06.04.10
The MPC
This was IT..the real deal……
Roger Linn started it with the Linn Drum and brought the concept to fruition with this beast.
I was in the middle of trying to rescue the production of “When The Radio Is On” for Paul Shaffer, a song that my partner Kevin and I had written for him. We didn’t get to produce it but everybody hated what the “big time producer” had done so it was up to us to reprogram the entire backing track,keeping only the vocals and raps (which included Will Smith,Carole King, Ellie Greenwich,Dion,Johnny Maestro,and more) When we got the 24 track 2″ tapes, the sequencers that we were using wouldn’t lock up correctly so we headed to Sam Ash in White Plains and rented the MPC-60. This machine was so intuitive that it was locking and we were rocking within an hour….we had to have one.
We did the entire backing track with this, the MKS-80,ESQ and EPS….the only thing they kept was a little sax part.
Paul promised me lifetime seats to Letterman but when I called him later (and after the song had tanked) for tickets, he told me that he couldn’t help me, as he “had no pull with the Letterman show”…I guess he really is “Mr. Show Biz”.
Anyway…I used the MPC-60 to death and was even a beta tester for the MPC-60 II (thanks to my buddy Andy Marvel) and got to speak with Roger himself as he sent updates…he is the nicest guy and a freaking genius in my book.
I upgraded as far as the MPC-3000..it had an HD interface, was 16 bit (instead of 12) and a bunch of other great features..but I eventually had to give it up for a Mac based sequencer, starting with MOTU’s Performer (nice but iffy on the timing) and moving over to Logic.
(side note: I did the entire “Jason’s Lyric” soundtrack’s midi-music sequencing using the MPC-60 slaved to a VHS machine that had audio on one channel and SMPTE on the other..talk about old school…)
