Hi
Chris, One of your everyday toy is the MPC60, when
did you first meet?
I bought my first one in Tokyo Japan at Five G, one of the best second hand shop in the world, in 1996. The big convertor, which turns 110v to 220v, was more difficult to find than the rhythm box. I swapped it for a friend’s 909 Roland later on because it didn’t have enough memory but I started to miss her after a while and bought another one because the groove is incomparable. I bought the Sequencer version call ASQ10 too.
What
was it about the MPC that first seduced you?
I
knew it was the box of one of my favorite hip hop producer, DJ
Premier from Gang Starr, and many groups from New York with
incredible groove. The
first beat I did that truly made me happy was with that machine, I
was seduced straight away. I had an SP1200, also one of the best, but
the MPC60 has a more delicate groove..
What
is a drum machine? (boite a rythme)
Drum
machines were created to replace real drummers - so it's an
electronic box that replicates drum sounds; like bass srum or kick,
snare, hi-hat (closed and open), ride, crash, tom; some have
percussion, too and a sequencer to play the drum.
How
does the MPC60 work? What is its specialty?
The
MPC60 was the first one to use pads, so it’s easy to play. Roger
Linn - the designer - invented that.
This
system is industry standard. It can sample like the (S950 Akai)
inside so you can take any sound and play what you want with it. I
mean not only drums, but voices or anything that makes noise…
Tell
us about the old-school discs?
I
still use floppy discs, it's slow but the driver works well. I have
an incredible bank of floppy discs with all the rhythms I’ve
sampled before, which I was selling a couple years – I also have
some samples from the time my studio was under a second hand vintage
synth shop. So
I’ve got a collection of sounds from machines like; HR16 Alesis,
Drum Traks Sequential Circuits, R8 MKII Roland, Linn 9000, Linn Drum,
TR 909, TR 808, TR606, TR707, TR727, CR78 Roland…
Have
you learnt by yourself?
I
learn with the manual but I’m a sound engineer so machines aren’t
really that difficult for me to learn about most of the time. It's
easier to understand gear than kid’s electronic toy sometimes.
Can
you give a trick to our readers?
It's
great to use rhythm box with delay to create a different groove.
Any
pieces of music you’ve created with it recently?
Recently
I used the MPC60 with some Modular FX Filter and LFO on my Monsieur
Georget LP, which is coming next month. Also
with my friend Dan Ghenacia for beat arrangement on most of the
tracks we did together the last EP we made on Apollonia and next on
Music For Freaks, too.
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