great topic! i gotta check out the full video when i get home.

i went from a 4-track, to an mpc2000, to protools, and now i'm getting familiar with logic.

starting off, i think every beatmaker in their 30s-40s has made pause tapes. shit, i even took one of those bullshit price club casio keyboards and tapped out beats, multi-layering it with the 4-track!

things got more serious with the mpc. it starting with just layering loops. then when "moment of truth" came out i (and everyone else with an mpc) chopped everything into 1-note samples and stabbed away. then a mix of the two. then turning off the quantizing feature. but THEN, it became more about controlling details rather than happy accidents, and that's when i REALLY really started using the step editor and the sample editing features on the mpc--"oh THAT'S how jay dee gets his shit to sound like that...THAT'S how dj shadow manually time-stretches that 1-minute long trumpet solo..."--(pre-2000xl). it got to a point when i didn't even use the pads to "play" anything. all step editor. but ironically, everything started to sound more "human" (via programmed dynamics, swing, and even better-placed sample air).

i was basically doing a protools workflow on my mpc, so by the time i actually got my hands on protools, i was able to do things i wanted--but MUCH faster. plus i had more options, esp with no sampling time limit and pad/trigger limits. i could sample an entire song and pluck out more parts to experiment with, without having to worry about ram memory and pad assignments. while conceivable on an mpc, it's probably not practical, and definitely not convenient. for example, for that last BLACK MESSIAH beat i made, i uploaded/"sampled" the entire album, chopped out every open instrument, made more chops of those...and then more, added some fx, etc. on an mpc, it probably would've taken over 100 pads just for the drums!

forget the mpc, gimme the software.

given all the above, it amazes me that the bomb squad and dj shadow made all those dense compositions on those limited machines from the 80s and 90s. it makes me appreciate what we have now and try find ways to stretch the limitations of the current gear we have.

Happy 50th D’Angelo: https://chrisp.bandcamp.com/track/d-50