pass' through the entirety of your sequence, the MPC switches from RECORD mode to OVERDUB mode (notice that th e REC button isn’t illuminated on the second pass, but the OVERDUB but ton is).. Once in this mode, you can simply choose to add additional notes to your sequence in real time without losing any of the notes you recorded.

Press STOP. To listen to what you have recorded, press PLAY START - this will play your track from the beginning. So let's say you want to add an additional note to your performance. Let's enter OVERDUB mode.

This time, instead of pressing PLAY START and REC, press PLAY START and OVERDUB. Your sequence will start playing again with the metronome and you can 'drop' your new note in at any point. Remember if you were to press REC instead of OVERDUB you will actually record over your sequence, in the same way that you would with a cassette player, so be careful!

Remember that with a quantize set to 1/16, you can only place notes in a specific place within the quantize grid – so don’t be shocked when some of your hats don’t appear exactly where you played them (quantizing can be bad and good!)

Endless Recording

If you are not sure how long you want a sequence to be, that's not a problem. Simply set the sequence loop to OFF and when you record, your sequence will just keep adding new bars until you press STOP. With loop set to ON, the sequence will always return back to the beginning when it reaches the number of bars set in 'Bars'

- but when it returns, it will be in OVERDUB mode, hence no notes are recorded over.

Erasing Notes

Method 1

After recording a sequence, you can press the 'UNDO SEQ' button - this will erase all notes that were recorded in the last recording session. After pressing you'll see it lights up red and if you play your sequence, your last set of recorded notes have gone. The advantage of this method is that if you press 'UNDO SEQ' again, it brings those notes back.

Method 2

To erase any notes you don't like, press OVERDUB and PLAY START and then hold down the ERASE button (to the right of the jog wheel). Whenever you want a particular pad erased at a particular point in the sequence, simply press and hold that pad and when the sequencer 'comes round' it will remove that note. So, you could actually erase your whole hi hat sequence by just holding down the hi hat pad and erase while in OVERDUB.

Method 3

Stop your sequencer and press ERASE. You will see the following screen:

Here you can tell your MPC to erase all the notes within a specific range by typing in the relevant times in the 'Time: ' field.

The 'Erase' parameter lets you specify the type of information to be erased - you can erase all recorded events (ALL EVENTS) or you can just erase certain notes (NOTE ONLY) or anything but note events such as MIDI pitch bend info etc (EXCEPT NOTE)

If you select NOTE ONLY, you can then set ‘Note’ to specify a particular pad to erase – just press a pad – if you press multiple pads, you can erase a number of specific notes – to remove a pad from the erase list, just press the pad again. To completely start pad selection again, just highlight the first selected pad and turn the jog wheel and all but the first pad will be removed from the list. Of course, if you want to erase all notes, leave it set as ALL.

If you would like your erase to affect all the tracks in your sequence, then set your 'Track:' to 0 (ALL TRACKS) - this will erase your notes on the selected track only.

In the ‘Time’ field, you can set which bars are to be affected (by default, this will be set to the entire length of the sequence).

We will look at more advanced ways of editing our performance in the next tutorial.

Note Repeat

There is an easy way to record a continuous run of notes in real time - the NOTE REPEAT function. The NOTE REPEAT button is the same button used for TAP TEMPO. By holding down the NOTE REPEAT wh ile recording and then holding down a pad, your MPC will record successive copies of that sound, each one being spaced out according to the 'Timing' value set in your main sequencer.

To use it, simply set your Timing value to 1/16 and press REC and PLAY START . While the initial 4 beat countdown is playing, hold down the NOTE REPEAT button and press and hold your Hi hat pad. Let the sequence record and run and you'll hear your hi hat play at even intervals without you having to manually bash the pad each time.

Note repeat does not work when the Timing field is set to OFF.

Adding another track

Let's add a kick drum. Now, you could just record your kick to the same track as your hat – but that's not a very good way to organise your projects. The best way is to create a new track dedicated to our kick. To select track 2 in our sequence, highlight 'Tr: 01 - HIHAT' and jog wheel once to the right. Alternativ ely press the 'Tr +' button (F4). Track 2 is now visible, so use the same method we did for naming track 1 and name this 'KICK' and make sure our DRUMKIT program is assigned to this track.

Press REC and PLAY START and record your kick drum (assigned to pad A1). Press stop and play back to hear your creation. Do you want to hear just the kick? Press SOLO (F6) and this will mute all other tracks apart from the currently selected. Repeat the entire process one more time, this time creating a snare track on track 3.

You should now have your own drum loop reco rded. For the moment, if you make a mistake, don't worry, we'll sort it out later, or you can keep erasing or re-recording until you are happy, it's up to you. Remember, if any of the tracks appear too loud, simply reduce the volume of the sample on your pad using the built in mixer or the Lvl control in your program editor – to open up the program screen quickly from the main sequencer screen, highlight the program name and press WINDOW.

