question about muting & un-muting via hitting the pads

[junebug]

hello!

i'm looking at buying the roland sp404SX, but i need to answer a SPECIFIC question first.

i need to know if you can have all 12 pads playing at the same time and mute/un-mute them individually on and off "on-the-fly" (via hitting the pads) for LIVE PERFORMANCE.

i read over the manual, and it seems this could be done using the [gate] button?

to put it another way:
can i mute/un-mute the sounds/sampled-loops on each "pad" individually, say i have LOOPS on each pad:

a drumloop on pad1, synthloop on pad2, bassloop on pad3, fx loop on pad4, etc. -- all the way up to pad 12... all playing, then can i mute and un-mute any loop at will just by hitting it's pad?

i'm looking for something to replace my awesome but kinda clunky yamaha SU700...

PLEASE HELP!!
THANKS!!
JUNEBUG

[Rabot]

iiish not really.

Let's say you have 12 MONO SAMPLE (cause it's only 12 voice poly) playing and they are all on LOOP mode.

If you hit one of them it STOPS the sample.

There is one trick people found but it's kinda ghetto imo.

Have the ISOLATOR effect turned on, muting the LO MID and HI of samples. with the remain button you unselect all the sample. You play your 12 (lol) mono sample all at the same time. while the effect is ON, you hit remain and select whatever sample you wanna MUTE.

But yeah i don't even know if that explanation made sense but...

[Dr Van Nostrand]

they won't just loop infinitely in sync either, even if they are trimmed to precise BPMs from your computer and imported into the SP, so you would have to toss them in the pattern sequencer so that they all stayed in time relative to eachother, which could be relatively easy or annoyingly difficult depending on the loops you're are using and how clean you need your loop points to sound (there are only whole number BPMs for the pattern sequencer)

then using the isolator as a mute would let you do exactly what you want, but from the way you explained what you wanna do and how you think you are going to do it, i feel like there's a chance that you might be let down with the capabilities of the 404, see if you can hit up a music store like guitar center and play with one and feel it out

and like rabot said, if you want to be playing twelve different loops at once, they would all have to be mono, and if you need them all to be stereo, you won't be able to play more than 6 at once

[Rabot]

well said. i feel like you do not really want to do such a thing with a 404. there's other way to do thing via pattern sequencer that could be way more interesting, using a 404 is not like using ableton.

even just live play and such, but then it's not a traditional mute/un mute way. i like it some people dont.

you might just want ot bring your laptop and buy a midi controller if you wanna do it this way :S

i think...

[junebug]

thanks everyone for your ideas on this!

seems like i'm after such a simple thing, but i can't find ANY sampler/grooveboxes that will do this for me except for the Yamaha SU700 (which I already own and use)...
the problem with the SU700 is that it only has 4 "loop" pads available at a time for you to mute/un-mute loops, you can access the other ones with a button, but i want to have ALL the tracks available to mute/un-mute with pads right there at the same time...

ANY SUGGESTIONS on machines that can do this?

i really don't want to use a laptop in my live set-up...
any help is much appreciated!!

JUNEBUG

[unsignd]

I feel like the MPC would do exactly that, but I may not have understood the question.

On the MPC you can record whatever you want to tracks that will all be playing at the same time. Then you hit the mute button, and it shows all the tracks you have, and you can just hit the pad for that track and it will mute, then hit it again and it will unmute without starting it over or anything like that, so it all stays in sync.

I would record hats to one track, bass drum to another, then snare, and then the sample. but you could add another track for bass or whatever you want, and could mute each track whenever.

[junebug]

with an MPC, can i just import .wav format loops to each pad,
and then mute/un-mute them LIVE on the fly?

THANKS!
JUNEBUG

[unsignd]

Yeah, the MPC deals with .wav files natively. You may want to do a ram upgrade depending on which MPC you buy since my MPC1000 only has 16megs of ram. I've heard its really easy to upgrade though. And yeah, you can mute / unmute tracks on the fly. To transfer the files over, there is a usb input you plug into your computer to access the mpc's storage space.

You may want to read up on it a bit to see if its something you want, I believe that midi controllers can do similar stuff and are much more integrated with the computer if you are wanting to work half on the computer and use the sampler for giving things a more human feel, on the fly type stuff. You may be interested in the Maschine, but I dont know much about it myself.

[JZTR]

I know you don't wanna use a laptop but a Novation Launchpad with Ableton Live would get the job done. Maybe something to think about?

[junebug]

thanks very much for your help and advice!

now, someone is telling me that the MPC2000 (old machine) can do this as well...
i'm pretty sure it cannot, and the RAM is really low on it also -
anybody know if the 2000 can do this?
seems unlikely IMO...

thanks much!
JUNEBUG

[knobsmcgee]

the 2000xl definitely can. theres a button called track mute,
which makes all the pads act as mutes/unmutes during the sequence.
you cannot trigger a pad during track mute mode; only mute and unmute.
im not sure if the og 2000 has this.

roland mc909 and the korg esx have something similar too im pretty sure

[Dr Van Nostrand]

but doesn't the track mute on the 2000xl work where it only mutes the track at the top of the loop/sample, so if you there is a sample that is playing when you hit the track mute, it doesn't mute right away on the spot, but once it gets to the next triggered pad on that track, and same when turning it back on, it doesn't just start playing instantly when you unmute that track, it starts playing when the next sample in that track is triggered

i think thats how it works, i've only used my buddies a handful of times though so somebody correct me if i'm wrong

[junebug]

hello again -

the more different gear i look at, the more i'm just not satisfied...
DOH!

nothing seems like it is really meant to do what it is i'm looking for...
i'm now thinking more and more about a cheap laptop and some usb midi controllers to get me going for live performance.

it's just that i think using GEAR vs. a laptop on stage looks better to the un-educated masses... i don't want people to think i'm just DJ-ing mp3's from a laptop, ya know?
DOH again....
jeez -
JUNEBUG

[unsignd]

I know that the MPC1000 mutes and unmutes instantly via the mute track screen. But some kind of midi controller + software with that feature might be more useful for you too.

[IIIII]

this might be weird but you could do that with a multitrack, just record the loops in for as long as you want and mute the tracks or fade them.