Anyone had experience sequencing an MPC 500 with their Pyramid? Selling my Digitakt to fund a pyramid (to sequence my growing synth collection) and an MPC. I know the MPC1000 with JJOS is always going to be the more popular choice, but as all I’ll be looking to do is sequence EQ’d drum samples I’m hoping I won’t have to spend too much time menu diving on the 500?
Hi! I’m using an MPC500 to playback my drum samples sequenced by the Pyramid. I use a free software on my Mac for drumkit preparation (called MPC Pad 187 - but i know there are PC alternatives), and then I tweak them a bit directly on the MPC when i’m in a no computer rehearsal situation (just volum, panning, and sometimes a bit enveloppes adjusting depending on the song). The MPC500 is really limited when it comes to tweak the sounds (basic enveloppe, no LFO, etc), so it’s not that much difficult to do on the MPC little screen. It’s basic but working. If you are on a budget, i think it’s the more effective solution for handling drum samples, even if it doesn’t offer a lot of fun option for playing with your sounds.
But i’m must say I will have a look on the Pipes sampler that will come later this year. It’s seems powerfull and not that expensive for what it can do. Here it is : https://www.pipes.rocks
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Thanks for that. Wow, didn’t expect I’d have to resort to third party software to prep a kit on the MPC500! I’ll have to check out the workflow but it’s certainly less appealing with that in mind.
Do you EQ your samples inside the MPC500? Interested to know how easy that is.
Thanks again
Oh actually you don’t have to use an app on the computer to make a kit. You can create the kits directly on the MPC, but i really found the process bring and too long. For exemple, when browsing all the samples loading in your MPC500 memory to attach it to a pad, they are absolutely not sorted by alphabetic order. I couldn’t find why, and what is the sort method on the MPC, and it can make it very long to find the right sample if you have a lot of them in memory. That’s why i found the computer method more quick to start creating the kits, even i finish tweaking them on the MPC only.
The MPC is an old machine now, and it will not be as easy to handle the samples and the kits as it is on the Digitakt.
I don’t EQ the samples in the MPC. Actually, there is no EQ per pad (i think there is an EQ in the global FX - but i don’t use them, as i EQ globally on my mixer board). It’s all part of my kit preparation on the computer, as i try to create my own kits, even if I sometimes blend them in layers with more classical drums sounds.
Not used my MPC 500 with my Pyramid (or at least not yet as I’m a very new Pyramid owner), but can suggest a piece of software called MPC Maid to help preparing kits for the MPC - it’s possible to do everything on the MPC itself (I started out that way) but it can be a bit fiddly. MPC Maid is effectively a clone of MPC Pad 187 but written in Java so it works on Windows as well as Mac, in case that is of relevance to anyone.
Okay, thanks all. Looking a bit deeper in to the MPC500 I think I’ll find the lack of per pad EQ and only low pass filter too restrictive. From what I can tell the MPC1000 has a four mode filter per pad which will allow me to sculpt drum sounds.