Hey I've had record in my head for a bit over a year now and i'm trying to make it happen at the moment.

Its a kind of shoegazey, psyrock kind of a jam and I have been keen to use drum machines for the drums.

A few weeks ago I picked up an MPC 1000 second hand and while its fun the slowness of loading up the machine and assigning samples to pads individually has been tedious and really slowing down my creativity.

The other problem I'm having is with sequencing/looping, id like to be able to just bang out like a one to four bar loop then hit save or hit loop and it continue to play, rather then set up a click track and if I'm to slow or to quick have the beat fuck up or get auto corrected etc.

I think the essence of the problem im having is I dont really want to write whole songs on the mpc rather I just want to lay down quick drum tracks which I can loop.

What I wanted to know is would an sp machine be able to do the things I want to do more easily or is it just that need to learn to use the MPC better? Admittedly I still know quite little about the MPC and I understand from the different instruments I play that there is always a steep learning curve when learning a new instrument.

I was also thinking that maybe a a step based sampler such as the electribe series may suit what i'm trying to do as being able to visually see the pattens and map them out may help with my timings / programming.

Has anyone got any experience with writing drums for a rock and roll band on drum machines?

Thanks

Alex

Yo homie,

If you feel that the loading times in the 1K is slow then don't mess with SPs, I own a 1K and honestly to me it is the fastest sampler I ever owned (and I had a few...) chopping and assigning samples to your pads in the 1K is just a snap... you are going to get very frustrated if you try a SP then...
Anyways I have passion for the process so I enjoy using my 505...

The MPC is the best for sequencing beats and drum patterns- I would like an MPC so I could create full songs with varying drum tracks. I can do this on the SP, but the sequencer (pattern mode) isn't nearly as good as the MPC's so instead it's more fun to resample beats. BUT the workflow on the SP is unmatched. If you want to bang out a couple of 4 bar drum loops, you can do it in about 30 seconds. Plus with the SP, you can add awesome effects to the drums (reverb, delay, distortion etc.) which you can't do as well with an MPC. Get one, you won't regret it- they're so fun to play with I wish I could quite my job so I could use it all day!

Provided the SP samples are already imported on your flash card - they don't have any load time and 404SX can have a LOT of samples on the SD card. I think the sequence programming is similar to MPC though but as long as you are practised and don't make many mistakes it can be very quick to record a loop. However, if you'd feel more comfortable with X0X style step programming, I'd take a look at the Korg Electribes (which can also do loop recording like the SP).

Jim