Chisel
ILLIEN
ill o.g.
Here's a question I'd like to throw out to all of you who use a sequencer, sampler, sound module combination to make music... I don't have any problems composing with my sequencer and controlling all my other equipment with it. The problem is deciding the best way to save everything into a "package" that can easily be loaded back into the equipment when it's time to perform the song. I can think of three different approaches. I've tried all three of these and I'm wondering what you all do. Here they are:
1) Write down the settings of the patches/presets/roms/ etc... of all the exernal equipment and load and configure everything manually before playing the song. [This is quite tedious, but is necessary for loading sample banks from media devices]
2) Record sysex midi dumps of all the arrangements (on the equipment that supports this) or controller data to the sequencer and play that back to the equipment at the beginning of the song. [This is my current method]
3) Record all the MIDI riffs back into a phrase sampler (i.e. MPC) and simply trigger the phrases from the sampler. [This is the all-audio approach]
What approach do you use? Is there a fourth, fifth, sixth approach I'm not thinking of?
BTW, all the equipment mentioned above is hardware-based.
1) Write down the settings of the patches/presets/roms/ etc... of all the exernal equipment and load and configure everything manually before playing the song. [This is quite tedious, but is necessary for loading sample banks from media devices]
2) Record sysex midi dumps of all the arrangements (on the equipment that supports this) or controller data to the sequencer and play that back to the equipment at the beginning of the song. [This is my current method]
3) Record all the MIDI riffs back into a phrase sampler (i.e. MPC) and simply trigger the phrases from the sampler. [This is the all-audio approach]
What approach do you use? Is there a fourth, fifth, sixth approach I'm not thinking of?
BTW, all the equipment mentioned above is hardware-based.
I love having more equipment to work with now, but it gets overwhelming sometimes. Last night, I used approach #3 and it worked great. My process was: 1) Queue up preset on my ESI-4000, 2) Record MIDI track using MPC 1000, 3) Record the MIDI track back into the MPC 1000 as an audio sample, 3) Assign sample to pad, 4) Repeat. For the drums, I skipped step 2 and recorded a single hit from each drum sound into the MPC. The only con about doing it this way is that if I need to change the MIDI data, I need to resample it as audio each time I make a change. The other way to do this is to use MIDI exclusively and create a new bank on the ESI-4000 containing the presets for the song in the MPC. Or if I'm only using instruments from a single bank on the ESI-4000, then I can add program change message in the MPC so it calls up the correct instrument before playing it. I'm thinking of loading all of my drum samples into the MPC as programs for each category (i.e. kicks, snares, hats, etc...) and using the programs as a palette. Then when I start a new song, I'll load in each program, choose the appropriate sample, and assign it to a pad in a new program. Anybody else use this approach?