There is a part of me that wants to write songs in the vein of Koyaanisqatsi (especially The Grid with its glorious arpeggios) or The theme from S-Express, and do my own messing with James Brown along the lines of The Payback mix or Blue Note sampling like the Beastie Boys' Root down.
And at the same time play and record Hendrix and Beatles songs.
So with both heads open, I began looking at audio interfaces, DAWs and drum machine/sampler/sequencers.
Rather than do the DAW route (audio interface, beat pad, DAW), would the Akai MPC X cover all the grounds? On one hand, it looks like some of the MPC X is way beyond me as a way to manage sequencers. On the other hand, it does seem to cover most of what I'm after. Used prices seem to be dropping with the launch of the MPC Live II.
Requirements:
Scratch vocals
Internal audio interface (for recording Line in Keyboard, Line in Electric guitar, XLR Mic'd guitar amp, XLR Mic'd vocals)
External audio interface (in the sense of using the MPC X as an audio interface between a microphone and the computer's DAW)
Drum machine
Sampler
Dawless standalone.
DAW controller
It isn't clear how good an audio interface / ADDA the X is. Please bear in mind that I have no idea what I'm talking about as soon as the words Digital or Midi come up. On top of that my experience of DAWs go as far as Garageband, and that was rather limited. I'd dare say that I have more experience with a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder.
Yes, I have a top spec 2019 iMac and I could just spend the same money on a great audio interface, a beat pad, ableton Live. The idea of having a standalone equipment would help combat the distractions associated with working on a desktop (tFB, email, youtube, etc.).
Comments
I have a Presonus Firestudio Mobile and I'm pretty disappointing by the monitoring: nothing like the actual recording. I wonder whether I set it up wrong. The headphone monitoring is pretty dull and I detect latency, and this was with Voice over work. Granted I was running it into a 2008 Macbook Pro. Perhaps a UA apollo X twin duo/quad core would eliminate these issues. A look at your set up/work flow might set me straight.