MPC Thread : MPC Live - MPC X - MPC One (Part 2)

I just went old school, downloaded my splice library, paused the sub and put everything on the SD card. It felt more convinient to me.
Besides that, I have my entire sample library on my own cloud these days :nerd_face:

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I couldnā€™t actually tell you the first thing about Splice, except that whenever someone uses it in a YouTube video, that vein on the side of my head starts pulsing.

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It is not the alien on your face making the vein pop?

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The mystery of why the veins in my temple might be throbbing is like an Agatha Christie novel with at least two dozen equally plausible suspects.

Thinking a bit more about my semi-serious prophet of doom act, it becomes ever more plausible. If you look at the MPC Keys, Iā€™d bet a large chunk of users may never sample a single sound into those, and I wouldnā€™t be surprised to see a cheaper version that does away with the audio inputs and just operates as a Play / M:S style ā€˜samplerā€™. Iā€™ve no doubt at all itā€™d sell (and with good cause).

I guess sampling is a difficult area in which to innovate, and while bundling in an FM synth isnā€™t really innovation, thereā€™s currently nothing that can really compete with the breadth offered by the MPC range. Isuspect thatā€™s a stronger selling point than the sampling aspects, and if the sampling arena starts to get a little crowded (and Roland start to ship the 404MKII in double figures) I woulndā€™t be surprised to see the other elements of the MPC range to be pushed to the fore.

Itā€™s true that ultimately I just enjoy catastrophising - it takes your mind off things - but the development of the current MPC line is just too interesting to resist speculating on, like a less cosmic and shorter-term version of wondering what humans will look like in the year 10,000 (hairless and with much bigger noses).

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Iā€™ll give it a try again, but I personally hate touch screen gestures unless they work flawlessly all the time. Sometimes, I canā€™t even pull out that slider thing, and other times it wonā€™t disappear again, so Iā€™m skeptical about that being any faster than Menu+pad.

Easy fix would be if they just let me repurpose the + and - buttons I never use for a program edit shortcut and another shortcut.

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Nah.

Just wanted to use that gif. :joy:

100%. Itā€™s my number one feature request.

Program Edit is one of my most used buttons ever since getting the new Instruments.

Adding custom shortcuts like that would be very useful.

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You have to slide it from the middle where the tab is coming outā€¦ that messed me up too for a while until I figured it out.

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Well, youā€™re missing out. Splice is a treasure trove of curated sample content. I mean, unless youā€™re not fond of sampling random stuff, in which case - I can see how itā€™s lost on you.

NOTE: I dont know why I had Wi-Fi turned off foreverā€¦
not sure when or why I turned it onā€¦but DAMN is it handy. my box notified me of an update, and asked to proceed. how freakin great is that. no futzing with the wire and BS update process. :+1:t6: :+1:t6:

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I tried it again but I still donā€™t like it. Itā€™s definitely not faster than Menu+pad for me at least. Just the swiping to reveal the menu takes longer. Glad itā€™s working well for you.

Iā€™m a huge fan of sampling random stuff, and I donā€™t doubt Splice is a massive convenience if you want to do things quickly and properly. I understand why people use it in YouTube videos where they canā€™t afford a takedown. It just feels too convenient for me - but I have the luxury of not having any deadlines or commercial considerations, so I can try to catch stuff ā€˜in the wildā€™. Any kind of curated resource takes away a lot of the fun (and ultimately the point) for me (which is not quite true because I love old drum & bass sample CDs, but they can still require a fair amount of legwork).

Separately it makes me a bit sad to think of people subscribing to a service thatā€™s integrated with their hardware where they can just filter by keyword, genre and BPM rather than skipping around an old easy listening LP from Oxfam before warping it into something completely different. I realise itā€™s not an either/or scenario, and I am also an old man tilting at windmills, but I suppose you have to tilt at something or you might as well give up.

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I totally agree with you. The immediacy and convenience of that type of approach is at the expense of having the connection and attention to detail that creating your own sound/sounds gives you.

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+1 Effort in music production has been marketed as an inconvenience, from curated sample libraries, bazillion presets, generative sequencing, the list goes on.

Personally I steer clear of all that, but I can see why it appeals to so many people.

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I love sampling so much losing limbs couldnā€™t keep me from it, but I also love mangling samples enough to not care where they come fromā€¦ but, recently Iā€™ve come to discover a caveat that I canā€™t stomachā€¦ I do blame the proliferation of sample packs for proliferation of the omission of sampling capability on alot of hardware samplers being developed todayā€¦ I think there is a direct correlation and I donā€™t like it hmmpf :pleading_face:ā€¦ you know that poem.

first they came for the sample slicing, and I did not speak up because I could still slice samples on my other beatmachine,
then they came for the stereo samples, but I didnā€™t speak up because I could still sample in stereo if I wanted on my other beatmachine,
then they came for the ability to sample altogether, but I said nothing because I could still sample on my other beatmachine,
then they came with the og circuit and I almost kicked my grandmother, but i didnā€™t cause I love my nana
and then finally they got it in their heads that nobody likes sampling and that what the world really needed was a bunch of hardware sequencers with no sampling because eh in their wisdom they new that if sampling was included people would be forced to use it instead of just simply not using it like any other damn feature they didnā€™t feel like using oops i digress, well you know how the poem goes.

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Lol! Well, on that we can agree. :rofl: But I suppose it can also result in option paralysis as well, and for that reason - services like Splice are certainly part of the problem. For the work I do (content delivery under tight deadlines), Splice is absolutely critical to my bottom line.

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Sure, a modern and more convenient development of music libraries, I expect - clients arenā€™t going to welcome your carefully disguised and uncleared King Crimson swipes. Itā€™s really when it starts to extend to the samplist on the street and gets recommended by YouTube channels that it feels wrong to me. I think sampler owners should get some blood on their hands.

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I think everyone should decide what and how to sample, and that no persons way of doing it is better than anotherā€™s.

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