Note that you can set your MPC into record mode and dynamically change tracks to record on without having to stop the recording in between track changes. Just press TR+ or TR- to change tracks and begin recording on the other track. As we shall see later, it’s a good idea to use only one instrument per track, so try to avoid mixing up snares and hats together on the same tracks.

In the tutorial download, you'll find a project file called ‘SEQ'. This is a quick sequence I made myself using the above technique - feel free to load this in and have a listen and study what I have done with this sequence.

Other Sequencer Functions

Similarly to programs, you can rename and delete sequences by highlighting its name and pressing WINDOW. You can also copy a sequence to replace any blank or existing sequence by pressing COPY in the WINDOW screen (F5).

Recording MIDI tracks

The note data we recorded in the previous examples were used to trigger internal samples in programs loaded into our memory. We can use the same techniques, but this time, we can trigger sounds from an external MIDI device such as a keyboard or a sound module. Connecting such MIDI devices to your MPC was covered in ‘002 Understanding MIDI’, so please refer to the diagrams there to help connect up your MPC.

Obviously, you can only complete this section if you have a MIDI sound module/synthesizer - if you don't have any MIDI equipment, don't worry it's not essential to create beats with your MPC as the internal sampler provides you with unlimited sounds!

Let's record a MIDI track onto track 4, using the pads to play sounds from a module. Once your keyboard or sound module is set up and connected via MIDI to your MPC MIDI OUT (use MIDI OUT port A for this example), set the output channel of your module to MIDI channel 1 – this means that your MIDI information is transmitted along MIDI channel 1 and is received by your MPC though MIDI OUT port A.

Select track 4 and where it says 'Type: DRUM ' change this to 'Type: MIDI' with your jog wheel. Now, move with your cursor to the right where it says Midi: OFF and change this to 1A. The '1' here refers to MIDI channel 1, and the 'A' refers to the MIDI OUT port we are using on the MPC. The track is now set up to transmit MIDI data out of MIDI OUT port A over MIDI channel 1. So, any note information on this track will now trigger a sound on our module.

At this point, play a pad on your MPC - it should now play a note from the sound module - if it doesn't make sure everything is set up as per the MIDI tutorial. Now record a sequence on track 4 using your pads in the same way you recorded your drum tracks earlier. When you are finished, press stop and press PLAY START and your sequence should automatically trigger the sounds from your sound module just like it triggers the internal samples from the programs.

If you have a MIDI keyboard you can use the keyboard to record the notes into the sequencer - the set up of this was also covered in the MIDI tutorial. Once the MIDI out of your keyboard is connected to the MIDI in of your MPC, playing a note on the keyboard will automatically trigger the corresponding pad on your MPC.

Why don't the notes I play on the pads run in order?

The notes on a MIDI keyboard run in numerical order (i.e. 35, 36, 37, etc) as you follow the keys along the keyboard. If you load at the MPC pads, you'll see the note numbers do not run in any obvious order - pad A1 is 37, pad A2 is 36, pad A3 is 42 and pad A4 is 82! So playing these pads in running order will play some very random notes on a keyboard.

There are two solutions. First, always use a keyboard to play your non-drum performances through your MPC - to be honest, this is the best way to get more realistic performances, especially for pianos and other similar instruments as the pads are better set up to playing drums rather than the subtleties of piano playing.

The second solution is to renumber all the pads, starting at 35 for A1 and ending on 98 in bank D (bank D is actually already in correct order). I also do this, but have a blank program on disk that has the pads already renumbered, so I just load it in whenever necessary.

By the way, to change the MIDI note order of your pads, go to PROGRAM and press NOTE (F4). This will let you renumber your pads in any order you want (but I suggest you do start at 35).

I've included this blank program in the tutorial download, it's called 'BL A NK.pgm'. Load it into memory and examine it to see what I did. We also use this technique in the multisampling tutorials later in this book.

Recording Mixer Changes

As you discovered previously in this book, your MPC has an internal mixer that controls the volume and panning of your internal samples - if you haven't read this, it may be a good idea to do so before continuing.

It's actually possible to record these volume and pan changes so you can, for example, fade out a particular sample or a set of samples, or perhaps change the panning of a sample while a sequence is playing.

Load up the project file PANNING from the tutorial files folder ‘PANNING’ - this consists of a program containing a short sfx sample on PAD A1 . Go our blank sequence 1 (PANNING) and set a BPM of 90 and set the timing of 1/16. On track one, record a 4 bar sequence using the note repeat function technique described earlier in this tutorial - just record 1/16 instances of our sample over the two bars (in a machine gun like manner).

Go to track 2 of this sequence and name the track 'PANNING'. This is the track we shall record the panning info on. With your sequence and track 2 still selected, go to mixer (MODE & PAD 8) - here you'll see your stereo mixer. Press 'SETUP' (F4) and set ‘Record mix changes’ to YES.

