The MPC Is a Solid-A$$ Production Music Machine
I'm getting into production music tracks for commercial purposes, cues, and stuff like that. This is the project I've been working on for a couple weeks, and the similarities to house music are pretty interesting. Specifically, house music made on the MPC, where you can't really have tails going over and smudging into different sections.
So it's a world of 8-bar sections, one idea, fundamental melodies, and succinct information. All of that is house music, especially when you look at it from the vantage point of an MPC.
You have eight-bar sections where you're adding and taking away. You build it up, take almost everything away, then you bring it back at the end, and that's essentially what a cue is.
What I've not seen one single person talk about is the fact that the MPC is kind of the perfect environment for it.
When you're--like me and have only an hour a day to make a track in the morning, you really, really, really have to make that count. That's where the MPC works, just because of how easy it is to copy and repeat sequences and create tracks incredibly quickly.
This is kind of exactly what modern MPC people are doing when they're making all their horrible beats anyway.
And although the world really wants the MPC only to make hip-hop or boom bap, I think it's an incredibly lazy, one sided way to look at the MPC. Akai and InMusic marketing are as guilty as anyone here.
No that greatness does not exist in this world, but people making decent music via beat tapes are very few and far between.
But while the MPC really lends itself to making great 8-bar loops, where it really shines as well is easily creating full tracks out of them, especially when you have the restrictions of cue writing where your B section is just taking things away and adding one or two new things to your A section.
Brilliant machine for that.
I've made 20-some-odd tracks in as many days, and my goal is always 25% with artsy music. Hit rate is much higher in production music (maybe even inverse). Already I've got loads of usable tracks. Batching them style-wise to send to people.
Now I just need to find said people.