Hip hop makers, Akai MPC or softsampler?

[Jak]

I make hip hop. I use battery to do the drums, but lately ive been thinking about getting one of the new MPC 1000s.

Im not good at playing drums with my midi keyboard in real time, so I pencil in midi data into a midi track and hook that up to an Aux track with battery on it. I do this in grid mode (16th notes). This way, kick, snare, and hi hat lock in perfectly. But maybe too good. I listen to it, and it sounds good, but when i listen to a pro hip hop track their drums 'seem' to be more real. I dont know, maybe im just imagining it, because they would quantize to lock in the beats, right? Making it the same as mine. I cant hear the difference in timing, so it might be something else that is creating that live feel. My point is, would using an Akai sampler, give me a more expressive, better sounding beat? No matter hard you work on re-creating something, sometimes its too hard to capture a live performance. Thats probably not too clear, but you get the idea, right? I just feel like, maybe an akai would be better.

Thanks

Alex

[carlone]

Whatever you use, the fact that your drawing in midi notes instead of playing them in makes it MUCH harder to get any feel at all. Midi uses velocity, duration and note placement (or quantize) to interpret what we call "feel". If you draw in midi beats then you have to take some time to tweak all of the above parameters on each part (Kick, Snare, Hi Hats, ect.) to even get close to something with the "feel" that it sounds like you're looking for.

The MPC takes alot of the math out of this process and makes it seem more natural. But you still have to learn how to use it to get the most out of it. That's the trade off.

[Guitarman2k2]

If you want to continue using battery (or better yet try using reason) or its a matter of funds just get the akai pads that they sell (not sure what they're called but its like the pad part of an mpc for around $300) plug it in via midi and you'll get a much better feel and have more fun than programming note by note. if you get reason try the redrum drum machine its very cool. if you're going the mpc route get an mpc 3000 or at least a 2000xl. i hear the mpc 1000 really doesn't make it.

[CarlAtBitHeadz]

The latest Dr Dre and 50Cent albums were made using an MPC(for drum rhythms) and Unity Session(for everything but drums and vox), if that helps.

[SHUK]

Groove quantise is a big help in getting the 'live' feel when programming beats, this is partly how the mpc made a name for itself in the hip hop world- it's very easy to apply a fixed amount of 'swing' to what you're quantising.

Nowadays you can also do it pretty easily using Logic or Pro Tools 6, which actually comes with MPC groove templates.

[DHS]

if u have crappy rhythm.. play them from the keys anyway. make sure your velocity range on the drum samples are say 40-127. most likely playing live for 16 bars you will be able to get a couple notes on minimum.
record, listen back, find the notes that u did hit on and copy them and make a bar out of em. delete the off ones. for fills just program em and play with the velocity. then youll keep a human feel with out quantize. the mpc does have a nice qauntize. i pefer not to quantize at ALL WITH SOFTWARE SEQ. but i use logic and the swing isn't to bad. if you go mpc i would def suggest the 4k. akai sys and the ability to play mulitis and patches will make it more useful than just a drum machine.

[tvent]

I don't know why the MPC1000 wouldn't "make it" other than it doesn't have any cdrom or floppy drive. If you are doing Drums and some loops then 32MB of RAM is sufficient.

I started making beats on a low-budget drum machine then finally moved up to an MPC3000 back when they were pretty new items. I really enjoyed it. Then I bought software and a computer and went through a really long learning period moving from the MPC to software. I don't know what the learning curve would be if you did the opposite and moved from software to an MPC.

I did eventually end up picking up a used MPC again (MPC60 this time since I thought I would only be getting it for the pads - this was before the "pad16" or whatever it is called was available). I find myself sometimes still loading up samples in it and programing beats in it's sequencer then letting it play back via midi beat clock through the ProTools inputs. It just sounds good to my ears - not talking about the groove here, just talking about the way the drum samples sound coming from it.

One thing I thing people associate with the "MPC" groove of it's sequencer is the fact that, by default, it quantizes on input so your beats sound "on beat" right off the bat. You can turn this on in ProTools too just by taking a quick visit to the midi menu and turning on "input quantize".

Another thing to think about with an MPC is that if you have one with enough ram (or a big enough SD card on the MPC1000) then you can load up quite a bit of samples and sequences and take it to a gig if you do anything live. An HD system is not that easy to tote around