Getting the most out of older gear Part 1: MPC 1000 fat pad upgrade

Posted on April 20, 2016 by flux302

These days there are a ton of options for the upcoming producer and selecting which tools you use can be daunting. Factors such as price range, hardware vs software, analog vs digital and workflow can all be major factors. Luckily for those in the know, there are some real deals to be had these days. This series will focus of finding production equipment deals, older gear that still holds a lot of useful abilities, and breathing new life into that gear. To help get the best bang for your production dollar, I have decided to grab a few of these pieces of gear and show how to revamp them, what to look out for, and how to use them in todays modern environment.

So lets start off with arguably the center of most production setups, the sequencer/drum sampler. I have chosen the MPC 1000 for a few reasons. 1) it is affordably priced and readily available. 2) with its compact flash slot, hard drive and USB connection, this MPC can easily connect to a modern studio set up with ease. 3) the MPC 1000 is to this day one of the most powerful portable samplers available.

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Dominant Drums Teaser!

Posted on March 8, 2014 by flux302

This new maschine expansion has been a labor of love. Drums were recorded in a variety of settings using both traditional kits as well as “found sound” kits. The drums were then processed through a variety of outboard gear and optimized for usage in todays top drum sequencing software with a special focus on Native Instruments Maschine.

The Expansion pack is available for both Maschine 1.8 and 2.x format also as individual wav files that are organized by category( kick, snare, etc)
All sounds are individually tagged for easy browsing.
Each kit is mapped out with finger drumming in mind!

Take a look at Dominant Drums!
available Soon at Bigfishaudio.com!

Maschine 2.0 / Studio Preview 2 (The Sampler)

Posted on October 27, 2013 by flux302

Time For Another Maschine 2 Preview!

I have been using Maschine 2.0 for a good bit now and am very familiar with it’s workflow and changes.

With Maschine 2.0 and the Studio controller about to hit the store shelves any day now. We have all heard about the great new 32 bit floating point sound engine, but I thought it might be nice to discuss some of the changes to workflow that you can expect.

Lets get right into it by talking about the sampler section

The first thing of note is now we are not limited to using only stereo inputs. This means we can sample mono sources with out having to convert later. On the studio controller we are given input selection buttons to allow us to directly select our source right from the hardware.

The four tabs in the left hand hardware screen are Record, Edit, Slice and Zone.

Under the Edit tab we are also given a new “Selection Range” this is a great feature in that it allows us to select a portion of the sample separate from the start and end points and loop points and apply functions such as time stretching or normalization to just that selection. you can pre hear the selection range from the software by clicking play icon next to the file name. very good for checking selections without screwing up your start and end points.

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