Now select L/PAN (F1) and highlight the pan control on PAD A1 - spin the jog wheel to the left to set the panning hard left. PLAY and RECORD - remember that we are on track 2, so everything we now record goes on this separate track. As soon are your sequence starts recording, start moving your jog wheel to the right which will change your pan setting gradually from left to right. Try to time it so it reaches the far right by the end of the second bar and then gradually take it all the way back to the far left just before it reaches the end of the 4 bar sequence.

Now press stop and press PLAY (while staying in the MIXER screen). You'll hear the sound move from left to right (if you wear headphones you'll notice the change even more). You'll also see the pan control for pad A1 move as the sequence plays.

Go back to the main sequence and mute track 2 by pressing F3 (TrMUTE). Press PLAY again and you'll hear there is no panning. Turn track 2 back on and your panning info is restored. There is nothing stopping you recording the panning info on the same track (1) as your SFX, but there is one thing you should realise. No matter what quantise you set, the mixer info is recorded as if the quantise was set to 'OFF'.

I prefer to keep the mixer changes stored on a separate track as it's easy to change mixer settings later in the future this way. You can always MERGE your mixer changes at a later date.

You can listen to my version - it's PANNING2 (sequence 2). Basically, our mixer changes are actually recorded to the sequencer. Note that you can also record volume changes in the exact same way - and remember that if you select multiple sounds at once, you can control and record those mixer changes for all the sounds (but obviously only sounds contained within the currently selected bank).

Go back to the root of the tutorial folder and load up the project file VOLUME. This uses the beat and break from the start of this tutorial. This time, I’ve recorded a fade in using our mixer. To do this, I selected track 4, went to MIXER and selected all three drum sounds on pads A1, A2 and A3 (holding down shift to make the mu ltiple selections).

I then reduced all their volumes to zero and pressed RECORD and PLAY START – I then recorded my fade out.

Note that if you stop your beat once the pads have faded out, your mixer settings will be set at the last setting set in the sequencer – so you may not hear your pads anymore! To remedy this, go back into MIXER and set the pad volumes back again!

One Sequence or Many?

When you come to creating a complete song in your MPC, you can either create the entire thing in one very long sequence or use many small sequences (2 - 16 bars long) and patch them together in Song mode. As you can imagine, trying to get your head around a 300 bar sequence will not do your health any good - so it's common practice to build songs from little sequences. I suggest keeping most sequences at 8 bars or less. If you cannot wait for the song mode tutorial, feel free to jump along to it and have a quick read of the way you can start building songs (although there may be some techniques mentioned there that you may not have covered yet!)

We'll look at the more advanced uses of our sequencer in later tutorials.

016 Editing Sequences Part 1

This tutorial shows you the ropes of using the Step Edit function to change recorded sequences and mixer changes

Recording your sequences in real time as we did in the last tutorial is the probably the most natural way to lay down musical performances. But as you can imagine, if this was the only way to record notes into your sequencer, you would find yourself being quite limited when it came to producing complex electronic sequences, plus, surely there must be an easier way to change a performance without having to record it all again?!!

Changing notes in Step Edit

Open up the tutorial files and load the program 'SINEBASS’. This program contains a sine bass program on bank A. In your MAIN screen, select a blank sequence, set the tempo to 80BPM and press MODE and pad 14 (STEP EDIT). You should see the following screen

Not very interesting at the moment, but with this screen still selected, press the red REC button (or OVERDUB) and then press pad A5 and hold for a second or so. You'll hear a bass sound and a constant click, but you'll also see some characters appear on the screen in front of you. It will look simila r to the following (but not identical, as it will depend on how long and hard you touch th e pad for)

These words represent the note we just played. Let's look at each part to see what it means.

001.01.00 – this tells us the time position of our note within the sequence

P: A05(39) - this tells us what MIDI note (39) and pad (A5) w as played.

T : 0 - this represents the note 'parameter' (one of 5 different types of parameter) which by default is set to a tuning (T) of 0 (i.e. no tuning).

D: 330 - This represents the length of the note (330 sequencer parts)

V: 127 - this is the velocity or (loudness, volume) of our note.

Each one of these settings can be highlighted and adjustments made using the jog wheel. If you highlight the '001.01.00' field and jog wheel to the right, you'll move through all the notes in our sequence (there aren’t any more t the moment – we’ll add some more in a bit!).

Highlight ‘P’ and jog wheel to the left or right – the note will change to a new pad. If you want to hear the new note, simply press PLAY (F6).

Highlight the 'D' field and decrease the number to around 40 and press and hold PLAY. Our note is now shorter.

Highlight the 'V' and reduce the velocity to 20 and press play. Our sample plays more softly.

We'll look at the 'Tun' field in more detail later in th is tutorial.

