9 replies to this topic

[lightfoot]

Allrighty,

Our setup for live work is at the moment using a motif ES7 as the back bone.

The motif is big, and a pain in a arse to move around and what not, we are looking to downsize our live rig to be more movable

we are looking at moving to a rack setup for the motif for live performances, plugged up with some keyboard midi controllers, intead of carrying the motif as we do now..

We will be needing a sequencer to run the midi data to the motif rack, I dont want to use a laptop live as i think it doesnt look good, and i dont want to be worrying about the communcation from the macbook to the edirol, and all the rest of those dramas...

I have been looking at an MPC500/1000 as the sequencer to control the rack, I am not familiar with MPCs and have a few quick questions..

1. I would like to transfer 16 channel midi from ableton to the MPC unit, is this as simple as just recording onto the MPC, or dropping the midi file over via USB?

2. Can you load a midi sequence to certain pads, so hitting pad 1 will start play the 16 channels of song 1?

3. would it be better to get a 1000 over a 500?

4. does this sound like a good idea?

If you have any suggestions please let me know, as im open to ideas

Cheers guys

lachie

[exohex]

1. I think you'd have to record each track seperately

2. The pads play samples not midi sequences - but you can use them to mute/unmute tracks and select different sequences

3. MPC 500 very portable, has stereo out only, one midiout port and each sequence has 48 tracks.
MPC 1000 has 6 outputs, two midi out ports and each seqeunce can contain 64 tracks and the OS can be upgraded.

Do you need the extra outputs, 16 midi channels and 16 tracks per sequence?

4. Yes

I think you could use an Alesis MMT-8 for what you want to do, it was good enough for orbital in its day ...

a guy called dirty as hell was selling two on ITM recently:
http://www.inthemix....ighlight=alesis

[lightfoot]

Thanks for the response,

hrmm quick look into the MMT-8, 8 channels max wont work for us, need more than that for what we have now

so, to play a 'song' out of an MPC you would have to dial up that song, and press the play button? still not a show stopper by any means, and some live sample triggering would spruce things up a bit anyways...

I need a crash MPC course for this kind of setup...

[lightfoot]

This is basically it!!

ha except hes controlling the full motif and not just the rack..

this could be looking good

KZlYTRRW51Y

[exohex]

mpc terminiology:

song: a chain of sequences, each link in the chain can be replayed a specified amount of times

sequence: a collection of parallel tracks with a specified length

track: a stream of midi data either triggering internal samples or external gear


"so, to play a 'song' out of an MPC you would have to dial up that song, and press the play button?"

yes - the mpc system is very intuitive - you'll get the hang of it in about two minutes

[lightfoot]

Awesome,

Cheers for the response mate

Time to decide which one will be best, and then do some shopping!

[niktu]

As an alternative suggestion, how about the Yami RS7000? I know it's not the quite as compact but it has two MIDI outs (32ch) and you can also trigger your parts live from it so you don't have to be so rigid with your live arrangements. It sports some gloriously useful knobage and can even throw in 64MB of sample data if you get the memory (cheap off ebay). I know you've got the Motif and therefore you might already be aware of the RS7k. It's obviously a little larger but I think the RS7k is a killer thing. I'd like to get one again for myself. I wrote and produced more on that thing in the two years I had it more than anything else - and fast. I sold it to get the MO6 but I didn't really have the same realtionship with the MO. Now I want to go back the RS7k.

Anyhoo, just thought it might suit.

[lightfoot]

jebus,

I had no idea about those! That would be far more applicable, since we know the architecture already! shit, and the synth aspect!

Man, thanks heaps for the suggestion, I had no idea about those!

Cheers!

lachie

[Spectrum]

Yeah, the RS7000 is a bit of a MPC killer, IMO.

Plenty of people have worked with these, both live and studio.

[niktu]

FYI - Don't exepect the sounds to be as posh as your ES7. The RS7k uses an older AWM2 sound set and the available synthesis control is also pretty basic. Having said that, I managed to pull heaps of noise out of it. For me, it was about the knobs and the immediacy of creating sounds, beats and songs - very fast.  After comparing the sound between the RS7k & the MO6 (ES sounds), I kind of missed the RS7k's grittiness. With that MIDI'd up to your ES rack, you'll have a compact, powerhouse rig.

Lastly, they're getting a bit hard to find now. I occassionally have a squizz on Ebay but I haven't seen one come up for a while. If you google, I think there's still one on Gumtree in Sydney and they come up from time to time over at ITM and in the Trading Post.

All the best. Cheers.