In a typical MPC, sequencer events are either recorded on ‘MIDI’ tracks or ‘DRUM’ tracks. Once you’ve recorded your sequence, you can then play back these instructions to the MIDI instrument and the instrument itself will play back the audio based on the instructions you send it. With a sequencer, you do not record the actual sounds from the performing instrument, you simply record note data ‘instructions’, which can consist of pitch, volume, length etc as well as the timing of that note in relation to other notes. What is a sequencer? It’s a device for recording data about musical events, rather than recording the actual audio itself. However, at the heart of every MPC is a powerful, intuitive sequencer. But in reality sampling is perhaps the weakest individual aspect of the MPC, because only the MPC4000 has a fully-fledged sampling engine and OS (thanks to it containing all the sampling features of a Z-series sampler). Many people know that the MPC is a sampler capable of recording audio from a variety of sources.

In this article I’ll also be looking at the hardware configuration side of the most common two MIDI set ups, that of using the MPC to control a sound module, and of syncing the MPC to a computer DAW. Initially, the concept of MIDI can be confusing, but hopefully in this tutorial you will realise that MIDI is pretty simple and has many uses.

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