To delete the currently selected sound, just press DELETE (F4). Your note is gone forever - there is no undo for this. Press pad A5 again to place a new version there. Press A5 again - notice that our sequencer does not put an additional copy of the same note in our sequence, it merely overrides the existing one.

Now press pad A1. This time our new note also appears on our screen as shown below:

The new note appears directly below our original note. This means that if you were to play the sequence, both these notes would sound at the same time. (Note that if you press F6 it will only play the currently selected note, i.e. the note that is highlighted).

Now delete this new note by moving the cursor anywhere on its line of information and press DELETE.

Set your cursor back on the original note at 001.01.00 and press and hold EDIT (F3) - this provides an additional sub menu with the buttons COPY, PASTE & MOVE.

While holding down F3, press F4 to copy our selected note to the (invisible) clipboard. Now press DELETE to remove the note so you now have a blank screen.

Notice that upon deleting this final note, we are taken automatically to the end of our sequence (003.01.00). You cannot add a note to the end of the sequence, so let’s return to the start of the sequence either by moving the cursor up and jogging to the left or pressing the left BAR button twice (the BAR button is just above the red OVERDUB button).

Now that we are back at 001.01.00, press and hold EDIT and then PASTE (F5), and you'll see your note reappear. At this point, the note still remains on the clipboard, so you can paste another copy in another location later.

Add another note so that you have two notes recorded in your sequence, let's select both these sounds together. With the top note highlighted, press shift and hold SHIFT and while keeping shift held down, move the cursor one step down - both sounds are now highlighted. From here, you can copy and paste both sounds at the same time, and if you press DELETE, you will delete both sounds at the same time.

With both highlighted, press and hold EDIT and select MOVE (F2). TO move both our notes to a new time, change the ‘Move to’ field to 002.01.00 and press DO IT. Upon returning to the main step edit screen, you’ll see both notes are now at 002.01.00 instead of 001.01.00.

Navigating in Step Edit

Look at the very top left of the screen and you'll see you can also your time position by entering numbers or using the jog wheel.

The top field consists of three numbers, for example, 002.01.00.

002 represents the bar; in this case you are in Bar 2.

01 represents the beat within that bar - in this case you are in beat 1

00 represents the sequencer tick within that beat. In this case you are at sequencer tick 00. There are 96 ticks in a bar (00-95), hence the sequencer resolution 96 ppqn.

Highlight '002' and jog wheel once to the right to change it to '001'. You are now at the start of the second bar. If you press PASTE, the conten ts of your clipboard should appear here - this is because once a note is on the clipboard a copy of it stays there until you leave the step editor.

Another way of navigating the step editor is to use the two ‘BAR’ keys above your REC buttons. The BAR keys simply move you one bar at a time though your sequence. To move in smaller steps, you need to hold down SHIFT and press the BAR keys – this time you are using them as STEP keys.

Press shift and the right STEP key and you'll see your time display change. How much it changes depends on the value set in our ‘T.C. field’. Press F1 (TC) to display the ‘Timing Correct’ screen. On my MPC it says '1/16', it may be set differently on

yours. A setting of 1/16 means that every time you press STEP (i.e. SHIFT and BAR), you move through your sequence a period of 1/16 of a bar - 1/16 of a bar is represented by a movement of 24 ticks. Try moving in STEPS – if your TC is set to 1/16, you’ll see that your top left time field goes like th is

001.01.00

001.01.24

001.01.48

001.01.72

001.02.00

Change your T.C. field to 'OFF' (F1), and your STEP keys let you progress through your sequencer a single point (tick) at a time. Change it to 1/8 and you move through your sequence 48 ticks at a time.

So, using your STEP keys or by using your cursor to highlight the top time field and changing the numbers with the jog wheel, set your time to 001.01.72. Now press pad A2 and you’ll enter a note in this time position.

As you can see, our MPC shows up to 4 note events at a time and if there are more than 4 notes in your sequence you can scroll up and down to view them all.

Step Edit Options

First, using the techniques explained previously, delete all notes in your sequence and return to time 001.01.00.

While in Step Edit, press WINDOW and you'll see this screen

With Auto step increment set to 'NO', every time you enter a note in step edit, you remain at that point in time. If you set this to 'YES', every time you add a note, your sequencer automatically moves on to the next quantise point, depending on the quantise set in the TC value. So set this to YES and press CLOSE.

Press TC and set it to 1/8. Press OVERDUB and then press pad A5. Your note is recorded and you are automatically moved on to the next quantise point (01.01.48). Play a few pads in succession until you reach the end of your sequence and then press the white PLAY control button. You'v e manage to write yourself a bass line with very little effort! Let's erase this entire set of notes by pressing ERASE in the MAIN screen and pressing DO IT (the default values will erase the entire track). Now go back to STEP EDIT.

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