Here we go...first thing if this was two weeks ago i would have said that's a great price for a MDUW MK1, but after the announcement of the +drive and the MDUW MKII+, I don't know how the used market for the non+ MDUWs will react.

1. i'll see if I can whip something up this weekend. I think I know what you mean by mute drops, but clarification would be helpful. in the mean time here are a couple quick and rough sample based beats.[url]http://www.kissingteeth.com/music/terminal.mp3
[/url]<--this one is just a one pattern "jam" muting and unmuting tracks on the fly.

http://www.kissingteeth.com/music/sleep ... unrise.mp3<--this one is sequenced out in the song mode which I'll try and explain a bit more below

2. you can't record things in realtime un-quantized, however, there are a lot of tricks that will let you push things around to get them off of the grid. one way to do this is you can program which steps swing and which ones don't for every track and then you can set the master swing amount. for example you could turn the swing off on all tracks except the one with your snares and make sure that each step that you trigger a snare swings and then set the swing amount above 50% you can start to push them behind the beat.
there are other tricks to like if you are using samples leave a bit of silence at the start and then adjust the start point (you could even set a LFO to this so that each time the sample triggers it leaves a different amount of space at the start). there are some more tricks and ways to really get your patterns moving, but I don't want to overwhelm you right now.


3. no real time stretching or pitch shifting, but similar effects could be achieved through clever use of the LFOs, but it would be hard to be accurate and most likely more trouble than it's worth. you can speed up samples and then slow them down, this is what I do with all of my longer samples, I either samples them at 45rpm +8% or double their speed on the computer. saves space and adds a bit more grit.


4. song mode, the sleeping sunrise track above is my first time messing with song mode and it's dope. you can sequence out your patterns, loop them, change the tempo, program mutes and even chop up your patterns like samples it's really powerful and flexible once you dig into it.


5. the differences between the MKI and MKII off the top of my head are MKII is smaller has a better power supply/adapter (more "universal" whatever that means) more ROM slots for samples (10 or so) 2.5MB of sample memory instead of 2MB, 4 bar patterns vs 2 (this is really useful for doubling the resolution of the sequencer) better signal to noise ratio and 4 RAM record and playback machines vs 2.

6. It's a tough call to say if you should get this over an MPC, I love it and find the workflow, interface and possibilities to be way way way more inspiring. I feel that I can make stuff that I'm stoked on in minutes on the machine drum that would have taken a looong time on an MPC. that being said there are things that a MPC is going to be better at- more sample time, unquantized recording and velocity sensitive pads. also the MPC is better if you just want to chop some samples up and bang them out in sequence. the MDUW is better if you want to really get into programing and freaking your sounds aside from the sampling it's also a world class drum machine/synthesizer and you can morph the drum sounds into all kinds of different stuff, i've heard dope synth leads, bass, wobble bass, pads, textural stuff, violin like sounds, crazy sound efx and tons more. also the effects in the machine drum are great and the fact that you can sequence the parameters of the efx is rad. the LFOs and parameter locks just give you and insane amount of control and options over your sequences and sounds.

word up RB i know what you mean by loving your machine

Bridge, I end up getting mp 1k, but for fuck sake it's the second one which turned out to be faulty, and after I give it back, I will start considering getting back to some software (+ sp + synth(blofeld?))

damn, i'm sorry this has taken me so long to get back. been super busy with school, work and art stuff (and my rapidly growing modular) . if you want you could have 16 different "chops" loaded into the 16 different machines which you could play out live and sequence (quantized of course).

you can also just have one sample on one machine and program the "chops" with the parameter locks. or you can kind of automate them using lfos assigned to the sample start and end points, this is what i tend to do more and is represented with the example tracks above.

another idea that I haven't really gotten to mess with, but i've been toying with in my head would be using between 2-14 machines for individual chops and creating a sequence with them. then using that remaining 2 machines for 1 RAM record and 1 Ram play machines to basically resample your sequence. then switching to another pattern and just loading up the RAM play machine and using that like a sample in itself and then loading up more sounds either sampled or synthesized and layering more on top. you could then just chain the patterns together in song mode. I don't know if this is a very clear idea, but basically it would allow you to constantly resample your sequence and then either flip the resampled version or layer more stuff on top or both.

hope that gives you some more insight. i'm not sure when ill have the time to make a video, but if your still interested i'll keep it on the to-do list.

lastly thanks for the kind words on the beats, I don't really post stuff too often so it's good to get some props from someone who's not my girlfriend.

Thanks for the info!

It seems like it's not as immediate as I was hoping. I think I'll look into the mpc3000 for half the price of an sp1200...

Maybe some lack of immediacy is what you need! I would take an md over any of those relics any day. MPC's are boring, but thats just my opinion. If you get one and it makes you a beat super hero thats all that matters.