I dont even know where to begin. It's so outside my wheelhouse, I normally do orchestral music. I love nearly every genre of music tho, so, I thought maybe I might try my hand at making some rhythmic music and delve into the world of loops and electronic stuff.

By the way, as a side note, for the love of God, those of you who are making "beats", please, stop selling yourself short by using this dumb term. What ya'll do is not all that different from what a sound engineer does. Yes, there is not much music theory involved, but that doesnt mean you aren't using the hardware in creative ways to make things sound interesting, and in my opinion, you sell yourself short by using this term.

I digress. I have a couple of questions. First, anyone with an MPC Live, any tips on both how to stay focused and not go down the insane rabbit hole that is options in this thing? I am finding the "workflow" to be somewhat confusing simply because of the plethora of options and branching paths i can take (I like to finish projects). Good Youtube content would be a great starting point, Tube Digga seems to be a decent fella who has done many helpful tutorial content.

Second, as a person who loves nearly all forms of music, are there any default sounds or loops I should get my hands on? This thing has a hard drive port on it for a 2.5 inch SATA, so I did what every red blooded person does when presented with such an option, I put a 1 TB drive in there, which seems like more than enough storage. I have nearly every expansion Akai sells (currently only missing OVXO, Sleazy Beats, urban echo, hook city talk box edition, and the newly released F9 instruments and jupiter rising), which comes out to 50 expansions. I have yet to figure out how to install these to the MPC live, that is the project for today, I want them to actually appear as installed expansions and not just a bunch of folders with wav files in them.

Related to the above question, any other companies that put out high quality sound content I should be looking at? MVP Loops seems to be one, Sample Loops is another I think. Like I said, I like all genres of music so if there is something in particular you like, mention it. Apparently, 808 is a thing, I should probably go about searching for some 808 things.

You can also PM me if you know of some less than legal compilations that might exist that I should check out, I do buy things I use, but, as I have zero knowledge of this stuff, I feel like I am learning a new instrument, and diving into things unknown, so I dont yet know what to invest money into.

 

this man is your friend , his channel is incredible , and dont forget to have fun and explore music , sampling is all about exploring genres and ideas , happy digging

 

Wow, that is crazy, there is a snippet about halfway in where he is writing the melody and he rolled his fingers across the four pads and created a sort of super fast run. Also, his finger work is amazing, I feel like what Ive been doing is so stilted. Ill keep looking at stuff he has done, sad that he ended up with a brain tumor, I hope he is on the mend now...